The Evil
Not just any evil, but the Evil. Time to go mano y mano with big Dick Crenna in Gus Trikonis' 1978 haunted house flick, THE EVIL. Richard Crenna stars as CJ Arnold, a drug addiction specialist, who along with his wife Caroline(Joanne Pettit) and some associates, sets up to open a new rehab facility. They get a great deal on a big century old mansion known as the Vargas place. Doesn't it seem that anytime you get a great deal on an old place with a proper name that supernatural trouble is not far behind? According to the realtor it also turns out that for centuries the local Indians have given the place a "wide berth". But that doesn't bother CJ ,right off the bat he makes some kind of "I think religion is crap" statement. What he doesn't know but we do since we saw the prologue and he didn't is that the missing handyman isn't missing , he's dead. He pretty much burst into flame while working on a furnace. I guess I should mention that Andrew Prine plays one of Crenna's colleagues, mainly because I think Prine is pretty cool. He wears some crazy man-batch clinging jeans, sorta like the kind that guy wore on one of the Journey albums. Greg Rolle possibly. But anyway, one of the ladies brought her German Shepherd, so you know what that means. Yes,the dog senses something troubling, begins to act weird and runs off to hide. While searching for the dog, Crenna finds a strange doorway in the cellar floor, leading down and latched shut with a big,metal cross, which he promptly removes. And Hell, all the hell,breaks loose. The doors and windows inexplicably lock, wood doors turn incredibly hard, sealing everyone inside. CJ still thinks there is a logical explanation even though his wife is seeing the ghost of Vargas and has mysteriously found his diary, with a detailed chapter on sealing the beast in his prison. I think there's even a statue out front that made some similar cryptic statements. No real surprises but it is a pretty effective haunted house story, with some viciously nice moments as the Evil tries to keep everybody locked in while it bumps them off. Anybody who ever saw an industrial arts circular saw safety film will appreciate the Evil's sense of humour. Around this time nationally, the best seller "The Amityville Horror" was widely known and might have been an influence. But this film is actually scarier despite Amityville's claim to being a true story. Mainly because people die in gruesome ways. Which brings us to Victor Buono as Satan. Apparently some cuts of the film eliminated the climax in the cellar with Buono, possibly because it was too goofy. Buono's fine but it is challenging not to see it as a comedic performance despite his spooky talk about "holy excrement" and so forth. At first he's just a portly fellow in all white sitting in a room with a unseen fog machine but he grows some horns and his eyebrows get bushier as he psychically tortures Crenna. I suppose it's best just to roll with the concept that the Devil himself has been locked in a basement upstate somewhere til some idiot lets him out but you gotta wonder how this could happen. He is the Devil after all and even before the cross was removed there was some bad mogambo going on so what's the difference isfhe's out or not? Still, it's a pretty cool entry in the devil house sub genre.