REVIEW DATE: 8:9:9:9
A while back Tcaikovsky wrote "The Nutcracker Suite", a piece of music which he completely loathed. After hearing it performed he felt that all copies of it should be destroyed, and the hands that wrote it severed, so that they might never again inflict such things on the world.
Okay, maybe he
didn't hate it that much.
Why am I prattling on about a composer who's been worm food for a few hundred years? Simple, really, both he and Dr. Freex have something in common: they are (were) both overly critical about their own written work to the extreme.
Now, Forever Evil is not the Nutcracker. It's barely Beethoven's 9th symphony. And I doubt Dr. Freex will be remembered as a significant composer of the 20th century. I mean, The Bad Movie Report isn't exactly The Nutcracker either.
However, this movie is by no means as putrid as the good Doctor will have us believe. In fact, I found it rather . . . entertaining.
Some of it, at any rate.
FE opens with a somewhat predictable tarot card reading between local wizard, Ben Magnus (Freeman "Freex" Williams), and whinny Texas girl, Mrs. Weinberger (Kayce Glasse). If her high, shrill, glass shattering, country singer voice gets on your nerves, don't worry. During her card reading, Magnus (of course) discovers that, not only are the cards for him, but they are pointing to something evil. Itching to head for the hills, Magnus orders Weinberger out of his house, just in time for her to get cut down the by Deadly POV Cam. So endeth her whining.
Meanwhile, packed and ready, Ben heads of the door, only to be confronted by the Grim Reaper. Or a giant Jawa, whatever. This whatever promptly takes several bullets to the chest and shots Magnus with a bolt of animated lightning, melodramatically laughing all the way.
Prologue over and done with, we meet Marc (Red Mitchell) and his cannon fodder, er, friends. There's Holly (Diane Johnson), Marc's girl, who, much to his chagrin, is pregnant; Jay (Jeffrey Lane), Marc's brother; Julie (Susan Lunt), his chick; Robert, their friend; and Jeanne (Karen Chatfield) his chick. These six have come together at Marc's cabin to celebrate. You see, Marc and his bro are about to paten there new invention and make lots of cash. What's the invention, you ask? Well, Marc won't say and I see no reason to, either. It doesn't become important until the last 30 minuets of the movie, anyway.
So, here we have 6 people in a secluded spot, with some sort of strange monster on the loose. Boy, I wonder what will happen?
Yes, that's right, 5 of them are ripped apart buy both the POV Cam and a 6 foot, blue
skinned, brake light eyed zombie (Kent H. Johnson). Marc makes it out alive . . . only to
be hit by a car
while standing in the middle of the road, thus earning him the title of
Unluckiest SOB on Earth.
And all of this in the first hour.
Hour two begins with Marc recovering in the hospital. There he meats Detective William Hurt Impersonator (Jon Cox) and Reggie (Tracey Huffman) the soul survivor of another massacre perpetrated by the same POV Cam. And probably the same zombie, too. For about 30 minuets of screen time, the three wander around and collect clues. Piecing them together in true Scooby Doo fashion, they discover that the zombie is a lackey of exiled (and pissed off) God by the name of Yog Kothag. Mr. Kothag is quite evil, which was why he got the boot. None too happy about it, his high priest has been killing people with Zombie in order to bring the boss man back.
Armed with this knowledge, the identity of the high priest, and some guns, Marc and Reggie go on the warpath. Can they stop the Zombie and the Priest before it's too late?
Not exactly the Nutcracker, is it?
But that doesn't matter, I'm not looking for an instant classic here. I'm looking for entertainment. As noted, despite its looped sound, despite its fuzzy picture quality, and most defiantly despite its stage like acting, I had some fun watching Forever Evil.
Am I truly mad? Or do I have a good explanation?
First off, there's always the fun inherent in pointing and laughing at the more ridiculous parts of a movie. Like the Demon Baby, for instance. This effect of a blue skinned, red eye fetus, while intended to be disturbing, generates (from me anyway) not much more then a crooked smile and a raised eyebrow. The effect just doesn't work. In fact, it flops so marvelously that I can make endless jokes about it.
Mockability aside ("Mockability" © 1998 Chris Holland, Stomp Tokyo) FE does have it's good parts. During the early cabin scene, our six characters display some very funny dialogue; comparable to several so-called good movies. Make no mistake, this movie is well written at times. Also the zombie, Alfie, is extremely well put together. Though I initially wished for a little more gore and decay around the face, I got that wish about ¾s of the way in, when Alfie has a run-in with some gas and a lighter, thus becoming even more well put together.
The acting ambles along from fair to partly cloudy. The looped sound track becoming the main reason for that. A lot of acting is in the voice, and some of these actors just couldn't seam to muster the proper voice from outside the scene. I'm not sure if the makers of this movie could afford a boom mike, or not (I'll ask), but, if they could, the probably should have used one. Better sound quality would most likely have resulted. Take the case of Marc's amazing disappearing/reappearing accent, or the way voices and sounds keep fading in and out, the result of someone, say, not holding the microphone close enough to their face while speaking.
Director Roger Evans sure loves that POV shot, don't he. Like dogs love trucks.
I know it was 
originally intended to boost suspense, and in the beginning of
the movie, it does. But, like most things used over and over again (jokes, clichés,
Backstreet Boys music, Halloween's plot line) it soon
becomes anoying.
Look, though, it ain't all-bad. I've yet to find another movie that kills off almost its entire cast in the first hour, only to introduce another set of characters. That's a damn gutsy move, and it's handled well. There are no big slow spots, and Red Mitchell does a good job of fleshing out Marc. I feel this dude's pain. And he doesn't go down that angst ridden, woe-is-me road, Reggie keeps him from that. Had more emotion gotten through the looping process, the two might even have some chemistry.
I suppose I can sum the trail mix of feelings this movie inspired in me in the following statement: Hey, this is low (and I do mean low) budget horror, you could do much, much worse then Forever Evil.
RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)
