Watch Prime Evil For Free

So much average

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A coven of devil-worshiping monks living in New York City search for relatives to serve as victims for their sacrificial ceremonies that can help them achieve immortality. Will they finally meet their doom in present-day (1980s) New York City? Dann Carr (Gary Warner), homicide, is awesome. "He was murdered last night." "Are you sure? I just saw him yesterday." "He's not breathing, he wouldn't talk to me. My guess is he's dead." Beyond that, I guess the film was just alright.People are bashing it, saying it is horrible and the rating is not very good on this title. Well, I am not going to say it is the best thing since corn dogs, but these people need to see more bad films. I have seen a lot worse than this...I liked the concept that a blood relation sacrificed would gain you thirteen years without aging, and to keep making sacrifices would keep you going indefinitely. But, I am curious, how close must a "blood relation" be? Once you move to third or fourth cousins, you could find hundreds or thousands of possible victims...

A nasty sect of evil monks led by the sinister Father Thomas Seaton (dreadfully overplayed with shameless eye-rolling hammy brio by William Beckwith) sacrifice virgins every thirteen years in order to appease Lucifer and remain immortal for perpetuity. The sect plans on carving up sweet, but repressed goody-goody two shoes social worker Alexandra Parkman (the singularly woeful Christine Moore) on the altar. Brave nun Sister Angela (a hopelessly dire performance by Mavis Harris) infiltrates the cult so she can put a stop to these foul heathens once and for all. Misdirected with alarming ineptitude by Roberta Findley (who also did the surprisingly passable cinematography), with a hackneyed script by Ed Kelleher and Hariette Vidal (for example, the devil worshipers are your standard bunch of creepy folks in black hoods and robes chanting wicked incantations), a poky pace, a generic ooga-booga shivery and ominous score by Walter E. Sear, clunky dialogue ("He's not breathing; he wouldn't talk to me. My guess is he's dead"), a few clumsily staged fight scenes, a generous sprinkling of tasty gratuitous female nudity, and a last reel appearance by a laughably hokey rubbery puppet Satan, this admittedly lousy, yet still oddly entertaining tripe certainly possesses the right wrong stuff to rate as an amusingly awful clunker. The lame no-name cast all fail to impress with their uniformly atrocious acting, with top thespic dishonors going to Max Jacobs as Alexandra's scheming, diabolical grandfather George Parkman, the ever-foxy Ruth Collins as reformed junkie Cathy, Tim Gail as Alexandra's stolid assistant college professor fiancé Bill King, George Krause as hulking psycho lackey Ben, Amy Brentano as Alexandra's ditsy gal pal Brett, Jeanne Marie as bitter foul-mouthed teenage hooker Judy, and Gary Warner as drippy Detective Dann Carr. Ed French provides some nifty gore and gnarly make-up f/x. A deliciously cruddy Grade Z hoot.

Okay, so we've got Roberta Findlay ("Tenement: Game of Survival", "Snuff") directing a cheesy 80's horror movie revolving on a brotherhood of devilish monks sacrificing young women to Satan himself and drinking their blood in order to remain immortal. How bad could this possibly be? Correction; it's unquestionably going to be extremely bad, but the right question to ask should be: How is this not going to be entertaining? What we have here is pure late-80's trash-gold, with a completely nonsensical and laughably incoherent plot, tacky make-up effects, gratuitous nudity and a whole lot of gibberish about Our Lord Satan! The script of "Prime Evil" is wonderfully incompetent and aimlessly skips from one theme onto the other without any form of continuity. The film opens in the year thirteen-hundred-forty something with a bunch of monks turning to Satanism because they're angry with God for allowing the Black Plague to kill millions of people. This was obviously a brilliant career move because the story suddenly jumps forward in time 600 years and all the monks contained their same age and virility. But the next winter sacrifice is coming up and one of the cult members suggests using his granddaughter because she's still a virgin. Meanwhile, the leader of the cult engaged a convicted killer to randomly kidnap the granddaughter's best friends and then – finally – there's also a sub plot about a devoted nun going undercover in the cult by order of the Catholic Church. This last sub plot is actually the most hilarious, since Sister Angela is hardly ever mentioned anymore after her initiation rites. This is why I personally love 80's horror movies! There are so many ideas yet they all just loosely connect together. There's no atmosphere of suspense whatsoever and even the whole devil-worshiping concept seems redundant. They're just a posse of bloodthirsty priests craving to cut open voluptuous young girls. There's fairly little gore until the climax arrives and that reddish puppet with horns, supposedly representing Lucifer, is just plain pitiable. The acting performances are horrible, but I don't suppose you expected it any other way. Boring, however, it was not.

I will sit through anything with demonic rituals, so I sat through this. On checking web reviews, I have become convinced there are two different versions. "CryFi" from Lansingburgh says in his review here on IMDb "surprisingly, there's no nudity." There was also no nudity in the DVD (Rhino) that I saw (there is also very little blood and almost no horror). However, over on cndb, reviewers are talking about how glad they are that there is nudity in the movie and judging the different actresses' "racks". Mr. Skin gives it three stars (!!!) for "great nudity" and lists four actresses as being nude during the flick. Does anyone know what is the situation with this film. It's hard to believe Roberta Findlay would make a movie without nudity, but there was not an inch of skin on the Rhino DVD, though there were scenes where I would have expected skin. Anyone know what's up?