Equinox

Equinox is the kind of movie that plays at midnight in creaky theaters built in the 1930s, amid bursts of laughter and sneering recitations of the hideously bad lines. But since there are no musical numbers or famously bad directors attached, this late-60s misfire will probably never achieve the higher profile cult classic status of movies like Xanadu or Plan 9 From Outer Space. But that doesn't make Equinox any less-deserving of devotion/derision. (George Lucas publically admits to being a fan.)

Gem-packed with dialogue diamonds like: "Oh, yeah. I just remembered: Asmodeus is another name for the devil!" and "I wouldn't know a catatonic coma if it bit me!" (the exclamation points are mine; the actors' delivery is as lax as the attendee list of a semi-annual prune tasting festival), Equinox is the story of four middle-aged looking college kids who wander into the forest looking for a lost college professor and wind up… dead! Well, at least three of them do. Somebody's got to stay alive to tell the tale from the padded walls of his cell in the insane asylum.

David Fielding (Edward Connell) recounts the story of how he and his pals found Dr. Waterman's (Fritz Leiber) cabin demolished, and a strange and beautiful castle erected just beyond it. Along the way (David says, complete with flashbacks), he, Jim (Frank Bonner), Susan (Barbara Hewitt) and Vicki (Robin Christopher) encountered a strange laughing man inside a cave where they were given an ancient book of evil (clue one: it smells of sulphur). Just your typical, every day hike in the woods, really.

Once the fearless foursome reaches the castle, we've already met a satanic forest ranger and the horse he rode in on, screeching winged dinosaur-demons, murderous automobiles that drive themselves, raping and pillaging, a cursed cross, giant reptilian apes, and so much more your brain will be splitting at the seams by the time it's all over.

Equinox quite obviously inspired a lot of the schlock cinema we see today (most notably, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, and Larry Blamire's The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera, to name a couple), so it's worth a look if you're into cheese-fests chock full of claymation, miniatures, spinning dissolves, delirious dialogue and overwrought acting.

…The End?

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson