Black & Blue.

It would appear the parting comments of my last post willed this one into existence. Here be my thoughts on George Mihalka's 1985 film Eternal Evil aka The Blue Man.

When people start dying around him, director Paul Sharpe (Winston Reckert) begins to suspect his recent dealings with astral projection may have something to do it.

When I picked this up a few weeks ago at Cultland, I had no knowledge of its existence - at least as Eternal Evil - but I was very happy to add it to my collection of crusty Canadian horrors. This film was directed by George Mihalka, best known for 1981 slasher staple and Moosehead commercial My Bloody Valentine and he definitely flexes his creative muscles in this one. The camerawork is wild, with it floating everywhere, suitably conveying the out-of-body nature of the subject matter. I noticed a sequence early on remniscent of Argento's Tenebrae, but Mihalka - and DOP Paul Van der Linden - almost one-up him when the camera seems to detach and float away.

I was pondering how many horror films are about astral projection and there really are only a few - at least of this era - and that surprises me because it's a terrifying concept. I guess we were just wrapped up with your average ghosties around this time to complicate things further I guess. About halfway through, when Reckert & Karen Black were walking across a bridge, I realized I recognized it, recalling that I rode actually over this bridge during the Montreal Horror Express in 2019.

I've been here!

Eternal Evil is decent overall I'd say. It meanders in the middle a bit, but it does offer some surprises. I also appreciated when it veered into giallo territory, one scene involving a red raincoated figure in an elevator comes to mind. The climax may be a little leading, but the payoff is satisfying enough to recommend. Thankfully, Karen Black gets to Karen Black with decidedly more to do here than she did a decade earlier in the 1973 Montreal-lensed thriller The Pyx. I can also confirm that this movie is not a Blue Man Group origin story... I'm sure I'm the first one to make that joke, right?

That's it for now, I'm shortly off to my yearly sojourn to Montreal for the Fantasia Film Festival. Until then, stay safe, kiddies.