Some things I liked some I did not.

Good idea lost in the noise

Fantastic!

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Richard Crenna is a psychologist who buys an old abandoned mansion to open his new clinic in. A bunch of friends, colleagues and former students join him for the weekend to help clean up the place, but evil haunted house stuff happens. This is an extraordinarily dull, by-the- numbers evil house flick until it's ridiculous climax where Victor Buono appears as the Devil in a white suit.

The good old days, before retarded teens started infesting almost every single horror movie.Overly paranoid atheists wary of religious propaganda lurking in every corner of any given religion-orientated supernatural horror film could certainly find enough here to complain about – if they took TE seriously. But they shouldn't. I'm an atheist, and I wasn't annoyed in the slightest. In fact, religious horror films are generally fun, even when they bash atheists. In the words of the Great Leader Aladeen: "It means a lot to them but to us it's just cute." Richard Crenna plays a level-headed though slightly arrogant (because non-Christian) scientist whose atheism is put to the test when Satan himself starts challenging him with an onslaught of mayhem and destruction, perpetrated on him and his friends in an appropriately run-down old building. By the time TE ends, Crenna is a full-fledged believer, very remorseful about the blasphemous ways of his past, and now ready to join a Christian church of his choice. No, not Islam, Hinduism or Judaism, but Christianity only: for it is the Holy Cross that once again robs Satan of his freedom. (Crenna's bony wife sticks it into S'tan's chest.) TE's S'tan is very much a Christian S'tan: a goofy-looking bearded white guy who likes to grimace a lot and laughs like an evil cartoon character; if S'tan looks like this, then might TE's God look something like South Park's? Of course, he also brings his horns with him; any public appearance without them would have been highly unprofessional of him. So this must be not only religious propaganda, but specifically Christian propaganda. Right? Not necessarily. I very much doubt that some Baptist sect finances horror films with ghosts hacking off people's limbs, or that the world of America's directors is awash with religious fanatics eager to use any opportunity to bring us wayward non-sheep back to the Lord's grass-grazing ways. It's just that supernatural stories inhabit a different world from our own, i.e. one that does have ghosts, vampires, demons, witches, god and all that other silly stuff, hence these stories are allowed to be "cretinous", that's all. In a sense, every supernatural horror film can have a sub-plot involving a "deluded" logical person who "sees the light". After all, within the context of such a bizarre world, being an atheist would merit ridicule – i.e. the opposite of the real world.All this might sound like the bleedin'-obvious, and perhaps you'd be right, but I felt I needed to address this phenomenon – the phenomenon of certain IMDb reviewers finding faults with certain horror films because they contain an anti-atheistic stance. I have a hunch though that the same people who make these complaints are Marxists, liberals, and other types of Socialists, which renders their criticism doubly stupid because behind every "atheistic" left-winger lies an unaware believer. Isn't "Das Kapital" really just a substitute for the Bible or the Koran? (All that drivel about the poor and a perfectly egalitarian society.) Isn't Utopia a barely concealed rip-off idea based on Heaven? Marx: the All-Knowing, perfect god-on-Earth that replaces all the theological god-in-clouds beings? Lenin: just another Jesus? (Though I'll be damned if I know where that mass-murdering psychopath Che Guevara fits into all this.) Marxism and Christianity have a lot more in common than they differ, so next time you bleedin'-heart liberals and other closet Marxists moan about religious propaganda in horror movies, remember two things: 1) you are not real atheists, merely adherents of a pseudo-religion just as idealistically daft as all the ones you pompously trash, and 2) you don't seem to be bothered by the thousands of left-wing propaganda movies floating about, mercilessly brainwashing and dumbing-down the sheepy flock. Well, now that I have insulted both religion and left-wingers (i.e. 99% of everyone on the planet), I look forward to many NO clicks.TE is a solid ghost story, with plenty of action and touches of originality here and there. The ending is more than a little silly, admittedly, what with Satan actually being a fat middle-aged man, but then again isn't every supernatural horror film silly by definition? Relax and enjoy.

The evil is hiding in an old mansion.Whoever strong and noble soul would set the holy seal upon the gate to guard the place in life and death till time is no more that no man will set loose the Beast again.The haunted mansion is bought by a psychologist and his wife.A number of Richard Crenna's colleagues and former interns help in the restoration of the ominous manor.The unseen force begins to knock them off one by one.The battle between good and evil begins..."The Evil" is an eerie haunted house movie that is a bit reminiscent to Lucio Fulci's cult classic "The Beyond".The acting is strong and the suspense almost never lets up.There is very little gore,but some shocks are certainly effective.If you are a fan of "House on Haunted Hill" or "The Nesting" you can't go wrong with Gus Trikonis "The Evil".8 haunted mansions out of 10.

The Evil is a brave but rather lacklustre attempt to make a haunted house film in the same style as "The Haunting". It's not too bad but there are a number of reasons why it doesn't really work. The story is very simple...a number of people rent a large old house for a prolonged stay, only to find once they have moved in that something sinister lives there, but they finds out too late and become locked in – many terrible things happen before they few remaining survivors confront the evil entity itself and try to defeat it.Let me start with the things that did impress me. First of all the cast are on the whole pretty good, with only a few weak links in there. Joanna Pettet makes a convincing heroine, and most of the supporting cast are pretty good too. And for a while the ghostly apparitions that confront the cast are quite effective, especially the white hazy figure of a man who appears fleetingly and indistinctly at the start of the proceedings. Some off the other effects are not bad either. People are flung about by unseen forces, which looks pretty convincing, and there is an effective scene of an assault on one woman who effectively portrays the situation without looking like she's doing it all herself. There's even a brief gore shot involving a circular saw which surprised me! Plus the film all seems to be shot on location, and even though it's evidently not a high budget production, the scenes all look good and are well filmed.Now for the drawbacks...well I said the film is set inside what appears to be a genuine large empty house, but the place is one of the ugliest, drabbest mansions I have seen in a haunted house movie It looks far too modern to have any ghostly atmosphere, and the outside in particular completely lacks any stylish design, with some dismally plain stained glass windows and a ridiculously top heavy tower to round things off. However, it's certainly huge, and some of the interior rooms look like banqueting halls, although they are all completely devoid of any effective period features.. bar one amazing over-sized fireplace that the director wisely sets a few scenes in front of whenever he gets the chance.Apart from that it's just a few below-par performances and lame death scenes that stop the tension from mounting as much as it could do, but things roll on in an agreeably entertaining fashion – until, that is...the CLIMAX! Oh my god. The end of the film has caused much debate among film fans, but I'm afraid I fall squarely on the side of the detractors. The climax of the film is a huge mistake. You can read about it elsewhere (I won't spoil it here), but be warned that the force behind "The Evil" which we all knew was lurking in the cellar turns out to be something so un-frightening that you might lose all respect for the film at this point. Which is a shame as everyone involved in the film is obviously trying hard to make it work. Even the background music swells into completely over-the-top dramatics as each "highlight" appears on screen, but nothing can save things from the really bad closing 15 minutes.Quite hard to get now, as there seems to be no DVD at time of writing and all VHS versions are out of print. As haunted house films go, it's around the middle mark. It could have been higher in the rankings if the climax had been re-thought, but it's too late now, so "The Evil" is stuck with it's reputation as a failure, and all because of the last 15 minutes, which is a real shame as for most of it's running time, the proceedings are all pretty well handled.