Equinox (1970, Jack Woods) (Patreon)

24/100

Watched this on 31 March, and wish now that I'd waited a day, so that it could have felt like being April Fooled by the Criterion collection. Granted, I'm not an F/X maven, so perhaps the technical achievement that Equinox represents for its era and minuscule budget escapes me; obviously, Dennis Muren went on to have a legendary career (that's a name even I know), and it's easy to imagine folks being curious about such an early showcase. To my eyes, though, nothing here looks appreciably more sophisticated—and a fair bit looks considerably less so—than Willis O'Brien's work on King Kong almost 40 years earlier. Is it just a matter of being impressed that it was achieved sans studio resources? Fair enough, if so, but you still have to sit through a monotonously awful movie that answers the question "What if someone made a porno version of The Evil Dead and then cut out all of the sex scenes?" All four of the main actors are utterly incompetent, but Edward Connell, who gets the most screen time by virtue of surviving to the wraparound present-tense framing story, boasts what might be the least natural accent-free* inflection I've ever heard, making every line he speaks (even something as banal as "Here comes Jim") sound vaguely computer-generated. For a good 45 minutes (out of only 82), it's just Z-grade setup, occasionally "enlivened" by the director's cameo as a blatantly evil forest ranger by the not-at-all-concerning name of Asmodeus; I can only marvel at his decision, in both of his professional roles, to give the character a grotesque, stroke-victim lip/jaw movement when kissing/possessing his prey, which poor Barbara Hewitt then has to reproduce to indicate that Asmodeus is controlling her homicidal actions. Did like the winged demon swooping down to grab Vicki, a shot that blends stop-motion and live action in a reasonably convincing way (albeit at a distance), and there's just an inherent charm to any practical effects work of this sort. But not charming enough to keep you from fervently wishing for Crow and Tom Servo.

* Threw that adjective in to cover Tommy Wiseau.