Review: Good Against Evil

The budding relationship between fashion designer Elyssa Davalos and persistent new suitor Dack Rambo appears to be targeted by powerful sinister forces. Powerful supernatural sinister forces that don’t seem to want the couple to wed, and will do anything to stop it. Richard Lynch stars as the chief evil puppet-master, with Erica Yohn playing Davalos’ boss. Dan O’Herlihy plays a priest, Lelia Goldoni plays a nun, whilst Kim Cattrall and Jenny O’Hara play young mothers.

 

A while back I got pissed off watching “Rich Man, Poor Man Book II” on DVD because it turned out to be season one of a TV series that left things on a cliffhanger and didn’t come back for a second season. Don’t get me wrong, it was a pale shadow of the first “Rich Man, Poor Man” anyway (though George Gaynes was hilarious as a scumbag), but the ending just ruins the entire experience. Now here’s this 1977 TV movie from director Paul Wendkos (a veteran of TV he also directed “Face of a Fugitive” with Fred MacMurray and a young James Coburn) that was apparently a feature-length pilot for a supernaturally-themed TV series that never got picked up. I think it was going for a “Dynasty” meets “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist” vibe. However, this cheapo piece of crap makes “Rich Man, Poor Man Book II” look like…well, the first “Rich Man, Poor Man”. It’s that bad. Like “Rich Man, Poor Man Book II” it also has no damn ending. Ugh.

 

Despite looking every bit the murky TV movie, it actually starts out OK with Jenny O’Hara scoring early as the distraught mother. Richard Lynch is always good value as a sinister figure involved in the creepy plot here, he and a chain-smoking Erica Yohn at least look to be enjoying themselves here in sinister roles. Unfortunately our leads are the singularly uncharismatic Elyssa Davalos and a man who chose to be called ‘Dack’ Rambo. The late Mr. Rambo (real first name Norman) was apparently a fairly familiar presence on television, but after this and the pitiful 1973 film “Nightmare Honeymoon”, I’m still at a loss to understand what his supposed talent or charms were in his chosen profession. He’s actually genuinely annoying, and together they make for a completely uninteresting soap opera romantic coupling. They aren’t helped by the truly dreadful teleplay by Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster (“Horror of Dracula”, “The Mummy”). They go from in love to having a fight to getting married all within minutes. It’s absurdly rushed and utterly tedious. The scenes involving the sinister plot with Lynch and Yohn are far more interesting, albeit not interesting enough. After about an hour, veteran character actor Dan O’Herlihy turns up to essentially play Max von Sydow in “The Exorcist” in a thoroughly miserable mood. It’s actually a rather amusing performance in a film of otherwise little amusement. Next to Lynch, the best performance probably comes from a young Kim Cattrall, though her character is irrelevant. Like O’Herlihy, her character turns this thing into a fourth-rate “Exorcist” knockoff that takes focus away from the main story (which doesn’t get a resolution because the pilot wasn’t picked up).

 

Put aside the fact that some of the actors are pretty decent here, don’t let that fool you. This isn’t a film, it’s a failed TV pilot, and a really shitty, cheap one at that. It’s sloppy soap opera nonsense with almost zero interest in anything related to horror until the climax. You’re better off re-visiting the ‘Marlena gets possessed by the Devil’ storyline on “Days of Our Lives”. At least that was unintentionally hilarious. Richard Lynch is terrific, but he can’t save this failed TV pilot that poorly mixes soap opera and horror clichés. Elyssa Davalos is absolutely awful in the lead. This is like “The Stand” done wrong.

 

Rating: D