The sort of film that screams "filmed in five days," EVIL SPIRITS is notable largely for all the old-timers in the cast, some of them holdouts from the days when a movie shot on that schedule could still turn out to be fun and creepy.
Mrs. Purdy (Karen Black) is the owner of a California rooming house whose tenants include a writer named Mr. Balzac (Michael Berryman), a drunk named Willie (Mikel Angel), a suspicious psychic named Vanya (Martine Beswick), dissatisfied new arrivals Mr. and Mrs. Wilson (Bert Remsen and Virginia
Mayo), a voluptuous young dancer (Debra Lamb) and a geek kept chained in the basement. The place has a high lodger turnaround, however, as the boarders are being systematically bumped off, apparently by Mrs. Purdy, under the influence of her nasty husband. She never reports the deaths, of course;
her motivation is not just to divert suspicion, but to keep the tenants' social security checks, which she's had signed over to her, flowing in.
Serving as flies in the ointment of her scheme are social security investigator Mr. Potts (Arte Johnson) and a nosy neighbor (Yvette Vickers). As Potts digs deeper into Mrs. Purdy's devious doings, it's ultimately revealed that her husband is actually dead, his body kept hidden in the house, and
that the young dancer--actually Mrs. Purdy's daughter--is responsible for the murders, which her mother has dutifully covered up.
Though competent technically and containing some amusing moments, EVIL SPIRITS is rather flat. Lamb's first appearance early in the film, dancing silently into the middle of a scene with Black, promises a more surreal approach than director Gary Graver ever takes; the bulk of the film is a fairly
pedestrian slasher story spiced with glancingly explicit sex and violence. In one scene, for example, Berryman's attempt to ogle the topless Lamb through a hole in the wall is rudely interrupted when the killer rams a screwdriver into the opening.
Although none of the veterans in the cast embarrass themselves, they rarely take advantage of the opportunity to camp things up. They, and everyone behind the camera, simply go through the motions on the way to the pair of twist endings. The first of these, Mr. Purdy's true identity as a corpse,
may surprise the two or three people who haven't seen PSYCHO, and the revelation of the real killer will be seen coming about halfway through the movie by diligent viewers. The most amusing moments, in fact, come courtesy of the deceased Mr. Purdy, who "speaks" to his wife in voiceover.
Fans of all the genre names in the cast--these days, Karen Black is making a career out of goofy roles in schlock horror flicks; others, like Robert Quarry and Anthony Eisley, make the briefest of appearances--may get a kick out of EVIL SPIRITS, but it's slight and forgettable to anyone else.
This film is not to be confused with the recent SPIRITS, whose director Fred Olen Ray has frequently employed Graver as a cameraman. (Violence, nudity.) leave a comment
