976 Evil II: The Astral Factor

USA/1992/93 minutes

Tagline- This time, Satan returns the call.

(A bit misleading, since Satan is the one making annoying phone calls all the time !)

Favourite Line-“Look daddy, everytime you hear a bell, a zombie takes a soul to hell”

(character Zuzu Bailey from “It’s a wonderful life” tells his father in the twisted mash-up TV version where Robin’s friend is literally thrown into)

Patrick o' Bryan reprises his role as Spike who has become a shadow of his former self, probably tormented by memories of having tossed his possessed cousin in a fire of hell at the end of the first movie. He rides from town to town, restless and unsettled by his past as also by Satan who calls him from any public phone and reads out the 'horrorscope' of the day by helpfully auto-dialling 666.

One day, Spike visits a small town near where there's news of a college Dean slaughtering innocent girl students, as a sacrifice to his Dark Lord. Arrested for his possible involvement, the dean Mr. Grubeck is taken for interrogation where he requests a phone call to his lawyer. Instead he calls Satan and asks for a bail out. This comes in the form of a phenomenon called astral projection, which allows the demonic professor to rest in jail while his spirit commits more grisly crimes.

The first on his list is the college night guard who is the prime witness of a student's murder.   Grubeck appears as a ghost, locks the man in a bathroom, causes the toilet to explode, and then chases him to a road where the unfortunate guy is hit by a steel trailer and is cut into shreds. Then he kills other people in innovative ways, the best among which involves a mash up between key scenes of the classic “It’s A Wonderful Life” and the cult horror “Night of the Living Dead”. Spike’s romantic interest and lead character Robin (portrayed by former Miss. USA contestant Debbie Jones) and her friend are busy switching channels showing the abovementioned two flicks, when Robin takes a break to prepare popcorn. Her friend is sucked into the TV box where the group of happy revellers at the over-dramatic ending of wonderful life film turn on her and reveal themselves to be zombies. A demonic kid rushes forward and repeatedly stabs the girl to death. When Robin returns, she is mortified to see the dead body and more so when Grubeck appears and proclaims his love for her, promising to be united as Satan's slaves !

Apparently, Robin used to work in his office and was pretty close to him, so much so that the professor actually fell for her and wants her for himself. There's some other shit involving Robin’s physic powers as she foresees deaths of future victims, and of course fails to convince her concerned cop dad or her friends, who think she might be going nuts. That of course is not entirely improbable considering that the story requires her to believe that Satan is on the other end of the phone line and that he has employed Grubeck as his human agent to carry out his nefarious objects. Spike’s scepticism also annoys Satan, especially when he breaks into Grubeck’s house to get evidence against him and shouts ‘fuck you’ to Satan when he calls. Satan retaliates by causing lights to go off, furnitures to explode, guns to shoot, and frozen pizzas to be thrown on Spike from a refrigerator !

Towards the end, Spike and Robin decide that the only way to stop the evil professor is for Spike to destroy the astral body, while Robin would sneak into prison and kill his physical body. This decision is revealed to Spike through an illustrated book at an occult bookstore run by mysterious Ms. Agnes (in a welcome guest role by Brigitte Nielsen of Chained Heat II and Red Sonja).

Though suffering from huge flaws in the logic department, the movie is thoroughly enjoyable for the unconventional 'kill' sequences and the make-up effects of Rene Assa playing Grubeck, who has a horribly scalded face, a cross between Freddy Krueger and the villain Toby of Popcorn (1991). The latter inspiration is just my guess, but as to the first one, there might just be a link considering that this was the sequel to 976 Evil directed by Robert Englund, who has played Freddy in all the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. This one is directed by exploitation maverick Jim Wynorski who earlier directed the delightful Chopping Mall in 1986. The acting is nothing to talk about either, especially Debbie James as Robin who is completely expressionless and ineffective, and whose only talent lies in screeching every time she witnesses supernatural events or physic visions come true.

Released on DVD as part of a 8 movie collection in the US by Lionsgate Home Entertainment in 2012, and later as a single disc edition in UK in 2004 by Boulevard Entertainment label, both of which contain no supplements, the movie is still awaiting a Blu Ray release in the line of Sony's 976 evil upgrade of June 2017 which has an audio commentary by veteran Robert Englund. I watched a choppy VHS print which had all colours faded and merging into each other and there was noticeable lack of clarity or contrast in the video. However I enjoyed it a lot, if only for unintentional laughs and a pleasant one and half hour of pure trash.

In comparison to this sequel, the original tended to be a bit more verbose with less action (except the spider scene which was pretty cool) which sort of made it a dull watch, whereas this one spends no time on explanations about characters or situations, but rather moves from one to other increasingly stupefying sequence which require no brain power to digest. Just sit back and be amused !