TowerofEvil

Tower of Evil (1972)

The movie opens with a couple of fishermen making a journey thru to a fog-encircled island. When they arrive there they are met with the bodies of three young kids that were crashing on the island in the abandoned lighthouse. After searching around a bit more one of the fishermen stumbles across a naked girl that stabs him to death. The action then moves ahead in time to a group of people who want to investigate the island. There is a team from the local university who want to look for the origins of an ancient gold spear that was used to kill one of the victims, and a private detective that is there on behalf of the girl’s family. She is in custody, but doesn’t remember what happened to her friends. While the authorities think she killed her friends the detective believes something else happened. After joining up with a couple of locals they head off to the island, only to be stalked and killed by a madman, or so it seems. The island holds many secrets, including the identity of the killer.

This is an awesome little movie. The movie has all the hallmarks of the slasher movies that would be in theaters a decade or so later. First of all the females and surprisingly some of the male cast spends a great deal of time naked. You will see not one, but three pairs of beautiful un-augmented breasts and more butt cheeks than you can shake a stick at. Now I’m not trying to be sleazy here, but the movie is trying to be a bit sleazy and really goes for it. So I figured I would get in the spirit of things and take my review there too. There is also a really cool looking killer, sort of. Without spoiling too much there is a neat little twist with the killer’s identity at the end that is fun and unexpected. Tower of Evil also manages to bring the characters to the island without slowing the story down, which allows for the atmosphere to continue building uninterrupted to the very end. This makes for a very entertaining movie that delivers the goods. Toss in a couple jump scares with the atmosphere and you have a great horror movie.

Technically this is a well-executed movie. The gore, while not up to the standards of the 80s is more than acceptable for the early 70s. You have a severed head rolling down the stairs, an arm that is chopped off, and the requisite blood splatter on a screaming woman’s face. The nasty stuff is all off screen and only hinted at, but to expect otherwise is a bit unreasonable for when the movie was made. I dig the look of the killer, but will admit that some of the makeup looks pretty bad. Still overall the makeup and gore is more than adequate to me. The movie is shot nicely with the island setting and the old lighthouse being used to full effect. I also really dig the liberal use of the fog, which I’ve always found scary and creepy.

Not to pat myself on the back too much, but there aren’t many great old horror movies that I’ve not seen. Sure I’ve missed a few that are so bad that they will only be released on DVD as an afterthought. But this movie is awesome and a must see for anyone interested in horror movies, especially slasher flicks.

3 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer