Borserie
it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
merklekranz
Taken for what it is, a 1977 TV movie, "Force of Evil" is above average entertainment. I'm not going to kid you though, believability is not one of it's strong points. Lloyd Bridges plays a doctor, and while Lloyd Bridges may not be able to tell when someone is dead, a doctor definitely should. The entire last half of the film pivots on this point, and drags everything down a notch. The acting is scattered, although William Watson is memorable as the villain "Teddy Jakes". There are definitely some scenes, such as the mom and daughter discussions on the houseboat, that I could have lived without. I actually rate this less than IMDBs 7.7. To me it's a 6.0 at best, because it seriously challenges believability. - MERK
Scarletfire-1
Back in the late 1970's I saw a movie on late night TV that was really creepy. It has stuck in my mind for almost 30 years. I have been trying to find out what the name of it was and see it again for a long time. It was about a doctor that had testified in a trial years earlier and sent this creepy guy to prison. Now that he's out of prison he wants to get revenge on the doctor and proceeds to torment him and his family.A few years later I watched a movie I'd never heard of before called Cape Fear, which was made in the early 1960's. Strangely enough it had the same exact storyline as that movie that had been haunting me. Obviously Cape Fear was the original and the one from the late 70s was a remake.In the early 1990s I heard they were making another remake of Cape Fear. Maybe I'd finally find out something about my mystery film? With all the hoopla about the second remake, I never saw any mention of the first one from the 1970s. I realized that the film I saw was probably very obscure and was probably a made for TV movie.Eventually I got on the internet and found out about IMDb. Surely I could finally find out about that creepy movie that I saw so many years ago. I looked up Cape Fear and only the remake from the early 1990s was listed. That seemed really strange, because Cape Fear was a well known film and I thought some movie buff would have already put a connection to the remake I saw under "Movie Connections". No such luck.A few years ago I was looking through the catalog of a company that sold rare VHS tapes and I read the description for something called "Force of Evil". I realized at once that I'd found it! This was that movie that I had been searching for, for almost 30 years. I got on IMDb again and saw that it was a made for TV movie as I had thought. Interestingly enough it was a Quinn Martin production and was narrated by William Conrad. That made sense as I recalled the distinctive narration it had when I originally saw it. It starred Lloyd Bridges and even had one of the Brady Bunch girls in it - Eve Plumb.I managed to get a copy on VHS and re-watch it again at last. It was as cool as I had remembered it. It does indeed have virtually the same exact storyline as Cape Fear, even down to the houseboat near the end.So cool to know the name and see it again after all those years!
daedelus-1
I remember this movie 27 years later so that should do justice to its staying power! Without giving away anything, suffice to say I recall the movie being thrilling, in a 1970's sort of way (those were more innocent days for everyone). William Watson turns in a really good performance as the scary guy too!What I also find interesting is the cast: Lloyd Bridges is good in anything he does and Eve Plumb, for those who may not remember, was Jan Brady and later tried (more or less unsuccessfully) to branch out into TV. If I recall she was in a movie about a girl who had multiple personality syndrome.The ending of this film, if I recall was especially scary, again, for the time.
ghost-9
I still remember this creepy movie. It was creepy in a subtle sort of way like most episodes of Kolchak, The Night Stalker. I wasn't very sophisticated as a child but I think this must have been something for me to remember it all these years later. If anyone knows where you can get it on VHS, I would be interested in seeing if it were still as disturbing after all these years.