Average horror but unsatisfying
Well I personally found the film about average. The story centres around cousins Spike (Patrick O'Bryan) and Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys). Also in the picture is Hoax's religious nut mother Lucy (Sandy Dennis), who wins my award for the most annoying character I've ever seen in a movie, and that's not a good thing.At the start of the movie Spike loses a game of poker to a gang and as a result must give up his motorcycle. Not really seeming too bothered by it all he phones up a number, 976-EVIL, which puts him through to some cheesy sounding "horrorscope" service. Paying some attention to what he hears Spike finds a way of getting the money for the gang so he isn't required to give up his bike. Hoax, who is basically a nerd, the subject of constant bullying also in turn phones the number and starts to hear the twisted horrorscope's advice...
The film itself is ok. Nothing special at all, but fun in it's own little way. O'Bryan and Geoffrey's performances were quite good, unlike the majority of the cast. 976-Evil is badly made in my opinion. The acting is bad and the direction is lacklustre...but lets give Rob some credit, at least the film wasn't too bad. The major problems with the film lie in the screenplay, acting in horror can be forgiven occasionally, and sometimes shaky direction can actually be of benefit to horror, but the screenplay needed to be solid and it wasn't.
The plot evolves far too quickly in some places and not near fast enough in others. After a particular incident in the film involving fish falling from the sky Jim Metzler is introduced as Marty, a journalist for a religious magazine, or at least I think he was, at one point he did pass himself off as a private investigator! Considering the rather small amount of information Marty was given throughout the film he certainly seems to trace the problems to the '976-EVIL' number rather quickly, this to me was a major plot fall.
Also some characters in the film just seemed to appear, while others disappeared for a while then came back with no explanation for their absence or why they've chosen to suddenly show up. The whole story seems very inconsistent on the speed at which it moves. To watch this film and fully enjoy it I think you need to keep concentrating which unfortunately in a film like this can be quite difficult to do now and again, but I think that's the only way for the whole film to make sense.
All in all a quite enjoyable, yet unsatisfying horror film, don't expect too much gore though there were some quite cool special effects and make-up and don't expect a masterpiece. Also, as the story is rather weak don't expect too much from that either, otherwise you will be disappointed. It's the type of horror film I'd probably watch again on sleepless nights.
score 5/10
Snake-666 16 May 2003
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0253516/34974
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