The Evictors (1979)

Undescribable Perfection

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Although "The Evictors" could be considered as a little bit too soft to fit into the horror category, I acknowledge it as a very effective and overlooked psychological horror film. I think it is a character-driven film, in which past events acquire a lot of relevance to build the atmosphere.In "The Evictors", the story takes place around the year 1942. A woman named Ruth Watkins and her husband Ben, move into a cozy house in Louisiana, in what seems to be an isolated village. Ruth feels very lonely, since her husband is away most of the time and the other women from town don't seem very friendly towards her, except for Ollie Gibson, an elderly woman in a wheelchair, who also happens to be the only neighbor in the area. One day, Ollie invites Ruth to her house for a pleasant evening with some coffee and cake. Well, the pleasant evening stops being so pleasant when Ollie reveals to Ruth that, before she and her husband moved into their home, there was a gruesome murder in it. Ruth becomes rather shocked by this and she's even more shocked when she finds out that between the 1920s and the 1930s, there was another series of murders, which were allegedly very brutal.Horrified by the events that took place in her house, Ruth begins to suspect that the person who committed all those murders is still around and he is out to get her. To make things worse, her husband is hardly ever home and Ruth doesn't have anyone to help her, except for Ollie Gibson, who clearly isn't much of a protection anyway.The story is simple, but it's filled with well developed intrigue. "The Evictors" is an unpretentious psychological horror film that mostly features Ruth's descent into a transitory state of paranoia and fear, which threatens to ruin her traditional, happy life. Ruth is a defenseless woman, who suddenly needs to rise up and face an outside force that threatens her very own life. Of course, before rising up, Ruth tries to get her husband to fight for her, but when she realizes that he is unavailable to do so, she comes around and ends up doing all the dirty work by herself. Let's keep in mind that this story takes place in the 1940s, a time where women weren't expected to fight back and it was unimaginable that a frail and delicate lady like Ruth would match a big, strong man in a confrontation. The fact that this film takes place in the 1940s serves the purpose of giving us a lead girl facing severe challenges, since during those days, women were only allowed to say and do so much. If anything, "nice women" were expected to stay home, be good to their husbands, cook for them and, of course, make babies. Well, in this case, Ruth seems pretty comfortable with this arrangement, when she is suddenly pushed out of her comfort zone and is forced to step up and fight. I think this is interesting, because we get to see how our lead girl is forced to drastically change from damsel in distress to warrior, throughout the course of film. Towards the end, we get to see an unexpected and far-fetched twist that evidences Ruth's repressed desires, which in this case is romantic lust towards another man. This gives us another reason to believe that Ruth has changed and she is no longer that fragile and subservient woman that we see at first. My main problem with the ending is that it goes out of its way to give us a surprise, when it is rather unnecessary and it comes off as an attempt to shock the audience just for the hell of it and it's not even all that shocking either. "The Evictors" uses the perfect setting, which is a big dark house, located in the middle of nowhere, where the pretty and delicate housewife spends her the time.This film features no gore whatsoever. The PG rating is a clear indicator that "The Evictors" is free from gore or nudity and it manages to stay on the "innocent" side, while providing a bunch of on-screen murders. The absence of gore can be a somewhat disappointing, but the movie makes up for the lack of gruesomeness with elaborated suspense and greatly achieved moments of tension. One thing that bothers me about "The Evictors" is that for moments, it is seems that Charles B. Pierce went out of his way to fill an hour and thirty minutes with never ending sequences that help to build tension, but that could have easily have been shorter and just as effective. All in all, a very enjoyable psychological horror film, done with a lot of simplicity. It can be highly enjoyed if one isn't expecting brutality of any kind or in-your-face horror elements, such as: visible supernatural elements, a profuse body count, beast-like creatures or exaggerated horror music.

The Evictors is another in a string of low-budget but memorable films made by producer/director Charles B. Pierce during the 1970s. The best of these were, of course, The Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The rest of Pierce's oeuvre is spotty but almost all of his movies show signs of his talent for coming up with interesting film ideas and executing them with a fair amount of creativity.This film is a mixed bag. The plot is that in 1942 a couple (Michael Parks, Jessica Harper) rent a house in southern Louisiana, where they are subjected to a series of strange occurrences and attacks. Then they find out the house has a history of violent happenings with previous inhabitants.The setting and premise are right in Pierce's wheelhouse. He directs with his usual flair for creating atmosphere and setting up some nice tension throughout. The flashbacks are particularly well-done with nice attention to detail from the periods involved. However, some slow spots drag the film a bit and the ending is a let-down. Still, there's enough of interest here to warrant you checking it out. Good direction, nice music, and the biggest "name" cast Charles Pierce ever had. In addition to Parks and Harper, there's Sue Ane Langdon and Vic Morrow.

A young couple -- just married -- rents a house in a village in Louisiana. But they are not welcome; the inhabitants of the village look at them with distrust -- in the house they rented were happening strange things in the past...So, I was drawn to this because it had a young Michael Parks and the legendary Jessica Harper ("Suspiria"). I was hoping that Sam Arkoff would have more of a role than "presenting", but oh well.I guess my biggest issue is that this is not much of a horror film. Both Netflix and IMDb say it is, and I agree... but the horror is subtle for most of the film and could easily have been left out entirely. Sure, we have a guy who gets an ax in his back... but otherwise, not too much.I still liked the movie, but I wish more had been going on. This will not go on record as one of the stronger films in either Parks' or Harper's careers.

I sincerely doubt this is based on true events, as the opening statement makes. I figure it was just a ploy to give the movie a creepy aura, like the rural flicks MACON COUNTY LINE and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (curiously, also A.I.P. flicks) used. But that's not important, of course; only the movie itself is. Unfortunately, the movie itself is kind of a drag. It doesn't take long to realize that *nothing* is really happening, and not too much is going to happen when the movie gets close to the end. The period detail is respectable, and the movie does offer some sepia-colored flashbacks that do have a creepiness to them. The best of them happens to be the one at the beginning of the movie, making it easy to watch the best part of the movie when it comes on TV, then quickly change the channel once that opening has ended.