Evil Spawn (1987)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: An aging has-been actress struggles to get the lead roles she once used to but succumbs to the temptation of a serum that not only de-ages her but also comes with a price of becoming an evil spawn. 

This is a left-over entry from Schlocktoberfest 9: Schlock 9 From Outer Space.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• I don’t know if this is part of the actual feature but producer/director/Roger Corman-wannabe Fred Olen Ray introduces the flick with three hotties*. I don’t know when this was filmed for the intro but I think Andy Sidaris’ lawyers need to get on the phone.

  *I use the term “hotties” loosely here.

• He pretends to struggle to get the DVD of the movie from his wife’s bosom. Classy.

• This intro is chock full of nudity! I guarantee this is more entertaining than the actual feature.

• Hugh Hefner had less nude chicks walking around while he spoke to his audience for Playboy After Dark.

• It should be noted that the run time fro this movie is 75 minutes. The dumb intro was 4 minutes long.

Whatever you do, do not watch a movie or buy a car from this man.

• “The Venus Probe ‘Odyssey’ returns to earth.”  According to the subtitles.

• It should bear noting that I picked this flick solely on the box art.

• Donna Shock! I’d be shocked if she won’t be naked at some point.

• David Carradine. Nice.

• For a 70 minute feature film, these credits are surely taking their sweet-ass time.

• Great panning shot. Michael J. Fox could’ve held that camera with more stability.

• Gotta love the low-budget of a flick that can’t remove the computer monitor’s flickering lines.

• We already have our alien creature, less than 1 minute into the movie. C’mon movie, no need to blow your load so quick. Sheesh.

• We’re not even introduced to who this man and lady are but already the lady sadistically trapped the man in a room defenseless against the alien. I have no idea if he’s a good guy or not. This movie already is showing me an utter contempt for storylines.

• I feel like the first half of the movie was cut.

• Oh the fella’s fine. That alien just grazed him a little bit.

• Always love a constant thunder rumbling. You know thunder doesn’t work like that right?

• “If you gave me half the attention you give that cat, I don’t know what I’d do.” Says this random guy we just met looking with his girlfriend in a secluded alley for her cat.

• This guy is full of boring one-liners. Everything he says is a really bad joke.

• OK…nice. The guy tries to help out the first guy that was attacked by the alien thing and a small fight ensues and ends with alien guy ripping off the young guy’s arm in a somewhat impressive gory display. I hope the rest of the film is this schlocky and fun.

• The girl wants to drive away from the raging maniac that just killed her boyfriend but shucks she forgot how car keys work.

• She got it now. And managed to squash the maniac with the Jeep.

• Man, David Carradine looks like death. Was this made right before he died? Or after he died?

You don’t know what death is!

• Carradine actually states that he is “…going to die pretty soon.” Like any second it seems.

• Carradine juts died on screen after finishing a sentence. I think they Weekend at Bernie’s his few seconds on screen.

• The evil lady who killed that guy in the lab earlier just told the dead Carradine that “the future has just been cancelled.” Speaking of cancelled, didn’t we kinda promise of cancelling all future Schlocktoberfests?

• I can’t tell if this writer is listening to a book on tape or if we’re hearing the VO of what he’s typing.

• Is this lady having an orgasm or in agonizing pain? OR BOTH?!

• This is my first foray into the sordid career of Bobbie Bresee. She kinda looks like an older Heather Locklear. Maybe it’s just the graininess of the video.

• So Bobbie is a washed-up has-been beauty queen actress and is only getting schlock work. So essentially this is a documentary. 

• Why does a has-been actress have a secretary? Do any actresses have secretaries? Does Nicole Kidman have one? Angelina Jolie? Gabourey Sidibe?

• She really wanted the lead in “Savage Goddess.” Now I’m thinking that Bobbie kinda reminds me of Dona Spier and her lead in Savage Beach.

• She doesn’t want to be in low-budget schlock or cheap-O flicks but Savage Goddess couldn’t sound less like a schlocky title. I would know!

• Oh my gawd this is so uninteresting! 

• In case anyone cares, Bobbie’s pool guy is Forrest J. Ackerman.

• “This sounds like something from a bad science-fiction film.” Cute.

• So the sadistic lady from scene one and later on in that dumb scene with John Carradine is our villain and she is offering Bobbie a “youth serum” that she is developing because Bobbie really wants her vital young career going again. This whole movie is a parable you see.

It says here in my contract that I only have to show my bare breasts twice max!

• Hahaha. The evil lady left a syringe of the serum on Bobbie’s table just in case she changed her mind. I’m sure she has a ton of samples and just leaving them at older washed-up actresses’ homes.

• She initially refuses the serum but after having a bad dream about her winning an acting award and then turning into a hideous zombified corpse she wakes up and takes it. Why would her dream have her winning the award and then quickly dying though? Wouldn’t it make more sense if she lost the award to a younger prettier actresses instead?

• Just moments after taking the serum she starts to mutate into a monster. I’m assuming if this movie was longer than 70 minutes we’d have a few scenes go her looking younger and getting the roles she wants and living it up for a few scenes before mutating. But this movie cannot waste that kind of time apparently. Probably for the best.

• Oh wait, she’s fine now. Looking good Bobbie! Yes, your tatas look amazing too! But you better shower again just to make sure.

• I’m not sure how this writer fella works into this feature. He’s kinda the narrator but he just said he is in love with Bobbie and also writing her biography. I guess he’s the hero perhaps? I dunno, this movie only has 33 minutes left.

• I’m not really sure that Bobbie looks much different from before she took the serum. Again, it could be the low quality of the video.

• I just realized that this writer, Ross, played Anwar in Blood Diner. 

• Bobbie just told him she’s too busy to work on the book with Ross. So he drove all the way over there for nothing! Her secretary told him that she was expecting him though.

• Bobbie sure does hang out a lot with her secretary.

• So Mrs. Avery, the evil lady, is talking to a bust of Bobbie’s while she combs the mannequin’s hair in a room covered with photos of Bobbie. Then the police knock on her door and before they barge in, she shoots herself in the face. Glad this film is taking care of all the loose ends.

• Hey now, the secretary is going skinny-dipping. This movie has more nudity than plots.

• Awww, Bobbie is being refused the lead in Savage Goddess. Such a shame. I guess that serum was a complete waste of time.

• As she watches her secretary skinny dip, Bobbie mutates again into the Evil Spawn. 

• Man, the secretary is smoking hot. And in complete full frontal to boot!

• Hahahaha. This film just paid homage to the original The Fly with the creature’s POV being multiple cells of the screaming secretary.

Help Me! Help Me!
No seriously, help me turn this flick off!

• Nothing like seeing blood drip down in a hot lady’s ass crack to ruin a perfectly good boner.

• The next morning Bobbie can’t find her secretary but last we saw her body it was thrown in the pool after Bobbie as the creature attacked her. So did Bobbie finish her off and eat her in the pool or is she still floating in there and Bobbie never checked?

• Did they actually frame this shot this way? Ross is sitting next to Bobbie and a bouquet of flowers on the table is totally blocking Bobbie’s face as she talks!

CINEMATIC!

• So now Ross heard the news about Dr. Avery and her experiments and is trying to warn Bobbie and this is one of the best Oscar clip worthy scenes I’ve ever seen!

• Bobbie is adamantly telling Ross the the serum, the same one she took 2 days ago, is the best thing to ever happen to her. Despite the fact that she took it to get that part in Savage Goddess that her director friend told her she was too damn old for.

• With less than 12 minutes left, we got some speeding up to do. After Ross tries to warn Bobbie about the effects of the serum and Bobbie throws him out of her house, Ross tries to warn her agent, Harry, over the phone as Bobbie arrives to kill Harry. Now Bobbie is going to kill her cheating boyfriend. I’m not even sure she suspects he’s cheating on her but dammit, this movie has to wrap up soon!

• Hey movie, it’s been more than 5 minutes since we last saw a naked chick, what gives?

• I’m mildly curious to how Bobbie’s transformation works. It kinda just happens at random times. Maybe it’s like the Hulk because it’s mostly when she’s angry. 

• The death mask of Harry really doesn’t make sense in terms of how Bobbie killed him.

• So good of Bobbie to wait for her boyfriend’s floozy to do a long strip tease for the boyfriend before she attacks them. She’s a butter face though. Her chin is larger than Tim Curry’s in Legend.

• The bug-eyed POV effect of Bobbie as the Evil Spawn just looks like several magnifying glasses glued together.

Looking great. No really. Top Notch.

• I’ve never experienced 5 minutes to feel this long. It’s like that time I tried to auto-erotically asphyxiate myself while watching old episodes of The Golden Girls.

• This ending is just like Cronenberg’s The Fly. Albeit without the masterful special effects, the good acting, compelling story or even lighting.

• Hahahaha. Best ending is when a 70 minute schlock tries to act all moral. The police shoot Bobbie when she was the bug creature as it was attacking Ross. The cop asks Ross what just happened. Ross says: “It depends. Do you want the cause or the reason behind the cause? It seems that she was the victim of a horrible scientific experiment. But there’s a simpler explanation than that: Vanity. The sin that cause the ancient gods to visit their punishment upon man. That’s what happened here.” Bravo. Fucking bravo.

• Wait did Bobbie impregnate Ross with an evil spawn? Because some alien just popped out of his chest! So fucking dumb.

• Now there’s a PS after the credits with Fred Olen Ray trying to give out animation cells for another one of his flicks. What a douche.

Was it Entertaining:

Final Thoughts: This movie is a complete mess. There’s really nothing good about it save for the secretary, Pamela Gilbert’s nude scene which is nothing short of gratuitous to say the least. The acting is horrendous, the story is half-baked and I’ve seen more convincing creature/alien make-up and effects in a Spirt of Halloween. In a small way, this did make me feel like “what if Andy Sidaris made a horror movie?” which was always a “what if” fantasy of ours. However, whoever directed this is no Andy Sidaris (Fred Olen Ray was just the producer). And that’s me at my most generous. This may all seem like a good so-bad-it’s-good entry of Schlock but sadly, it’s way too bad and hardly entertaining. It needed to be slightly better or slightly worse. 

Score: 2 Blood-soaked Ass Cracks (out of 10)