aka Eternal Evil
Canada. 1985.
Crew
Director – George Mihalka, Screenplay – Robert Geoffrion, Producer – Pieter Kroonenburg, Photography – Paul Van Der Linden, Music – Marvin Dolgay, Art Direction – John Meighen. Production Company – Filmline International/New Century Productions
Cast
Winston Rekert (Paul Sharpe), John Novak (Detective-Sergeant Stewart Kaufman), Karen Black (Janus/Amelia Lambreaux), Andrew Bednarsky (Matthew Sharpe), Patty Talbot (Jennifer Sharpe), Vlasta Vrana (Scott Brown), Joanne Cote (Helen), Tom Rack (Dr Carl Meister), Philip Spensley (Bill Pearson)
Plot
Detective Stewart Kaufman investigates the identical deaths of two men, both killed after either claimed to have seen the apparition of a blue man. The trail leads Kaufman to the common link of filmmaker Paul Sharpe. He discovers one of Sharpe’s documentaries about an elderly couple, William and Monica Duval, who claim to be psychic vampires who terrorise people via astral projection so they could reincarnate in their bodies. Sharpe now believes that the Duvals are terrorising his life so that they can inhabit his body.
This was a Canadian production that gained some genre press when it came out and did reasonably in video-release, although is largely forgotten today.
Seeing the film, it is an undistinguished and bland piece of horror. It is almost like a Miami Vice (1984-9) horror film – all duskily lit designer interiors, soft washes of synthesizer sound, moody atmospherics. But that is all it is. There are a great many slow-motion point-of-view tracking shots as we watch astral bodies creep up on victims but the film holds no impact. Incredibly enough, we never get an appearance of the film’s titular Blue Man.
There are the odd couple of scenes that stand out – the ones from a documentary where the interviewed couple (one of whom is Lois Maxwell, alias Miss Moneypenny from the classic James Bond film series) talk with a matter-of-fact sophistication about terrorising people so they can possess their bodies, and the twist ending – but mostly the film is one that seems cocked and still waiting to go by the time it is over.
The Blue Man/Eternal Evil was made by Hungarian-born, Canadian-based director George Mihalka, a regular genre hand who has also directed the likes of the original My Bloody Valentine (1981), Psychic (1992), Relative Fear (1994), Watchtower/Cruel and Unusual (2001) and Race to Mars (tv mini-series, 2007).
Full film available here