The 1980s remain my favorite decade for horror flicks. In general, that decade had a much lighter take on the genre than the 1970s, despite all the splatter. In the ’70s, the aim of horror auteurs was to disturb, or to inspire dread. Take the career of Wes Craven, for example. His two most provocative films of the ’70s were The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. Both use rape as a plot device, and both rely far more on dread than fear. Then, in the ’80s, Craven launched the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which embraced a fun house atmosphere, embodied in antagonist Freddy Krueger. And I do mean fun house. Freddy, with his razor glove, the facial scarring, and the exaggerated sweater and hat, is a horror movie clown. Jason Voorhees, over in the Friday the 13th franchise, is a horror movie clown. Chucky, from Child’s Play, is a horror movie clown. Et cetera, et cetera. The ’80s were awash in blood, but the tone is far different than what came before.
Regarding Freddy Krueger, the actor who portrayed him, Robert Englund, had built up a decent amount of credibility in Hollywood by the late ’80s, and he used that to helm his own fun house horror flick.
976-EVIL, from 1988, takes its cues from the proliferation of premium-rate telephone services that were rampant at the time. Television, especially late night, was packed full of commercials advertising phone sex, psychic readings, sports picks, etc, and all seemed to use the 976 prefix. I understand that explanation will make little sense to people of a certain age, so those readers will have to trust me that this was a thing. Anyway…
From a screenplay by Rhet Topham and Brian Helgeland (who would go on to write some excellent Hollywood fare), 976-EVIL follows cousins Spike and Hoax (Patrick O’Bryan and Stephen Geoffreys), who stumble upon a phone service that offers one’s ‘horrorscope.’ When calling, 
a spooky voice reads a fortune that is actually a set of directions, that if the caller follows, will get them the object of their immediate desire. Spike loses his motorcycle in a game of poker, and his horrorscope directs him to steal some cash that is enough to cover his bet so he can keep his bike.
These calls come at a cost, however. It’s implied that the call is being routed through hell itself, and the callers are condemning their souls to hell with every instruction they follow. Also, the more a person calls, the more they become a slave to evil, to the point of physical transformations. That’s a really good set of ideas for a horror flick. Usually, when this column points out a film has good ideas, that’s because the ideas are better than the execution, and 976-EVIL is no exception.
With a reported budget of around two million bucks, it would have taken a filmmaker with some serious skill to stretch that out, and Englund fell a little short. Being a first time director, he didn’t have final cut. When producers have final cut, they can be both ruthless and foolish, and this flick looks as if it had been butchered in the editing room, with more than a few scenes referencing events that didn’t make the cut. The effects also suffered. A good deal of the kills happen off screen, with viewers seeing the remains. The deaths that are key to the plot are shown, but it’s clear that shortcuts were made.
Lest I place all the blame on Englund and producers Lisa M. Hansen and Paul Hertzberg (both prolific b-movie producers), the script is due for some criticism as well.
There are one too many protagonists in this movie. Spike is the cool, Harley-riding high school bad boy who gambles and has sex with hot chicks (Lezlie Deane, in fact), while Hoax is a mama’s boy who gets bullied by the punks at school and laughed at by the girls. Both of these characters are heavy on tropes, and both, had they been tasked with it, could have carried the film on their own. The movie had to pick one of them to become the bad guy, which had the effect of causing the other to go missing in action for most of the final act. A tighter story would have featured just one of these characters, bad boy or loser, fall into the habit of calling the evil telephone number. But, this is complicated further by adding a third protagonist in private investigator Marty (Jim Metzler), who shows up to wander from scene to scene lumping on some exposition. He doesn’t have much to do other than that, until the end when all of a sudden his character, and the principal of the high school (Maria Rubell), become important to the resolution of the plot. It’s not quite a jumbled mess, but it’s close.
Story foibles and cheapness aside, Englund got some fine performances from his cast. O’Bryan was channeling Peter Berg to the point that I wonder why Berg didn’t do this movie, but his snarky, narcissistic portrayal fit the tone of the movie. Geoffreys will best be remembered for his role in Fright Night, yet he had far more screen time in this movie. He embodied the character fully. One can picture any number of short and skinny guys that could have played this part, but all Geoffreys did was go and make it his own. The standout performer, though, was Sandy Dennis as Hoax’s overbearing mother. She was an Oscar and Tony winner, which means she was really slumming it in this movie. That didn’t stop her from being professional, and acting her ass off in every scene she’s in.
976-EVIL is an up and down horror flick. At times it teeters on the edge of excellence. I can’t help but feel that if it had producers that trusted their director, and a director with more experience and talent behind the camera, it would have been a much better movie. The sense of missed opportunity is an unfortunate feeling that permeates this film from start to finish, and can’t be ignored. That said, if one is into 1980s-style horror flicks, this is a decent one to watch on a dark and stormy October night.