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976-EVIL (1988)

Rate: 4
Viewed: 8/19

976
8/19: A horror picture at the hands of first-time director Robert Englund, 976-EVIL fails to generate any scares.

I like the idea which includes a catchy word "horrorscope," but the whole thing reeks of low budget and is so cartoonish. Fish falling from the sky? Um, okay. As 80's as it gets, bad acting is another problem. The potential of making the reporter angle to work is there, but it's weakly developed.

Stephen Geoffreys is well known as Evil Ed in Fright Night, but it's hard for me to take his character seriously as an intellectually disabled person; he seems advanced for his low IQ. Getting into trouble with drug/alcohol addiction and money issues, Geoffreys ended up doing gay porn not long after which went on for a decade. On the other hand, his co-star Patrick O'Bryan is a sad James Dean wannabe.

Starring in one of the last few films of her career, Sandy Dennis hit rock bottom due to health problems. As you see there are cats all over the place, she was a passionate about them, owning over twenty stray cats while living in Westport, Connecticut.

Back then, the area code of a premium-rate telephone number was first 976 before making the switch to 900. As everybody knows, it used to be for kinky phone sex and connecting with psychics (think of Dionne Warwick) and various celebrities of mostly D-list stature. These calls was expensive which usually went $2.99 for the first minute and $0.99 per thereafter.

All in all, The Washington Post sums it up best: "From start to finish, 976-EVIL is a sorry, wrong number."