Equinox
(1970) dir. Jack Woods, Dennis Muren
viewed: 10/16/06
This was one of those Netflix recommendations, strangely a film that I’d never heard of, a campy, low-budget horror film that earned Criterion treatment. So, I got it.
It has that pleasing, low-budget quality of films from the 1950’s-1960’s that are earnestly created, cheaply acted and filmed, but full of weird little things that would never show up in any other instance. In this case, we’ve got stop-motion giant apes and squids and flying devils in true homage to Ray Harryhausen, made on the cheap by a young Dennis Muren, who would go on to greater special effects heights in Star Wars (1977) and many more Industrial Light and Magic projects. The animation is fun, for sure. And pretty slick for the low budget.
The other aspect of the story is the discovery of a book that is compared to the “dead sea scrolls” of evil, which launch all these weirdnesses on the countryside. This seems like a probable influence on Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) in many ways. The devil worship stuff and the flying devil and the lurid, drooling kiss of the devil-sheriff make this more than it is, certainly, which is basically a fun but pretty bad little film. It assurecly has its value and charms.
