Review of 976-EVIL (1988) by Jason D — 05 Oct 2009

The directorial debut from Freddy himself, Robert Englund. 976-EVIL hits close to home for Robert Englund who became aware of (and ashamed of) his Freddy character and all of his famous lines being used by marketing companies to lure kids into using daddy's credit card by calling those famous 1-800 #'s in the 80's.

The story is similar in this one as kids are caught up in dialing this number that reads their Horror-scopes, but really is Satan possessing people into doing bad, of course. Here, cousins Spike (a rebellious thug with a heart of gold) and Hoax (nerdy, religious, clueless to the real world) become caught up in the 1-800 craze.

While Spike sees past it, Hoax let's it possess him, causing him to become a violent and murderous demon, equipped with one-liners and all! Lots of mayhem ensues. I gotta say that I finally caught this film after Robert Englund directed his second film last year (the dreadful Killer Pad) and I was nervous going into this one (because of the dreadful Killer Pad), but this film wasn't entirely bad.

Of course there was the classic bad acting, bad effects, and plotholes, but it worked out so much better, leading me to enjoy this little film. Although the cast was relatively unknown, the film sports the great Robert Picardo, who makes a brief appearance in the film, but whom we hear most of the time as the devilish voice on the phone.

Also, young Hoax, who was played by Stephen Geoffreys, went on to have a very "active" career in film after this, mostly by the name of Sam Ritter. Some of his hits include Latin Crotch Rockets, Butt Blazer, and Guys Who Crave Big Cocks.

Yeah, really. Anyways, decent time killer but definitely has its boring moments.