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.
