Evil Altar

Trying to rule the earth with dark powers never seemed quite popular. Not as awful as I thought it would be, but it still stinks! Crummy, cheap-jack and totally muddled covers the bases of this dank supernatural / occult 80's horror film starring the beefy, square-jaw Robert Z'Dar. No surprises. Its routine stuff (the usual small town secret) and the premise holds a nasty side to it, but director Jim Winburn's incompetently lazy and laboured handling brings it down. Atmosphere is non-existent, and suspense follows the same course that we're left with weak thrills coming off mostly droll. While it can be unintentionally funny, there wasn't enough of it to cover it. Special effects are little, but are gaudily executed. The lousy story doesn't come together, or even tie in that well with an endlessly moronic script of terrible dialogues and choppy editing with awful continuity. The high-strung music score telegraphs everything. There are actually one or two decent moments, and the grimy look works to its favour, as these things could make for campy fun, but it all comes off rather boring and worthless to care much.