Review of Evil Spawn (1987) by Brian S — 25 Apr 2011

Disjointed, incoherent, badly acted, ineptly edited, silly, ridiculous, epic edwoodian failure that's so bad that it manages to amuse for all the wrong reasons. Probably the most fun you'll have watching a train-wreck all week.

The film opens with footage of a spaceship and some onscreen verbiage about microbes from space. This has something to do with a scientist making a drug to stop the aging process. That scientist is none other than John Carradine, who appears to have done this film about an hour before he died (in fact, the Carradine footage was shot separately and edited in; Carradine never knew he was in "Evil Spawn"). The scientist's assistant poisons him, steals the serum, gives it to an aging actress, and thus unleashes a monster. A very silly-looking rubber monster with a bug head and which makes cicada noises. The monster, which doesn't appear until about 45 minutes into this 75 minute bomb, then kills a couple of people before the actress' biographer delivers unto us the moral of the flick in just the way that Ed Wood would have done it.

None of the cast or crew of this flick had the first bit of talent or, apparently, any clue as to what they were doing. The actors are all horrible, even John Carradine, who is clearly old, sick and about to die. The direction is largely non-existent. The special effects are literally laughable; I know that I laughed out loud several times! Even the lighting and sound are bad, and the cameraman and director didn't know how to block a shot between them. "Evil Spawn" is a rambling, ridiculous mess, and you might just find some guilty pleasure in it!