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| Horror |
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THE BLUE MAN
aka
ETERNAL EVIL
Rating: 
Canada. 1985.
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 claimed to be psychic vampires who would terrorize people via astral projection so they could reincarnate in their bodies. And Sharpe now believes that the Duvals are terrorizing his life so that they can inhabit his body.
This Canadian production is an undistinguished and bland piece of horror. It’s like a Miami Vice (1984-9) horror film almost – all duskily lit designer interiors, soft washes of synthesizer sound, moody atmospherics. But that is all it is. There’s an awful lot of slow-motion point-of-view tracking shots as we watch astral bodies creep up on victims, but there’s no impact. And 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 James Bond film series) talk with a matter-of-fact sophistry about terrorizing other 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.
This film was made by George Mihalka, a regular genre hand who has also directed the likes of My Bloody Valentine (1981), Psychic (1992), Relative Fear (1994) and Watchtower/Cruel and Unusual (2001).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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