Search - Good Against Evil & Night of the Bloody Horror (2005 Digitally Remastered Horrorfest) on DVD

Dull and Duller

Andrew McCaffrey | Satellite of Love, Maryland | 10/13/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"The distributors of budget DVDs will often package more than one film in a single release in an attempt to increase sales. Usually the combined films will share an actor or a genre. If the connection between the films is a little obscure, I like to play a fun game of figuring out what the movies have in common.

However, with this double release of NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR and GOOD AGAINST EVIL, I find myself defeated. Apart from their both being members of the horror genre, I cannot find any overlap in their story, in their cast, or in their atmospherics. They are two totally different kinds of horror movies, and I cannot fathom why they were packaged together.

NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR (1969) stars a very young Gerald McRaney who you may remember from his hit show "Major Dad" (and if you don't remember him from that, then you'll find this film a lot less unintentionally amusing than you should). McRaney is an angry and disturbed young man prone to blacking out and waking up to find people around him bloodily hacked to pieces. With the police closing in and the audience assuming that their protagonist is a serial axe murderer, McRaney's reaction is to meekly and passively wait for the plot to unfold around him.

In keeping with its ridiculously over the top title, this film is fairly bloody and gruesome. People are hacked to bits and dismembered in various disgusting ways. Red paint doubling as blood is splashed across the screen quite liberally. But the film's biggest drawback is that in between these sequences of gore are huge periods of extremely boring and talky material. It can be quite a challenge to stay awake.

The other film in the release is GOOD AGAINST EVIL (1977), a failed television pilot starring Dack Rambo, Elyssa Davalos and an extremely young Kim Cattrall. In this film (which attempts a more psychological form of terror) we're told the story of a young man courting a young woman unaware of that fact that his bride-to-be is possessed by Satan.

There's no blood and guts in this one. I think the most gruesome scene is where a woman is killed by falling down a flight of stairs. But this film isn't a success either, arguable for the same reasons which killed the other movie in this release: there are huge stretches of film where absolutely nothing of interest happens. The film's central conflict isn't even hinted at until the half-way point.

So I can't recommend either of these two films. While they both have occasional moments of interest, the bad and boredom more than outweighs the good and the fun. As far as I can tell, the only thing these films share apart from their genre is their predilection towards long, boring sequences of neither horror or entertainment."