976-EVIL
Back in 1988, when Freddy Kruger-mania was at its absolute peak, Robert Englund was actually able to generate enough clout to be able to actually direct his own horror film, and this is the result: a curio-piece that pales next to the classics (including the Nightmare films), but is certainly more watchable than much of the watered-down PG-13 crap that passes for horror today. The script takes as its inspiration the 976 / 900 number craze of the era, where people could call various (expensive) phone lines looking for anything from sex to sports scores to fortune telling, and in this case, the title phone number provides people with a “horrorscope”, basically telling them subtle tips on how to improve your life but ultimately causing the unlucky callers to lose their souls in the process. As it happens, we have two cousins, one a geeky, picked-upon nerd (Stephen Geoffreys, forever remembered as Evil Ed in Fright Night before he descended into the real life hell of gay porn), and the other a leather-jacketed, motorcycle-riding tough guy (Patrick O’Bryan, just as curious a story because even though he has swagger and screen presence, reprised his role here in the sequel and then completely disappeared from the film industry altogether), both of whom wind up calling the phone line. While the tough cousin quickly loses interest, the nerd becomes addicted to the phone line and the power it starts to grant him to gain revenge over his tormentors while at the same time causing him to physically transform into some kind of demon. Geoffreys brings a lot of his Evil Ed persona into play as the nerd, but since he always had kind of a creepy screen presence, fails to generate much sympathy even when the bullying gets to be its worst while O’Bryan (as stated) seemed to have a future star look about him and was certainly masculine, but his acting was not quite at the level it probably could have developed into had he stuck with his career. Also in the mix is Oscar winner Sandy Dennis as the religious fanatic mother and aunt to the two of them, Jim Metzler as some kind of “religious reporter” who starts to check out the background of the phone line, J.J. Cohen (best known as one of Biff Tannen’s thugs from Back To The Future) as the main bully and tormentor of Geoffreys (even though he appears to be friends with O’Bryan and has a job as a projectionist in a movie theater which doubles as a nightly poker game hangout), and Lezlie Deane (best known as the tough girl from Freddy’s Dead) as the town slut (who quickly hooks up with O’Bryan) who also leads Geoffreys on and pays for it dearly with a visit from some poisonous spiders via the phone line (though it is a nice thing to see in the 80s a so-called slutty “bad girl” that nonetheless is free from having any tattoos or piercings and actually looks good naked). No prizes are awarded to the viewer for guessing that the phone line is a device of Satan himself, though the most curious scene in the movie is when the reporter goes to visit the wheezy little proprietor of the phone service (Star Trek star Robert Picardo) and we find him to be a rather underwhelming type who laments about how hard it is for someone to make a few bucks (though the final scene does confirm that he is evil). Of course, while the acting is okay, one has to fault Englund as director for not doing a very polished job here, whether it be the bad abrupt editing on display, or the fact that the story seems to have entire gaps missing for character development and exposition, most notably in the character of a female teacher who is barely introduced into the film and all of a sudden seems to be dating the reporter and then just like that is accompanying him to the cousins’ house for the big climax where the possessed Geoffreys fawns on her like he’s always liked her even though it’s their first scene in the movie together! Not to mention some odd choices in the way certain scenes are lit (like one in a locker room that for some reason is made to look like something from The Exorcist) that distract the viewer by being so obvious, as if Englund was trying too hard to establish a unique style but wound up stumbling all over the place as a result. We do get some decent gore and atmosphere, along with such twisted bits like when the poker-playing bullies get an obviously underage girl to do a striptease, but the technical faults on the film eventually overwhelm the positive aspects, making it one strictly for those who are into uncovering the era of 80s horror (when there was greatness seemingly everywhere) as opposed to being an all-out classic…
5/10