3 Year Anniversary: 976 Evil vs. 976 Evil II

Let's mix things up a bit, shall we?  Thanks to the random shake-up over at Netflix HQ, a whole bunch of random films are suddenly in my Queue for the first time in years.  One of those films was 976 Evil, the Directorial debut of Robert Englund.  Lo and behold, this gave me a pretense to finally watch 976 Evil II, a film that has been haunting my Instant Queue for months.  Which one would I review though?  Was either one of them important enough to suffice?  I know- I'll do them both.  It's important to look at these together, since the latter is not made by Englund.  No, the sequel comes to us courtesy of Jim Wynorski, the man behind such classics as Deathstalker II, The Return of Swamp Thing and Cleavagefield.  Yes, that is a real movie.  Which one of these films is better though?  Is the original superior or does the sequel up the ante in all of the right ways?  To find out more, read on...won't you?...

Let's start with the big match-up: the Monster.  While the true evil in the film is Satan or whoever is running the phone service, he/she/it works through these guys...

Not to take anything away from the monstrous Dean from II, the original Monster wins this one.  He has back-story, even if it is silly.  His descent into evil- while oddly-paced- is actually believable.  The other one- he's just kind of crazy.

Next up, a comparison between two of the random kills.  It all boils down to spiders vs remote-control car work...

The scene in the first movie is interesting, but a bit confusing.  Our villain turns to magic abruptly and does some spell with spiders...before the woman dies of a heart attack.  In II, he controls the Attorney's car and causes her to crash into a power station.  It loses on logic, but wins on silliness!

How is the actual baddy of the film though?  The Monster is neat and all, but he's only part of the equation.  Who's the real villain...

To 976 Evil's credit, they do somewhat address this by way of having Robert Picardo running the phone.  In the sequel, it's...well, a phone.  They never show the real villain.  In fact, we only hear him a few times.  Cop out!

Let's wrap up this comparison with the movies themselves and their own wrap-up scenes...

The original film has a silly, but interesting finale.  The evil kid opens a portal to Hell itself!  Ultimately, he falls into his own portal, apparently closing it in the process.  In contrast, 976 Evil II has an astral projection blow up a truck with a bomb...before it gets tossed off of a cliff.  It's very anti-climactic, kind of like this.  The End.

*****

Which one is the winner?  Not surprisingly, it's the original.  Let's get the good points out of the way for both films first.  The original film has some good effects, mostly in relation to the make-up work.  Some of the optical effects are not that good though- see the finale.  I liked the overall plot, even if the pacing was a bit off.  The second film has some cheeky humor and is chock full of ridiculous moments.  One such moment involves all of the random objects in the Dean's house coming to life and attacking our hero.  Another crazy moment involves our heroine's friend being sucked into the TV and being attacked by the zombies from Night of the Living Dead.  No, really.  Now on to the bad stuff.  976 Evil II is full of weird, random moments that make no sense.  The two scenes mentioned before are great examples.  This is just typical for Wynorski though.  Another thing is that the movie has some really-dated optical effects, often looking worse than in the original film.  It just comes off as being weird, random and full of silliness.  It also has an abrupt and dark ending, unexpected in a film like this.  The bottom line: watch both movies.  You'll find different reasons to like them both, but the original is just better in every way.  Stinger face-off...

Next up, another After Dark film.  This one involves a plot similar to House of Fears, but is not nearly as interesting.  Stay tuned...