Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The Ancients Will Swallow Your Soul



The 1970s actually had some rather bizarre movies made during that era, especially horror movies. One of the most outrageous of those low budget films is Equinox, which is remarkable in that it was clearly made by people on acid. Or at the very least people who set out to make a rather unique and crazy movie, one that is not so much a horror movie as it is a journey into madness. For man was not meant to venture into the unknown, peaking into another world.

Something like that, anyways, especially considering what happens throughout the movie. The only really standard aspect of Equinox is that its part of the famous sub genre of horror films known as "People go into the woods, and bad things happen." More of the strange things occur at first slowly, and then rather frequently very rapidly. Clearly this was an incredibly low budget film, especially considering the special effects, which are as weird as the movie is. The use of clay animation is a nice touch, particularly as this only increases the film's level of oddness.

Despite what Sam Rami says, Equinox seems to have been something of a lose inspiration for The Evil Dead series. The frantic camera use, and the movie's plot of young adults stumbling across ancient evil is certainly at this point rather standard for the genre, yet at the time of this movie's release it was still rather fresh, overall. And of course I rather dug the ending, which only adds to the movie's mythology-I can see why this film was selected for a Criterion release. 85?

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