Horror Movie Review: Evil Town (1987)

A cursory glance at the credits for the 1987 ‘zombie’ horror Evil Town will certainly raise an eyebrow. After all, how many movies have four directors credited? Curtis Hanson, Mardi Rustam, Larry Spiegel and Peter S. Traynor.

If you’re wondering what this nonsense is about, well, Evil Town is a combination of several older films. The majority of footage coming from 1974’s God Bless Dr. Shagetz. Parts of that movie, as well as others, were pieced together, along with some new footage to create Evil Town. New footage mainly made up of nudity, thanks to Playboy Playmate Lynda Wiesmeier.

It sounds like a mess, and it is, but it’s not as much of a mess as you would expect. All credit to the editors who somehow managed to create some continuity and coherency. Although their herculean efforts were hardly worth it as the film is pretty rubbish.

In his final role, Dean Jagger stars as Dr. Schaeffer who has discovered a way to reverse the aging process. Good news for the aging population of his town. Not such good news for the youngsters passing through as they’re needed as part of his experimentations.

Almost completely separate to that but stitched in, is a plot point about two men who kidnap and rape the women who enter the town. To tie this into the main story, these men are providing Dr. Schaeffer with the people he needs. Sort of. It doesn’t neatly fit together, which is probably no surprise. That’s it for any semblance of coherency though. The rest of the film is made up of various inserted scenes and sequences that don’t exactly enhance the enjoyment of this disordered film.

There are a lot of scenes shot in a hospital. A lot of talking about nothing. A lot of horny characters and a lot of dead ends. By the halfway point, it’s clear that Evil Town is going nowhere and the brain-power needed to piece things together, just isn’t worth it.

It’s a puzzle as to why anyone would go to the effort of doing this. The end result is such a mish-mash of nonsense, such a boring and uneventful watch, such a ball of nothing, it just seems so pointless. It’s not the worst film we’ve seen, purely because all that effort was actually made, but it’s not far off.