Leofwine_draca Yep, you guessed it, another deservedly obscure no-budget cheesy American horror movie which is almost totally worthless as a film. I usually don't mind watching these kind of films but I found myself unusually intolerant of this one, maybe because it's so tiresome. I don't really know how someone can make a film about a man being possessed by an evil Aztec doll uninteresting but the makers of this movie manage to. It's not that the film is lacking in action or that it's totally worthless, it's just so similar to a hundred others and the merit to be gained from watching is hardly worth the ninety minutes.The film does have a good beginning, I'll grant it that. It starts off with the usual stuffy college professor being heckled by his brain-dead class, but the twist here is that HE is possessed by the doll and causes one of them to have a major nosebleed. Soon afterwards he is levitated into the air by the presence and is gorily impaled on a flag pole jutting from a nearby wall. After lots more messing around in the dark and confusing plot points we are introduced to what look like the main characters, a trilogy of nerdy teenagers who decide to hold a séance in a deserted warehouse at night. This of course ends in death, with a security guard being crushed by a huge crate. It's all very unimpressive.The film's main characters (as if there weren't enough all ready - damn) are now ready to be introduced. First of all we have an irritating female reporter who is sceptical of the whole thing and also happens to be a really bad actress to boot. Her geeky boyfriend, however, takes an interest in the idol. Cue a possession which takes an age to actually get anywhere, lots of dialogue, and people wandering around in the dark so you can't see what's happening. It goes without saying that the amateur-style acting is bad, pretty much from the whole cast. There isn't a single character to care about either. The plot is clichéd and trivial and the film as a whole forgettable and worthless. The only thing good about it is the music, which at least manages to be spooky. The only reason horror fans would bother watching this is, I guess, the special effects and I'm sorry to say that they disappoint also.Most of the gore is saved for the finale in which a girl has her hand chewed by a waste disposal unit (ouch!) and a man turns into an ugly demon and pulses and disintegrates in what looks like a scene ripped off from the end of AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION. Probably my favourite special effect in the whole film is when a boy sees all manner of objects on his desk being attracted to his Aztec doll as if by a magnetic force. A simple effect yes, but the simpleness and unexpected nature of it is what impressed me most and it's much more interesting than the tiresome yucky blood scenes. In any case give this no-hoper a miss or risk wasting ninety minutes of your life.

udar55 Through a confusing series of events, a trio of high school teens end up with a figurine of Destacatyl, an Aztec god of something bad. They turn it over to tabloid reporter Sandy (Susan Stokey). Soon her friend Jerry (Warren Lincoln) is seduced by its power, turning into a misshapen monster of rage that, naturally, is angry she won't go out with him. This was the second feature from directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow, after the slasher THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1982). Props to them for not delivering another slasher, but this is pretty so-so stuff. The set up is unfocused (four writers are credited) and you don't really get too emotionally involved in the characters. There are some nice FX by Matthew Mungle, also a DORM alumni, towards the end though. And Christopher Young contributes a score that is way too classy sounding for the material. After this they would go on to co-direct THE KINDRED (1987) and the Koontz adaptation SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT (1991) before breaking up as a team.

Vomitron_G I saw this film once somewhere around the year 2002, during a period in which I wasn't really in touch with the horror genre anymore -- Now hey, don't give me that look, a man's entitled to have other interests in life and explore a wider range of cinematic wonders, right? I'll admit I was much more into art-films/author-films and 'critically acclaimed masterpieces' at the time, so when I stumbled upon a copy of "The Power", I was amazed at how utterly bad this film was. Annoyed by all the ineptness is perhaps a better description of my initial reaction. But during the last five years, I've had myself regularly wallowing in horror obscurity again and have seen my fair share of irredeemable low budget rubbish. So I guess it was kind of inevitable that I would give "The Power" another watch at some point, to try and re-evaluate things. A friend of mine (also an avid obscure movie hunter in his free time) had not seen it yet. Reason enough for both of us to sit ourselves down and watch it over the weekend.For an early/mid 80's horror film, "The Power" has a mildly intriguing and not too unoriginal setup: Destacatl is believed to be an ancient Aztec demon able to control the dark sides of the human soul. According to pagan believes, his powers are locked in an Aztec idol, a little statue that looks like "a Mexican salt shaker" (a student at a lecture 'wittily' remarks). The best parts of this film, are actually the beginning and the ending. The first 15 minutes contain the awesome death scene of a professor who has been meddling with the evil powers of Destacatl, some native mumbo-jumbo in the desert and another cool killing of a graveyard caretaker. The whole middle hour has the statue coming into the hands of some students and nothing significant happens during that hour, aside from a lot of talking, attempts at investigating the history of the statue, things flying around in a student's dorm room and one guy concluding he'll be able to handle the powers contained within the idol. Of course he will be proved wrong, because this is a horror film. But all these goings-on are snooze material, really. Then, during the last 15 minutes of the film, the guy who thinks he can handle it inherits the Evil Power -- I never really figured out if it's the power that transforms you or if it's actually the demon Destacatl that possesses you -- and we're treated to a short but amusing stalk & slash routine in some house, featuring our two leading ladies vs. evil powered-up deformed guy. Plus, an amusing & typical horror-twist at the end.So you get the idea here, I'm sure. Cut out the middle section, and you end up with an amusing 30-minutes low budget short horror deformity. The low rent special make-up effects are bound to amuse any die-hard fan of the genre. But in the end, I don't even have to re-visit my initial conclusion from 8 years ago. It's still a bit of a task to sit through this B-movie, with the painfully uneventful mid-section, the inferior acting, the clumsy & rather pointless plot, etc. So I guess I still retain my sanity after 5 years of shooting up 'quality' B-horror drivel on a regular basis, since I'm not going to yell "Awesome movie!" and rate it like your average Stanley Kubrik film. The suffering may have gotten a bit painful at moments, but there were actually some benefits to this experience. For one thing, I learned about this interesting duo of genre filmmakers from the 80's, called Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow. From the looks of it, these guys are really spirited genre lovers that started their careers by making films together. And their efforts got consistently better. Just watch their third film as a directing-duo, "The Kindred" (1987), and then compare it to this, "The Power", and you'll see what I mean.In the years following "The Kindred", Obrow & Carpenter both expanded their horizons individually, though still occasionally working together on genre outings. They collaborated on the pretty decent Dean R. Koontz adaptation "Servants of Twilight" (1991), with Carpenter scripting & Obrow directing. Jeffrey Obrow wrote and directed "They Are Among Us" (2004), which is a pretty cool little 'alien invasion' film. Reminiscent of the classics from the 50's & done in the spirit of the 80's (with regards to most of the special effects). "They Are Among Us" is actually a better film than most people seem willing to admit. Or maybe the wrong people have been renting it so far (or since it was made for TV, maybe it has been caught by too many people who normally don't watch this kind of stuff). Either way, worth a watch if you're into this particular sci-fi/horror blend. As a director, Stephen Carpenter re-visited the horror genre in 2001 with "Soul Survivors". Again a film not too many people seem to like, but regardless it had an interesting concept (recycled from the right movies, I might add) and was a modest hit on rental VHS/DVD at the time and it features an interesting cast of young talents too, such as Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck & Eliza Dushku. I wonder what Obrow & Carpenter might be up to these days... If they'd ever re-visit the horror genre in a collaborative effort again, I for one would sure be very interested to see what they would come up with.And then there's the whole notion of Aztec myths and their use in horror movies. It's basically another obscure sub-genre, but when you look into it, you'll be surprised how many films you can find revolving around such topics. Mostly sinister hard-to-find titles, so this opens up another path leading to yet another nether-region of horror history. A path I'll be most willing to try out some day.

Coventry The directors duo Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow released three divergent low-budget horror movies during the 1980's before their paths separated. Perhaps they really ought to have stuck together for a little while longer, as the quality level of their work improved with each film. Their first feature "The Dorm that Dripped Blood" is a horrendous and suspense-free slasher that is better left forgotten. This one – "Evil Power" - is a nonsensical but fun thriller about psychic possession and their last collaboration, entitled "The Kindred" and dealing with a genetic monster, even is a slick but heavily underrated mixture between horror and Sci-Fi. Maybe if they had stayed together, they would have fabricated some hidden gem of horror during the 1990's, who knows? "Evil Power" knows a promising and very exciting start, but sadly suffers from an overlong and dreadfully boring middle section. Pivot element of all the horror is a small statue made of clay, representing an ancient Aztec deity with a hardly pronounceable name. The statue provides tremendous amounts of power to whoever possess it. The only problem, however, is that the power isn't a very useful one… The statue brings out your darkest side and eventually causes its owners to transform into horribly deformed maniacs. The little Aztec bastard comes into the hands of three high-school students that learn about its powers during a séance held at an old abandoned graveyard. They wisely decide to give the statue to a newspaper reporter for further research, but she's a firm non-believer of the supernatural. Her boyfriend Jerry, on the other hand, quickly becomes obsessed with the thing. "Evil Power" is well worth checking out in case you're a sucker for 80's horror nostalgia. The special effects, especially during the first ten and last fifteen minutes, are delightfully cheesy and gruesome. They're fairly well-handled for being a low-budgeted flick and include some gooey melting parts and impalement. The atmosphere is relatively sinister as well, with two memorable sequences in particular. One in the graveyard and the other in the remote Mexican desert. There are some massive holes in the plot and, quite honestly, it's a bunch of senseless nonsense, but I definitely don't regret watching this little-seen oddity of the early 80's.