A Name for Evil (1973)

Powerful

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Much has been made of this movie's 'plot', or lack of one. The white horse is just not scary! The hippy scenes are dated and unintentionally humorous (I guess hippies love noodles). It could easily qualify for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 feature. But I really enjoyed the first thirty minutes or so of this movie. I liked the intro, and the photography is great. The dilapitated house in what appears to be the middle of nowhere is one of the more interesting settings I've ever seen in a ghost film. I like the fact that the caretakers wanted it to rot away. If they stayed away from the counter-culture movement and focused soley on telling a ghost story it would have been a better film.

This is one of those moments when you try to warn people about losing, perhaps, a good deal of their lives to this slopfest. I watched this "movie" last night in AMC, having nothing better to do. Alas, doing nothing would have been actually better, but I was NOT warned.A Name For Evil starts promising enough, about a bores-out-of-his-skull architect (or something like that) that inherits this wreck of a house, supposedly built during the civil war era. This is supposed to be a haunted house movie, but it suddenly degenerates into somebody's acid trip, when Robert Culp goes out for a walk and jumps into this white horse, goes to a hippie party, gets a blonde chick laid, goes back home, confronts his wife (who believes the guy never left), goes OUT again but this time in his car, goes back to pick up the blond chick, frolic in a pond... then the guy gets back home and kills the wife in a pseudosurrealistic scene, and in comes the credits... uh, forget about the shadows the guy saw at his home, or the tunnel in the basement from where air with enough pneumatic pressure knocks his lantern off his hand...I know some movie makers in the early 70s experimented a lot, but horror movies are pretty much straightforward affairs, so why in the world did the producers of this stinker see the need to change a well known and tried formula? I mean, gosh, the seventies WAS the decade of The Exorcist and The Omen... I do not know, but I guess the producers needed a good platform for the folksy singer that plays the guitar, accompanied by a full orchestra that happens to be invisible... well, lets say I do not think Mr. Culp remembers this stinker with much nostalgia.

From what I read in the tv guide it sounded like it might be a rather interesting haunted house movie. Instead it is perhaps one of the most boring movies ever filmed. The plot is muddled and really makes no sense, it is very slow paced, and there are very few instances of supernatural going ons. Instead the most we see is a shadow moving here and there and a stupid horse. This makes "The Amityville Horror" look like an Italian horror film splatter fest. The plot, couple moves into an old house that belonged to the guy's great grandfather. You figure out the rest. Apparently, the ghost is haunting the place, but nothing much happens. Even the end makes very little sense. Why this movie was entitled "A Name For Evil" is beyond me. Well that was the name of the book, but I hope the book had more going on than happened here. I have to say avoid this movie at all cost. It is almost to painful to sit through, you will feel like taking a nap in the middle of it and by golly you will not miss a thing. I can not believe this movie was on amc, because it is not an american classic.

In the very beginning of the film, you view a man who walks on the grounds of his home and also looks out of his bedroom windows. This figure of a man vows that no one will live in his home. However, Robert Culp,(John Blake),"The Almost Guys",'04, decides to leave his job in the Big City and go to a home he owns far away from everything. He even threw his TV out the window and wanted to disassociate himself from the world of big business. John Blake takes his beautiful wife Joanna Blake(Samantha Eggar),"The Astronauts's Wife",'99, along with him to enjoy this home in the mountains. Sheila Sullivan(Luanna Baxter),"Hickey & Boggs",'72, plays a very cute and sexy role and goes skinny dipping in a wonderful falls in the mountains. If you love Robert Culp and wish to see his real wife( Sheila Sullivan) at the time of this filming, this is the film for you. The ending of this film will surprise you and make you wonder just what happened!