Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Boring

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A typical late '80s horror film, which has an goodish premise (a direct phone line to Hell), but which loses things at the end. While the film could have been a lot more thoughtful and interesting, it wastes the story and instead gives us lots of special effects and gore, in place of plot development.However it's not quite as bad as some of the trash turned out in the 1980s, and the story is just about diverting enough to pass the time. Unfortunately, director Robert Englund, better known as Freddy Krueger in the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series (and for his incessant cameos in many 90's horror films) gives us a rather poor film, this man is an actor, not a director for god's sake, so why did he even bother? Most of the scenes are too dark and it's difficult to see what's going on. Englund's presence is even more obvious in the way that the demon makes stupid wisecracks and jokes at the end of the film, just like Freddy.The acting is pretty poor. Pat O'Bryan tries to be like Kevin Dillon in THE BLOB remake, but he's never convincing or sympathetic. He's just a clichéd rebel. There is a boring subplot involving a PI investigating the strange goings on, but this is frankly uninteresting. Sandy Dennis is quite good as the religious nutter of a mother (shades of CARRIE here) but is not given enough to do, while Robert Picardo (THE HOWLING, the Doctor from STAR TREK: VOYAGER) steals his single scene as a whacked-out loser who might just be the Devil in disguise. It's left to Stephen Geoffreys (FRIGHT NIGHT) to carry the main body of the film, and while he's quite funny as the nerdish, snivelling loser, he's not in the least bit effective at the end. I mean a tanktop, of all things, doesn't really cut it does it? There are quite a lot of special effect scenes, with people burning and getting ripped open, although there appears to be absolutely no police presence in the city where the film is set. While the gore is not excessive there are lots of people dying in bloody ways, and one girl nearly goes the spider death routine from THE BEYOND, only for the scene to change track halfway through. The demon makeup at the end of the film is surprisingly understated and therefore more realistic, and as the scenes are set in the dark this makes it more believable too.If you can get over this film's flaws and accept the fact that it's no different from a million others, then you might enjoy it in fits and starts. Or if you're a strange fan of cheesy, poor '80s horror films then you'd probably like it as well. The fact is, though, that the theme of revenge is old (the ultra low-budget MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH did it a decade before, and better), and the theme of selling one's soul to the devil is even older, i.e. with Faust. Critical watchers would be well advised to watch something else, as there is a lot of stuff in here (90% of it in fact) which wouldn't stand up to those with a low tolerance threshold.

First of all, I don't believe I have ever, and I mean EVER, seen a film in my life with as much smokers and smoking scenes, then in this movie. There was more smoke in the air then evil! It seemed like every scene revolved around a cigarette, a cigarette being lit, cigarette smoke lingering in the air, "You got a light?", even a cigarette smoked before the kill! Wow! As for the film itself, I don't believe I have ever, and I mean EVER, seen a film with so much nonsense that doesn't even explain itself. Fish falling from the sky? Really? This the best you got, England? Oh, yeah, Robert England is our director. Yeah, him, the guy who played Freddy. Maybe if we had one of the guys who played Jason as our director, we would have had a watchable flick. Well, to be fair, this flick isn't that bad. I mean, it's bad, but is it so bad, that you're reaching for a rope, and finding a good sturdy beam to hang yourself from? No. Not quite that bad. But it's bad. The film is what I would call a "train-wreck". You don't want to look, but you look. You cover your eyes, but you're peeking between your fingers. How much worse can this movie get? You find out quickly, it's for the worse. The story opens up with....okay, forget about the phone booth, let's talk about Hoax. Hoax is a teen, being bullied in school. He ends up getting hooked up onto one of those 976 numbers, remember those? Ahhhh, the 80's. Kids would call those numbers, and they thought it was for free. Ha ha! Now there's evil! So, he gets hooked up with this crazy phone number, and weird stuff starts happening, but it's working in his favor. So it seems. Will his evil phone number help him earn his charm with the girl who likes to smoke? Tune in, Tokyo, cause no one else is!! A few characters in the film are likable, but most are flat out annoying. Is it scary? Hardly. I mean, you can't just gather a bunch of unknown actors and actresses together, and think that you're going to put together the greatest horror flick of all time. It just doesn't work like that. However, 976-EVIL doesn't seem to aim for that mark, so that's not an issue. In fact, I'm not sure what the movie is really trying to tackle, other then the subject of school bullying, and finding a really jacked up way of resolving the problem. 976-EVIL, on the plus side, does have some great dialogue. For a horror flick, it's actually entertaining. However, the story line itself suffers so bad, that it makes the two 'oil and water', and this good point isn't enough to save the film from being anything more then a recipe for disaster. The dark humor, however, does bring it up a few notches, and to be honest, it's the only thing that saved me from giving this film 3 out of 10 stars. If you're looking for a dark humored horror movie, this film delivers the goods. Of course, it's stuff you shouldn't be laughing at, but let's just say if Hoax doesn't scare the heck out of you, he's bound to determined to crack you up laughing. Another annoying note: What is up with all of the overhead camera shots? I thought the director of photography was just a really tall person. Overhead shots, under head shots, it's just a disorganized mess, and yet it still manages to be entertaining enough to keep you watching. You're not really sure why, but you do. The violence and gore is kept to a minimum, making it close to a harmless movie for your kids to watch. ( I said 'close', that's up to you to decide.)

So this was the legendary Robert Englund's big directorial debut??? Hey, I LOVED him as iconic Freddy Kreuger, but as Director? I hope this was his only project.How some Reviewers could rate this even remotely above a 3-point is beyond me. Only due that Geoffreys plays the title role is the reason I sat through it all (should I have stated 'Suffered'?) waiting for it to improve. It didn't. The acting is terrible, the entire plot; below B-film quality, the action was lame and very slow (if you can describe it as such) and God-awful. Englund appears to give his characters absolutely nothing to work with; no depth whatsoever. And he portrayed Freddy Kreuger?! One would assume he'd have utilized his iconic expertise into this genre and produced a horror film even Krueger would have been proud.The poker scenes, especially near the end where the biker chick has a moment with Spike...I sure thought this was a HORROR FILM - because THAT was romance scene. So just where WAS the "horror"? Not ONE SCENE is remotely "scary". The entire special effects were special, and well beyond cheesy; poorly executed would be a better term. Either the producer was high that time or the graphics dept. was on break, recruiting a C-student apprentice.As said, Geoffreys plays the lead; but that's par the course. The character directions were weaker than last weeks coffee. The film altogether: Insufferable.We sat dumbfounded through most of this train-wreck. And here it apparently was an over-rated horror movie??? That film reviewer must have been on Quaalude's or something.Thank heavens Geoffreys and J.J. Cohen did other very excellent acting work.

This odd, incoherent, cheesy and ridicule late-80's horror feature represents the directorial debut of Robert 'Freddy Krueger' Englund. And let's be honest, if it wouldn't be for his name on the credits, the film would have been righteously forgotten a long time ago already. "976-Evil" has an absurdly implausible plot and it takes far too long before the (tepid) gore & action kicks in. During the first hour of the film only really weird things – that largely remain unexplained - are going on, like a totally random biblical omen that exists of a shower of fish-rain. Yes, dead fish falling down the sky like normal rain! I'm not quite sure about the significance, but presumably it's God's sign to warn the lead characters that they will soon face an unholy type of evil. With reason, because rebellious teenager Spike and his nerdy cousin Hoax frequently call the titular phone number to get their daily "horrorscope". But the toll-free number is possessed with diabolical forces and turns its customers into homicidal monsters. Spike is strong enough to resist, but the miserable Hoax is an easy victim and he soon begins to mutate. He doesn't mind, though, because now he can finally fight back against his domineering mother, the school bullies and all the girls that rejected and laughed at him. You guessed it, "976-Evil" is just another lowbrow horror version of "Revenge of the Nerds" and the only good thing about it is the choice to cast Stephen Geoffreys. He's ideal to play a character that is simultaneously pathetic and creepy. In the second half of the film, there's a bit of gore and witty one-liners, but it's too late to improve the overall quality. The plot is unimaginably incoherent. Cousin Spike suddenly disappears at one point but randomly appears again for the finale, the amateur-reporter out of the blue hooks up with the school's headmistress and Robert Picardo's potentially terrifying character is never properly introduced. From time to time, you get the impression that Englund is a gifted director but on other occasions you damn him and his film to hell for being just another disappointing and time-wasting 80's turd.