Unseen Evil
DVD
*
Directed by
Jay Woelfel
Written by
Scott Spears
Cast
Richard Hatch
Tim Thomerson
Cindi Braun
Frank Ruotolo
Jere Jon
Cindy Pena
Robbie Rist
R
90 min
Unseen
Evil, or, 'The Biggest Bastardization of Native American Culture Since
Chief Lucky Strike,' provides us with not only a Yuma Indian creation
story, but also with the sad, sad consequences of their story being
accurate.
Apparently, as the Yuma Indians tell it, four eagles
created the planet: the black one, the brown one, the white one, and
the UNSEEN one (the movie provides UNSEEN in all caps, so don't blame
me). This begs the question, if there were four eagles, and one of them
has never been seen by man (another verbatim quote from the script),
how do they know there were four of them to begin with?
Freaky, huh?
Anyway,
we rejoin our craptacular in the making with a pair of college students
(those darn college kids again! Aren't they just the wackiest?) and
their terribly ambitious professor, along with a handful of
minor-league mercenaries. They're off in search of a Historical Find, a
burial mound, which is, coincidentally, the exact same mound we just
saw earlier in the film, containing the nasty, bloodthirsty, evil
UNSEEN. At least, that's what I'd guess it is. This particular burial
mound may, apparently, provide proof that other explorers had been
visiting North America well before Christopher Columbus and Amerigo
Vespucci and their ilk had arrived.
The movie then turns
into a morality play as the two coeds decide they don't LIKE the
thought of having the relics of long-dead Indian civilizations sold on
the black market, and thus grow VERY UPSET with the professor, who
responds in the terribly mature manner of directing his hired thugs to
hold guns on them while tying their wrists together.
The burial
mound is, indeed, stuffed to the gills with artifacts and assorted
barterables, which the professor and his coterie of hired thugs grab up
and stuff gleefully into gunny sacks. Other things, much less
identifiable corpses of what can only be called "things," are also in
the burial mound. Of course, the professor and company don't seem to
care much about these corpses, while the coeds are too busy screaming
about unethical behavior and the evils of greed to anyone who'll listen.
That is to say - nobody!
The
predictable comes to pass--the UNSEEN and its formerly corpsed-up
minions try to do the two typical things of protectors of haunted
burial mounds:
1. Recover the stolen piles of loot.
2. Kill everybody even vaguely associated with the project.
Of course, as our mercenaries discover, it's really, really hard to kill something that has never been seen by man.
I
can't believe this kind of crap is still being produced. It's almost
identical to a horde of other movies before it. Deadly Species, among a
host of others. The acting is nightmarish, with the lone black male
mercenary veering wildly between legendary badass caricature and
gibbering and screaming like one of those really awful actors in the
thirties and forties who was always screaming about "being ascair'd o'
dem ghosties." The female actors, at least the one that survives, is a
shrill feminist ecoterrorist who is constantly screaming about macho
male pigs engaged in "dick-waving contests" and about how AWFUL, AWFUL
it is of them to be LOOTING and DESTROYING historic sites!
The
UNSEEN effects are nothing short of misery made celluloid, alternately
a low-budget Predator ripoff or shoddy CG animation. Occasionally, it's
a snuffling, screaming pig-sounding thing seen only in the usually
repulsive 'He-Who-Walks-Behind-the-Rows'-vision.
The firearms
wranglers should be shot themselves--there are NO muzzle flashes. In
full light or in shadow, guns never fire with visible flashes.
The
only high point of Unseen Evil is the performance turned in by an
actual actor, Tim Thomerson of Dollman fame. As Chuck, a park ranger
ambushed earlier on, Tim Thomerson plays the classic hard-boiled
character he's so used to, and does a fantastic job of it. His
colleague, Bobby (in a pleasant and welcome homage to the bumbling,
everpresent duo of Chuck and Bobby from the earlier Ernest movies), is
a bumbler in his own right, but always ready to help Chuck out.
Extra
features are...you know what? There ARE no extra features. That's
right, folks, it's a DVD utterly devoid of extra features. No
subtitles, no trailers, no 'making-of' featurettes... no nothing!
How monstrously awful this is.
All
in all, despite a thoroughly adequate performance from Tim Thomerson,
nothing can save Unseen Evil from being a movie better left UNSEEN.
DVD
*
Directed by
Jay Woelfel
Written by
Scott Spears
Cast
Richard Hatch
Tim Thomerson
Cindi Braun
Frank Ruotolo
Jere Jon
Cindy Pena
Robbie Rist
R
90 min
Unseen
Evil, or, 'The Biggest Bastardization of Native American Culture Since
Chief Lucky Strike,' provides us with not only a Yuma Indian creation
story, but also with the sad, sad consequences of their story being
accurate.
Apparently, as the Yuma Indians tell it, four eagles
created the planet: the black one, the brown one, the white one, and
the UNSEEN one (the movie provides UNSEEN in all caps, so don't blame
me). This begs the question, if there were four eagles, and one of them
has never been seen by man (another verbatim quote from the script),
how do they know there were four of them to begin with?
Freaky, huh?
Anyway,
we rejoin our craptacular in the making with a pair of college students
(those darn college kids again! Aren't they just the wackiest?) and
their terribly ambitious professor, along with a handful of
minor-league mercenaries. They're off in search of a Historical Find, a
burial mound, which is, coincidentally, the exact same mound we just
saw earlier in the film, containing the nasty, bloodthirsty, evil
UNSEEN. At least, that's what I'd guess it is. This particular burial
mound may, apparently, provide proof that other explorers had been
visiting North America well before Christopher Columbus and Amerigo
Vespucci and their ilk had arrived.
The movie then turns
into a morality play as the two coeds decide they don't LIKE the
thought of having the relics of long-dead Indian civilizations sold on
the black market, and thus grow VERY UPSET with the professor, who
responds in the terribly mature manner of directing his hired thugs to
hold guns on them while tying their wrists together.
The burial
mound is, indeed, stuffed to the gills with artifacts and assorted
barterables, which the professor and his coterie of hired thugs grab up
and stuff gleefully into gunny sacks. Other things, much less
identifiable corpses of what can only be called "things," are also in
the burial mound. Of course, the professor and company don't seem to
care much about these corpses, while the coeds are too busy screaming
about unethical behavior and the evils of greed to anyone who'll listen.
That is to say - nobody!
The
predictable comes to pass--the UNSEEN and its formerly corpsed-up
minions try to do the two typical things of protectors of haunted
burial mounds:
1. Recover the stolen piles of loot.
2. Kill everybody even vaguely associated with the project.
Of course, as our mercenaries discover, it's really, really hard to kill something that has never been seen by man.
I
can't believe this kind of crap is still being produced. It's almost
identical to a horde of other movies before it. Deadly Species, among a
host of others. The acting is nightmarish, with the lone black male
mercenary veering wildly between legendary badass caricature and
gibbering and screaming like one of those really awful actors in the
thirties and forties who was always screaming about "being ascair'd o'
dem ghosties." The female actors, at least the one that survives, is a
shrill feminist ecoterrorist who is constantly screaming about macho
male pigs engaged in "dick-waving contests" and about how AWFUL, AWFUL
it is of them to be LOOTING and DESTROYING historic sites!
The
UNSEEN effects are nothing short of misery made celluloid, alternately
a low-budget Predator ripoff or shoddy CG animation. Occasionally, it's
a snuffling, screaming pig-sounding thing seen only in the usually
repulsive 'He-Who-Walks-Behind-the-Rows'-vision.
The firearms
wranglers should be shot themselves--there are NO muzzle flashes. In
full light or in shadow, guns never fire with visible flashes.
The
only high point of Unseen Evil is the performance turned in by an
actual actor, Tim Thomerson of Dollman fame. As Chuck, a park ranger
ambushed earlier on, Tim Thomerson plays the classic hard-boiled
character he's so used to, and does a fantastic job of it. His
colleague, Bobby (in a pleasant and welcome homage to the bumbling,
everpresent duo of Chuck and Bobby from the earlier Ernest movies), is
a bumbler in his own right, but always ready to help Chuck out.
Extra
features are...you know what? There ARE no extra features. That's
right, folks, it's a DVD utterly devoid of extra features. No
subtitles, no trailers, no 'making-of' featurettes... no nothing!
How monstrously awful this is.
All
in all, despite a thoroughly adequate performance from Tim Thomerson,
nothing can save Unseen Evil from being a movie better left UNSEEN.
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