1PanelReview The Evil Below

In 1989, 5 (no less!) horror films taking place underwater and seeing a crew face some supernatural danger while testing the strength of their teams were released simultaneously, one after the other.

These films were in theatrical release order: DeepStar Six, Leviathan, Lords of the Deep, The Evil Below and finally The Abyss.

This is one of them.

What it is: The Evil Below 

Which is: A B-movie horror film

Directed by: Wayne Crawford & Jean-Claude Dubois 
Year: 1989

The Evil Below, released on July '89, was direct-to-video horror film directed by and starring low-budget film produced Wayne Crawford. The film also stars the cult famous June Chadwick (of Forbidden World, Magnum P.I. and The A-Team fame). The story follows a woman named Sarah Livingston who hires a down-on-his-luck captain, Captain Max Kesha, having some trouble making ends meet lately, to go on a treasure hunt after a shipwrecked Spanish galleon, the "El Diablo". Not only do they end up having to face off the local thugs after the same treasure but they also apparently awaken a potentially supernatural curse...?

What's Good about it: It's... something. Well, I don't know what it is, but it is some "thing".
It's one of these old direct-to-video flicks (and by video I mean "VHS").
A simple enjoyable 80s horror flick, with barely any "special effects" to speak off and barely any budget at all. A cheesy B-movie.
On the plus side, this is the only of all these 5 1989 underwater films to not have revolved around another scifi underwater scientific research laboratory where some crew "one week before getting topside" finds a monster that starts killing them all one by one... So... Good point.
The film has some of the finest "bad acting" I've seen in ages, including mister Wayne Crawford's.
...
And that about covers it.

What's Bad about it: It really is a cheap looking film... I mean..
This is the cheapest kind of low budget films at its worst...
I won't even call it a B-movie... It's a low B-grade flick with no talent involved, nothing.. Just a plain bad film.
The hilarious bad acting proves to also just be really, really bad in most parts. Not even enjoyable by any means... While Crawford's always fun in his own kind of way, the rest is just sub-par. Awful. Period.
Coming off the likes of Leviathan and DeepStar Six, and just released prior to the release of The Abyss, I suspect they made this quickly just to cash-in the whole underwater motif that was going on at the time, without any idea what James Cameron movie was even going to be about...
The problem is, Evil Below is simply just a very boring movie, with awful pacing, random scenes barely tied into another, a nonsensical edit job and even features a random 80s-montage insert at some point... just because! The plot barely makes sense and watching one scene fly into another is an interminable test of endurance in itself...
The poster alone (at the time) should be considered a crime, featuring one of the worst cases of bait and switch I've ever seen, promising a fantastic deep sea horror film.. Such a let down.. (the DVD isn't that better!)

Overall: All in all, stay away from this film!

Just plain bad.

The Evil Below promised adventure and pure horror... and what we ended with is only this bizarre half-assed mildly boring little flick....

Not fun at all. Cringe-worthy acting. The dumbest scenario ever filmed.... The end almost makes you think they wanted to turn this into an on-going franchise or make more Evil Below films... Good god.. I'm glad nobody remembers this film...

Like the El Diable curse, it should have stayed forgotten, away from mankind...

Burn it with fire!

 

I give it: 1 / 3 Quacks!
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