Equinox

I love bad movies. This is a bad movie. I was channel flipping and saw one of the monsters cavorting about until gored by a sharp stick. I had to watch after that. Truly bad acting, unintelligible plot and a swarthy demon with the classic "Bru haa haa haa" laugh that only is done in the worst of movies. Very entertaining. I recommend you watch it with friends. Not a first date movie unless you know them well. Rather good special effects for a low budget film.

I love this movie, could watch it over and over...

The reason I like it so much is just the whole idea behind it. Plus the claymation is pretty cool! The way they act is hilarious (to me anyway), almost like an old Leave it to Beaver, the way they talked in those episodes. Combine that with what they are up against, and the contrast between the 2 is great!!

It shows how good a film can be without spending $100 million. Evil Dead is another one that comes to mind when I think of this movie.

I won't spoil anything, but sometimes they use a fisheye lens when things are getting insane/over the top, and Dennis Muren has done some great work in famous films since this was made.

Four friends, David, Vicki, Jim and Susan, head out into the woods to visit David's professor, Dr. Waterman. They find Waterman'home destroyed, the professor missing, and a mysterious book. It soon becomes apparent that in meddling with the book, Waterman accidentally opened a portal to another, hellish dimension, and now the demon Asmodeus (posing as a park ranger) wants to acquire the powerful book. The four friends must fight against a variety of ghoulish monsters sent after them by Asmodeus, and eventually Asmodeus himself, in order to make it back to civilization alive.

Often considered one of the best-worst movies of all time, Equinox was a student film made by a young Dennis Muren which producer Jack Woods picked up for cinematic distribution, casting himself as Asmodeus and shooting some new scenes. On the one hand, this seems like a strange movie for Criterion to release, especially in a two-disc set, however despite its ineptitude it features some charming stop-motion animation for the various monsters (and some impressive forced-perspective shots to turn an ordinary stuntman into a blue-skinned giant) and it's also certainly worthy of being preserved if only because Dennis Muren and his friends had such a piddly budget to work with that it' a miracle they even had a completed (albeit rough) film, even before Jack Woods came along.

Bad, good, it doesn't matter. This is one of the great film labors of love. Rent the criterion edition and do as I did. Listen to the commentary over the Muren cut of the film. Then Switch to the Jack Harris, Jack Woods commentary over their cut. I was under the false impression as I watched the kids cut that Woods did not add much when he made his cut. Watching Woods cut you see how much effort went into shaping the final theatrical cut. It's amazing that the actors, unpaid for 2 years, already constantly returning to remote sets to incrementally add to to the shot count, would ALL reassemble for the extra shots that Woods would want to add. Listening to Muren, Danforth and McGee knock their own acting and talent is a real crack up. Everyone involved obviously loved the doing of this film. I am still impressed by the high quality of illusion achieved, especially the forced perspective work and the matte painting by Danforth.

Come on, people! This was a zero-budget student film, for God's sake! You can't assess this movie like you would the latest big-budget studio blockbuster. This was an earnest effort of some FX-crazed kids, who did their damnedest to get some cool stop-motion monster sequences on film as a showcase of their talents. Dennis Muren went on to STAR WARS fame and many Oscars, and the late lamented David Allen enlivened many a crappy Charles Band flick (that's actually a redundancy) with superb effects that always belied the pitiful budget he was given to work with. All I know is, my younger brother and I, both stop-motion fans, saw the trailer for EQUINOX at some long-ago Saturday matinée and KNEW we had to see this film. And when we finally did we thought it was COOL! I'd rather see a continuity-challenged, amateur FX effort like this than any multimillion-dollar CG crapfest like VAN HELSING any day of the week!