Fear No Evil (1981)

People are voting emotionally.

good back-story, and good acting

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Fear No Evil, the 1981 directorial debut of Frank LaLoggia (who would also helm Lady in White and Mother), is all about Andrew Williams, a high school student who turns out to be Lucifer. That sounds simple. But this movie is anything but.First off, nearly every other student in this film is a complete miscreant. Andrew (Stefan Arngrim, Barry from Land of the Lost) is a weird kid that gets good grades and is well-liked. But again, you know, he's the Antichrist.Let's go back to the beginning. Father Thomas arrives at a destroyed cathedral to fight Lucifer (producer Charles M. LaLoggia discovered the Boldt Castle in Alexandria Bay, NY and told his director cousin that this would be an ideal location for a horror movie), whose defeat only puts him into the body of baby Andrew. His parents constantly battle over his origins and the fact that even his baptism didn't go right. Yeah, the water all turned to blood. You know how that happens.But that's all well and good, because on his 18th birthday, Andrew's powers create an accident that paralyzes his mother and leaves his father a drunken mess.If someone can make the Antichrist's life hell, it's Tony Indavino and Mark Landers. Tony is near relentless in his abuse of Andrew, where he calls the young man gay and they have what I can only refer to as a kiss fight.Another shocking moment, as full frontal male nudity is still verboten today and this scene is full of it. It makes the shower abuse in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 seem tame by comparison. During his second attempt to kiss Andrew and repeat this action, he suddenly grows breasts!Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/10/09/fear-no-evil-1981

I don't understand why this has such a low rating. If it's a matter of just not liking the film because you don't think it's scary or a good story then that simply is just a matter of opinion. Technically the film is very well made, in my opinion. The lighting stands out almost more than the soundtrack which is awesome. The director was just 24 years old when he made this, the simple special effects (those with shadows, camera tricks, strings, etc..) make you question how they actually pulled the trick off while other effects were rotoscoped. You know when artists trace over a live action scene frame by frame, cool stuff! Joel Coen was the assistant editor, scenes were shot on location at incredible settings. There are a lot of interesting facts about this movie. The film fits right in with other early 80's horror classics and any fan of the genre should not miss this one.

I recently picked up FEAR NO EVIL out of a bargain bin of cheap DVDs because the cover art looked vaguely familiar, but I could not recall if I'd ever actually seen the movie. After sitting thru FEAR NO EVIL last night I came to the conclusion that I must have missed it back in its heyday, because I definitely would've remembered seeing a movie this BAD!! FEAR NO EVIL is a story about Andrew, a young high school genius who also happens to be the reincarnation of the Antichrist. You'd think that having supernatural powers would make high school easier on a kid (You're getting picked on by other kids in the locker room? Make their heads explode! Why doesn't THAT ever happen in a teenage-Satan movie?), but Andrew is a rather wimpy, effeminate looking Satan-in-waiting, surrounded by the usual stock characters that populate nearly every early 80s high school horror film (the tough Vinnie Barbarino clone, the greaser girls who smoke dope, swear and meet guys in the school boiler room for "quick and dirty sex," etc.), all of whom make Andrew's daily life a living Hell (sorry, I had to say it). After a lot of seemingly unconnected scenes that show these characters going around in circles without doing much, Andrew eventually kills a dog, drinks its blood, and goes out to the creepy old castle outside of town (where his predecessor was killed by Priests back in the olden days) to accept his Satanic birthright, while two Archangels (in the form of a crazy old lady and one of Andrew's high school classmates, whom he has a crush on) prepare to destroy him; all the while, there's a local Church production of the Passion Play happening in the background. (??) If this sounds like a mess, it is. Due to absolutely wooden acting by all involved, poor editing, and shoddy script writing (to say nothing of the Atari 2600 style "Laser" special effects), we never get to know enough about ANY of these characters to really care much about what happens to them, and the few disturbing gore sequences that DO work feel like they were tacked on at the last minute to briefly wake the audience up before everything slips back into talky, pretentious oblivion. The last 20 minutes are somewhat interesting, when Andrew unleashes his army of the Undead on his high school tormentors, the guy playing Jesus in the church Passion play suddenly starts bleeding REAL blood all over the first ten rows and general chaos ensues, but even those disturbing images aren't enough to save this movie after sitting through the absolutely craptacular first hour. Especially hysterical is when the Archangels finally encounter Andrew in his full Satanic regalia, which appears to be a black evening gown and dark lipstick. He looks more like a Goth club kid than the Lord of All Evil. Trust me, the effect is more likely to invoke laughter than horror. I turned to my wife and said "That's the gayest Antichrist I've ever seen." Even Dr. Frank-N-Furter from "Rocky Horror" is more macho looking than this guy!! I could go on about the unusual amount of male nudity in FEAR NO EVIL (some of it frontal), the male-on-male kissing scenes (One of which causes a guy to grow breasts!!) or the hilariously wide-eyed, vacant performance of the girl Andrew has a crush on (seriously, was she on Valium during filming?)but I think I've wasted enough time describing this mish mash to you. Suffice it to say that the highlight of this movie for me (aside from the end credits) was when Andrew's father ordered my favorite beer (Genny Cream Ale) in a bar. Apparently FEAR NO EVIL has become a cult film over the years, but I'll be damned (sorry, I did it again) if I can see why. Avoid, avoid, avoid!!!

I actually went to a movie theater to see this movie when it came out. I must've been 13 years old or something and I hadn't seen the movie until last night, for the 1st time in over 25 years! There were really very, very few things I remembered about the movie, except that the bad guy was the Antichrist reborn. I am sorry to say that FEAR NO EVIL has NOT aged well at all. The premise is interesting: a trinity of angels/priests are sent to earth to stop the Antichrist from reigning supreme on his coming. That's as interesting as this movie gets, because the story is rendered with sub-par FX, god awful acting and extremely boring movie. You have to remember that FEAR NO EVIL came out at the height of the slasher movie craze: Friday THE 13th, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, MANIAC, PROM NIGHT, etc. so it had to compete with all this profitable (if not very interesting) movies. For bloodhounds, FEAR NO EVIL will be very tame, and the few blood scenes are so badly made you wish they were never filmed at all. I bought this DVD out of nostalgia only. Some of the movies I've seen as a kid have held up well (MANIAC, Excalibur, ALTERED STATES), but FEAR NO EVIL should have been left in oblivion. Maybe the producer is friends with the people at ANCHOR BAY. Why this trash was ever released on DVD is beyond me, while other MUCH, MUCH worthy movies (like Ken Rusell's THE DEVILS)are left to their hard-to-find VHS versions. View under your own risk!