Well after screening, and enjoying, the low budget independent film Lethal Force last week, I decided it was finally time to don my helmet, break out the old jock strap, and nut cup, and take a look at Forever Evil. (Yes that Forever Evil.)

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We open on a lonely house in the middle of nowhere. Inside, the whiny Mrs. Weinberger (Kayce Glass) complains about her latest husband while Brother Magnus (Freeman Williams a/k/a Dr. Freex.) lays out his tarot cards for her weekly reading. It’s her 50^th birthday - an unlucky number according to the ancient Sumerians, Magnus ominously points out.

Magnus tells Weinberger to leave, immediately, and kicks her out of the house where an unnatural storm is brewing. (OooOoOooOooO…) She returns to her car -- under the observation of something inhuman. She stops when she hears something like a dog, howling, and is then mauled to death by a Rogue POV shot. (The Rogue P[oint] O[f] V[iew] shot proved so popular in the film that I decided to make it a character.)

The mutant Jawa (since we’re already using Star Wars references) laughs at him and disintegrates the gun. It asks why he uses the man made tools instead of his occult powers. Magnus answers defiantly "I don’t fear you!" and the Jawa answers "you soon will" and blasts Magnus with an energy beam from his hand and Magnus is banished to another dimension (I think fulfilling his earlier vision) and the credits roll.

We come back to a cabin in the woods, where Mark Denning (Red Mitchell) closes the deal to sell the property through the local realtor, Parker Nash (Howard Jacobsen). The Denning brothers plan to have one final blowout at the family cabin, then sell it and use the money to patent and market their new invention. (What is the invention? Sorry you’ll have to wait a bit.)

The rest of the revelers arrive, including Marks girlfriend, Holly (Diane Johnson), his brother, Jay (Jeffery Lane), and his wife, Julie (Susan Lunt). The party is rounded out with friends Robert and Jeanie (David Campbell and Karen Cholfied).

While the others start the party inside the cabin, The Rogue POV watches Mark and Jay having a brotherly talk outside. Mark confides that Holly is pregnant and it obviously wasn’t planned. (I’m not sure if Mark and Holly are married, I don’t think so, because Jay asks if it’s Mark’s but the movie never makes it clear.) Jay asks what they’re going to do. Mark says they’ll just have to talk it out. Jay observes that a storm is brewing. (OoOOoOoOOoOooO…)

Later, the party starts running out of gas. Holly leaves for bed and The Rogue POV watches as she strips and takes a shower. 

We interrupt our film for a test of the Emergency Boob Shot. 

The camera lingers on Holly for a while as she soaps up.

This has been a test of the E.B.S.

 We now rejoin our film, already in progress.

A few diehards want to play more poker before calling it a night. Jay promises Julie he’ll only play three more hands. She says "make it two hands" (hint - hint, wink - wink, nudge - nudge, say no more) and leaves for their bedroom.

One hand later, Jeanie excuses herself to the bathroom. Mark says Holly’s still in there, taking a shower. Jeanie points out that you don’t pee and shower in the same place. (The woman has a point, except that if I’m in the shower - and the drains right there…sorry to much information. Let’s move on.) She leaves but before the next hand can be dealt, the cabin is filled with her screams.

The others rush down the long hallway and find her in the bathroom, pointing at the shower. Mark and Jay look inside and find Holly - completely disemboweled. Mark really freaks when he realizes that their unborn baby has been torn from her womb. They retreat, back, into the main room. Robert thinks they all should leave immediately (good idea there, Bob.) but Jay won’t leave without Julie.

They decide to stick together and search the house for her. (What a novel idea. Screen history folks, screen history.) They head down the dark hall again, when the lights go out. Mark finds a flashlight while The Rogue POV cam reveals something with glowing eyes, watching him, through the cabin’s large windows. (Okay, it really isn’t a cabin but more of a summerhouse by the lake.) The monster gurgles and lurches off.

The group does a sweep of the entire house, managing to stick together (man these guys are good), but can’t find Julie. They return to the main room and are shocked to find her -- hanging upside down from the ceiling with her throat torn out. Mark wonders where all the blood is when the Rogue POV books it down the hallway floor and seizes Jay, by the legs, and violently pulls him back down the hall.

Mark immediately grabs onto his brother but is pulled into the hall, right behind him, but Robert manages to get a hold of Mark's legs and brace himself against the doorframe - resulting in a macabre game of tug of war. Jay, the object of the tugging, is in obvious pain. Mark looks up and sees two large demonic eyes, glowing red in the darkness, down the hall. Meanwhile, a Rogue Tree Branch (no relation) breaks in a window and tries to pull Jeannie outside.

The monster down the hall wrenches Jay loose from the others - and their equal, yet opposite, reaction - spilling them back into the main room. The Rogue Branch pulls Jeannie outside, into the storm, and Robert follows her. The Rogue POV gets a hold of Mark's legs and starts to pull him down the hallway. Along the way, though, he manages to grab a large knife (they’d been carrying it around during the search) and hacks away at the malevolent force dragging him to his doom. The creature roars in pain and Mark scrambles away on his torn up legs.

He makes it outside and gets into his car - where he finds Robert’s bloodied body in the backseat. He abandons the car and spots the glowing red demon eyes in the darkness (a truly effective scene) - and is then seized by the gurgling zombie we spotted earlier. The creature throttles him, so Mark goes for it’s eyes and manages to gouge one out causing it to drop him.

While the creature roars in pain, Mark escapes down the long driveway and spots a car coming on the main road. He runs onto the highway (touchdown!) and feels safe enough to turn around and flip the hell creatures the bird.

We cut back to the cabin as the police tape the crime scene off. Lt. Leo Balls (Charles Trotter) (I knew a Harold Bols once but everyone called him Harry) is put in charge of the investigation. A mystery woman tries to bully her way onto the scene, claiming to be a reporter, but retreats after Leo arrives. Inside he finds Dr. Peter Carpenter (Richard Zamecki) (yes, he’s Lisa’s dad) trying to put several of the bodies back together again. He thinks there were five victims; but he can’t be sure. It’s the most gruesome thing either man has ever encountered.

Time passes and Mark gets better. We find him in the local library, going over the microfiche’d newspapers, making notes of reports of similar massacres. (There have been an alarming number in the general vicinity.) The Rogue POV stalks him through the racks of books but it only turns out to be the mystery woman. Reggie (Tracey Huffman) introduces herself and insists she’s not a reporter. Mark ignores her until he scrolls to an article with a picture of her, proclaiming she was the only survivor of a similar massacre.

They go for a walk and exchange stories. Reggie lost her boyfriend in her attack; but managed to escape the demon by hiding in the crawlspace. Fearing no one will believe her demon stories, she scours the country looking for someone else who survived a similar attack to confide in. The Rogue POV stalks them but it turns out to be a friendly dog. (Perhaps too friendly. OooOOoOo…) Mark thinks they should pool their resources and find out what’s really behind the attacks.

After they drop Leo off, Mark invites Reggie in for a cup of coffee. Mark heads inside while Reggie gathers Magnus’s things. The Rogue POV swings into action, heading right for her, but it turns out to be the same black dog again. (Leo also spotted the dog outside the Magnus house.)

Not very concerned, she heads inside. They exchange stories of their lost loved ones (oh just go jump in the sack and get it over with already.) Mark turns serious for a moment and begs Reggie to help him find and kill the demon. She thinks he’s crazy because it’s impossible. But he promises that the creature won’t be taking them by surprise this time and they can fight back. Reggie peruses the articles they found and spots the same black dog in the picture of the massacred family. She runs outside but the dog has disappeared. (Ah, doggone. Har-Har.)

Reggie asks to see it, so he shows her The Emergency Grappling System. (Or the EGS. Patent pending.) It straps to your arm and all you do is aim and shoot. The harpoon will lodge into whatever you aimed at and either reel it in or reel you up (or rip your arm out of its socket, whichever comes first. Okay, obviously dad’s creative genius got lost in the genes with his sons.)

Okay, our plot throws us a curveball while Leo teaches Mark how to shoot a gun. He gives Leo a copy of an astronomy magazine with an article about quasars. In particular - a certain "phantom" quasar, that pulses once every 30 years (or something) and it coincides with all the massacres. (C’mon, don’t change the plot now!) Leo harrumphs and says Nash’s paper trail abruptly ends 30 years back. (Coincidence? OoOoOOooo…)

The next day Mark wanders around a cemetery, taking notes from certain headstones. A nasty storm rolls in. (OooO *cough*cough* - sorry - oOOooOo.) The sky turns black and The Rogue POV comes up behind him. It’s Holly - all zombified. She claims to have something for him. And in the film’s most notorious scene, she tears open her own abdomen and a demon baby spills out onto the ground. It cries for Mark.

Mark jolts awake. (It was all a dream.) There is a knock on the door. It opens and Holly is there. Mark blinks and it turns out to be only Reggie. And to make a long story short, Mark and Reggie, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g…

Meanwhile, Leo receives some mysterious mail. He opens it, mutters a few expletives, sticks it in another envelope and addresses it to Mark. He walks to the mailbox down on the corner, with The Rogue POV marking his every move. ANOTHER storm brews up and nukes Leo’s Studebaker off his driveway. (And yes, The Rogue Storm was almost dubbed a character.) On the way back, Leo senses something is following him and draws his gun. There is something following him. The Rogue POV starts growling and gurgling and zeroes in on him. Leo empties his revolver with no effect.

Mark jolts awake again (with Reggie right beside him) and claims Leo is in trouble. They rush to the scene but the cops are already there and the EMT’s are loading Leo’s body (or what's left of it) into the ambulance. Peter and Lisa are both their, too, and let Mark inside the police barricade. They were close friends of Leo’s (especially Lisa) and he confided in both of them about the investigation. They both offer to help anyway they can.

Mark notices the murder sites form a pattern and traces them together, forming a pentagram. The same kind of pentagram in the book of Yog-Kothag (or any old werewolf movie.) Lisa helps the audience by asking Mark to elaborate. It seems Kothag was the crankiest of the ancient gods, so the others ganged up and banished him to a distant star. (Which we assume to be the phantom quasar - bringing all the plots together.) Kothag’s followers have been trying to bring him back ever since. And if they ever succeed, it will be the end of civilization as we know it.

That’s it?

Ah, but the zombie was only playing possum. It grabs Mark and starts to throttle him again. Reggie has a little trouble with an axe chained to the wall (don’t ask) but gets it loose and takes a chunk of the zombies head off. Mark tackles and stabs it through the heart, pinning it to the floor, with a fire poker. The zombie writhes in pain and falls silent.

The sun comes up and the two head into town. Along the way, the zombie lurches on to the road. Reggie guns it and runs him over. Mark's convinced it’s not dead and tells her to get the gas can out of the back. The zombie is already trying to get up but Mark keeps knocking it down. The douse him in gasoline, apply a flare and leave him burning on the side of the road. (For cripes sake shoot him in the head.)

In the battle with the zombie, Mark got covered in zombie goo so he heads to the bathroom to clean up. Reggie locks the outside door and hears Mark calling for her. She turns and finds him stumbling out of the bathroom - with a dagger stuck in his chest. (I think its Yogi-Bearthog’s ceremonial dagger. They showed us a picture of it I think. I don’t now, it’s all a blur, wheeeeeee…) The smoldering zombie comes out right behind him. Mark collapses and the zombie walks over him to get at Reggie.

This looks like a job for The Emergency Grappling System. (Patent pending.)

Reggie makes her way to Nash’s office and spies the black dog again; but it mysteriously disappears at the office door. She produces another gun from her jumpsuit and cautiously enters. She finds Nash alone but he doesn’t seem to concerned about her gun -- until she shoots him with it. He smiles, unharmed, and Vaders (hey, I think I just invented a verb!) the gun away from her. He explains that he isn’t a human but not-mortal and there's a difference and (OH GET ON WITH IT!)

She tells him his plans are ruined because they blew his timetable. And now he'll have to wait 30 years, until the next time the quasar pops off. The plot completely unspools as Nash says time means nothing to him since his master made him not-mortal. He shows her Leo’s mystery letter and it turns out to be Nash’s birth certificate, revealing he's about 150 years old.

So he can wait a while longer. Time means nothing to Yogi-Berrathog. Nash's plan went into action when he killed the family before the turn of the century. In fact, the zombie they’ve been fighting was that family’s father, kept alive to do Nash’s dirty work. He senses that Mark was able to dispatch the zombie with the dagger. (And in a very funny sequence, she chucks a rock at him but he Vaders that, too, and spins it around his head.)

Nash also says the quasar still has one more hour of pulse time left, so he can complete the ritual by killing two more people (Reggie and his secretary - due any moment.) He apologizes that one of the conditions of the killings is that the victims die in fear, so he introduces Reggie to his new zombie servant.

Now that’s not entirely true. I remember seeing Forever Evil long before I even knew who he was and didn’t know a URL from an FTP as the world wide web had yet to explode. I rented the old United Home Video version and remembered not hating it. (If that’s not a compliment - I don’t know what is.)

Three things always stuck with me after the first time I saw the film. First was that goofy scene at the end, when Nash "Vaders" the paper weight and it flies around his head while his eyes blink like a couple of Christmas lights. (Dang that was funny.) The second was the graveyard scene, when Holly does her own emergency c-section. (Dang that was gross.) Third was the uncanny resemblance between the late Red Mitchell and MST3k’s TV’s Frank. (Dang that’s uncanny.)

As a horror movie, Forever Evil delivers the goods, for the most part. The good guys are likeable, and we’re on their side, and don't want to see them die. They unravel the plot-puzzle, piece by piece, and it doesn’t cheat (although it does get a little convoluted and confusing.) It's also one of the rare instances when the hero doesn’t miraculously recover from severe trauma. The hero and the heroine also have some serious personal demons and issues to wrestle with after all the crap they’ve been through.

The works of H.P. Lovecraft and a lifetime of watching monster movies heavily influence the screenplay. The problem is they assume the audience is familiar with ancient demonology and horror clichés. (So in a sense, the film was a head of its time.) Personally I think they tried to cram too much into the plot and overcompensate on the origins of Yog-Kothog that it becomes more confusing and extremely far-fetched. 

It falters by going into greater detail on some minor plot points (Quasar's and such) but is rather vague on the major plot points. This would explain the several instances of detailed plot threads jumping out of nowhere and the romance between Reggie and Mark appearing extremely forced.

After re-watching the film, and re-reading Dr. Freex’s memoirs, I realized that most of the fundamental problems I had with the film are answered there as well. (Several important scenes wound up on the cutting room floor.)

The film also sets a world record by using 1743 POV monster shots. It also has about 230 plot threads that all converge and crash into each other in the last ten minutes. (And to the film's credit, it all makes sense.) And what the heck was the Emergency Grappling System all about? (Somebody get Ron Popeil on the phone!) A couple of F/X shots also break down (like the paper weight scene) and will have you giggling.

The film has gotten a bad rap as being nothing more than an Evil Dead rip off. I say thee nay! That’s not really true. Aside from the demon angle, and ancient gods trying to rip a hole in the fabric of reality and invading the Earth, they really have nothing in common. (Uhm, maybe I should rephrase that.) C’mon if we’re getting that picky then Evil Dead is nothing more than a rip off of Equinox. So stop pointing fingers.

Say it with me! OoOOOoOooooOOoOOOOOoooOOoooooo…