Lance Henriksen Week: Necessary Evil

This wasn't entirely necessary.  To begin Lance Henriksen Week, why not begin with a bizarre, low-budget mess of a film?  Nobody was there to stop me, so that's going to happen.  It's a bit confusing to even try to explain this movie, honestly.  It's about science, religion and, well, the guy from Machete.  The DVD box art for this movie was clearly updated a couple years ago to sell the film around Danny Trejo being in the film.  No fair- you had your own week already!  It all has to do with, well, a lot of weird shit going down.  I'll try to walk you through this, but good luck making sense of it.  To find out more, read on...

In the Intro, a bunch of soldiers wandered around a fake cave- cave racists!- and find a big pillar.  Trejo leads the group, but vanishes for a long time.  Thankfully, he does show up again...unlike On Bloody Sunday.

After more narration, Lance Henriksen- now out of his wheelchair- shows up at a residential address...and blows the door down.  No, really!

Alongside his freaky-eyed friend, he attacks the family and takes their son hostage.  In the grand scheme of things, this means nothing...or a lot.  I'm not really clear on it.

Our heroine is an investigative journalist or, rather, she intends to be one.  She pesters her Psychology Professor into getting her into an Asylum to investigate.

How about you investigate The Asylum?  Those folks are making Nazis at the Center of the Earth- they're clearly nuts!

This guy is a Detective.  He's important or so the movie says.  His scenes are repetitive, save for one where he randomly fights Trejo...in a scene that comes the hell out of nowhere and amounts to nothing.

Our heroine walks right into the Asylum and confronts Henriksen about some drug he's making called Reficul.  This doesn't end well for her.  Big surprise, what with your lack of a back-up plan.

She gets tortured by Henriksen and Trejo, proving that he's still in this movie.  He has no real plan once her eyes start glowing.  No, really.

Rather than daring to explain any of this, I'll show you that this movie has a monster in it that's not just a cheap eye effect.  It's still cheap, but at least it's a suit.

Our heroes seem to win the day and...get married.  I think I missed a scene of you two hooking up.  They have a baby, which appears to be some sort of Demon.  Is this a weird, Omen prequel?  The End.

Evil lives...or something.  I wish that I could say a lot of good things about this movie, but I can't.  It's not a terrible movie, but it is a bit boring.  Part of the problem is the bizarre pacing.  It starts off strong- what with Henriksen blowing open a door- but just devolves into this annoying heroine acting stuck up.  She reminds me a lot of the lady from On Bloody Sunday.  In this case, she only gets herself in trouble though.  Another problem is the just generally confusing plot.  Henriksen apparently gets his health back by talking Reficul and even gets some super powers.  One scene later, he's a weak, drug addict that has to be conniving.  Want to explain that?  Further confusing the matter is the Editing.  As I hinted at earlier, we get a random scene of Trejo and the Detective doing some bad, UFC-style fighting.  It ends...and the movie just moves on.  It doesn't set up this scene either, making you wonder why it's even there.  No scene can go unused...dammit.  Finally, our heroes are just not that good.  They are either annoying- the woman-, ineffective- the Detective- or both.  I just don't care about them at all.  Mind you, it would be nice to know what any of the plot actually means, but that's just icing on the lame cake.  There are some neat ideas here and I recommend the film to the more forgiving viewers.  If you can actually explain this, leave me a comment.  Take us away, obvious pandering...

Next up, a three-part look at Lance facing off with some Skunk Apes (yes, three!).  First up, Lance and company actually make a decent film?  Stay tuned...