This is the 2nd movie in Troma's Blood Bank DVD box set, and a real treat!
Amazing This Is 1980!
The hair styles, and fashion and especially the special effects, I would have thought this film was shot in the early 1970’s! This movie SO has the feel of a mid-70’s ABC Mystery Night Movie or some such thing. Other then the occasional cuss word, the production values are WAY 70’s television!
And I kinda like that!
Trust me,
Swan
My, you're nosey, aren't you?
I thought this film was okay. The cast was very good and there's a reasonable amount of spooky atmosphere, but the hopelessly shoddy special f/x nearly ruin the flick. 6 out of 10 from me.
1,000 mini-bios and I feel like I'm just getting started
I just watched it for the second or third time last night. I like it overall, although yes, it is extremely cheesy at times--but I thought a bit fun at that, and the ending is a bit of a mess in my opinion. The plot gets a bit stupid at the end (the ring business--it just seems random and not significant enough for what it is supposedly doing, because nothing had been established about the backstory to make that a likely solution) and ventures a bit into "wtf is going on?" territory, with the double entities, the fate of the "devil doll", etc.
John Saxon, Lynda Day George, Michael Dante and David Opatoshu all did a fine job performance-wise, in my opinion (and I don't remember realizing before how friggin hot George was, too bad she retired after her husband died, but she did a lot of work before and a bit after this film that I need to check out). Some actors, like Mario Milano, are not as good, but they're fun to watch in an MST3K kind of way.
The core story, except for the ending, which they didn't seem to quite know what to do with, is very engaging, and as the other poster noted, this film has a decent "atmosphere", a great setting, etc. The house was fantastic.
It didn't help that I've got it on a Brentwood DVD, which looks worse than a bad VHS (I thought I had the Troma disc, but I can't find it at the moment), but helping my score on the positive side is that I'm a bit of a John Saxon fan. Overall, I gave this an "enthusiastic 6.5" on this last viewing, which I rounded up to a 7 here to help the average. Having an average score below 3, as it does at the moment, seems a bit ridiculous to me, but I guess you have to have a taste for the era's non-gore-oriented horror and at least a slight taste for cheese to enjoy the film.
Beyond Evil would be a good candidate for a remake, too.
http://www.rateyourmusic.com/~JrnlofEddieDeezenStudies
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