A Name for Evil (1973)
Dissatisfied with the family architectural business, a man and his wife pack up and move out to his great-grandfather's old house in the country. While trying to patch it up, the house starts to make it clear to him that it doesn't want him there, but the local church (with some off-kilter practices of their own) seems to take a shine to him.
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Best movie of this year hands down!
Simply A Masterpiece
Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Robert Culp and Samantha Eggar high-tail it from the city into woodsy environs to oversee the renovation of their inherited historic house...a creepy, desolate lakeside place where shadowy phantoms cloaked in darkness whisper orders for the couple to depart.That overview may sound simple enough, but don't be fooled...A NAME FOR EVIL presents more random points of aimless departure than one could possibly imagine. What results is a discursive, audience distancing clusterf--k, replete with earthy, post-psychedelic erotic inclivities. As stated by other reviewers, it's occasionally suggestive of modest professional contributions, chiefly in response to the cinematography and soundtrack, but despite these niceties, A NAME FOR EVIL remains a lead balloon of carelessly overburdened derangement which goes absolutely nowhere, and takes far too many side-roads getting there. A metagrobolized rummage of wandering notions, stuffed into a hand-carried wet paper bag. 3.5/10
...the only upside of which is that Robert Culp has his only--as far as I know--full frontal nude scene. At least he got it in before he went too much to seed. It's amusing to watch him as Debra's Dad on "Everybody Loves Raymond" and think to yourself, "I've seen this man completely, utterly, stark raving naked!" Other than that and the beautifully photographed surroundings of the house and woods, there's not much to recommend it, especially if you like leaving a movie with some small insight as to what the heck happened. The ending is particularly unsatisfying, with Samantha Eggar apparently being murdered by Culp. Did Culp's ancestor--the builder of the house--possess him and make him do it because he resented the renovations to his home? Did he also make him participate in a hippie orgy? The spirits are silent on this matter.
This happened to come on last week late at night and I seriously thought I may have found a unheard of gem..especially by the beginning as it was quite atmospheric and had eerie music/credits rolling..and then the movie started..wow..what a turd.This is 1 stinker and it actually bored me and irritated me at the same time {something only a few movies have managed to do..Salo being one of them}. What on earth was the director smoking to do such a pretentious/erratic/unscary horror flick such as this.These types of film can give the 70s horror generation a bad name all on their own.If you see this on late night T.V...run don't walk away.
This was one poor film. While at times it does keep your attention, the muddled plot is too hard to follow. And besides, it is hard to focus on the plot of a film when Robert Culp is running around NAKED! NO human being should be subjected to such mental torture.