Good Against Evil is a 70's American made-for-TV film, more specifically it was a pilot to a series that never was. This factor explains its strange open-ending which leaves one crucial plot-strand completely unresolved. It owes a pretty obvious debt to The Exorcist (1973) and to the 70's thirst for occult horror in general. It tells the story of a satanic group who brutally manage the birth of a little girl in the 50's. 22 years later she starts stepping out with a journalist completely unaware of her evil guardians. These occultists once again step out from the shadows to put a stop to this liaison, having already pencilled the girl in as the bride of their evil demon Astaroth.This is obviously a bit of an anomaly in the sense of it being a pilot with no real resolution. I found this initially quite baffling but to be honest it didn't really bother me too much. In fact, the oddness of the finale makes for quite a distinctive and unusual ending. The content on the lead up was fairly run-of-the-mill occult horror stuff, with several scenes that take ideas from other movies from the time. But I felt it sort of worked quite well on the whole and thought the opening segment set in the 50's was especially well done, particularly in how they played upon how sinister the nun's with the big hats can appear. Admittedly, the film sort of loses momentum once it switches to the story of the little possessed girl in a segment that owes a huge amount to The Exorcist. But up to that point I honestly felt pretty involved in this one. On a side note, it is worth pointing out that the current poster image used for it here on IMDb is hilariously misleading; it makes it look like it must be a sexploitation flick. I can only imagine the disappointment that many people had if they bought this film on the basis of this cover.

Following his move to the United States, Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster found steady work in TV where thrillers and horrors could be turned out cheap and fast. Having made a mint back home with a mix of DIABOLIQUE (1955) and PSYCHO (1960), Sangster now turned his attention to two major diabolism films of the era: ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and THE EXORCIST (1973). The result, however, is a dismal failure – for which his own, frankly, lousy screenplay is largely to blame! For the record, I have watched countless rip-offs of both films by this point but I do own at least one virtual copy of the former (THE STRANGER WITHIN {1974}, coincidentally also a TV-movie) and as many as 5 other 'possession' films – ABBY (1974), THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW aka THE SEXORCIST (1974), THE POSSESSED aka DEMON WITCH CHILD (1975), THE EXORCIST III: CRIES AND SHADOWS aka NAKED EXORCISM (1975) and THE POSSESSED (1977; TV). By the way, director Wendkos had earlier helmed a stylish diabolic chiller himself i.e. THE MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971) but, here, he is cramped by the under-lit TV look (even if the film frequently changes locale for the sake of variety – starting in 1955 New York, then cutting to present-day San Francisco and moving to New Orleans for the climax) and, as I said, a plot that is half-hearted, under-nourished and downright confusing! What is more, the whole works its way to a major cop-out of an abrupt ending – having been intended as a pilot to a prospective series but it was understandably not picked up – so that the central premise is pretty much left hanging!The notion of having upper-class types revealed to be Satanists is a pretty tired one by now: meeting every once in a while – here to present the Devil with the child that, upon growing up, is to bear his offspring – to honor their master (whose disciples conveniently keep a statue of the Horned One secured in their private place of worship). That said, after the opening sequence (which recalls Hammer's own TO THE DEVIL…A DAUGHTER {1976}, albeit not Sangster-related), the horror element is so underplayed that it seems to interrupt the blossoming romance between the girl (Elyssa Davalos, who looks too sweet to suggest the evil that is supposed to lurk underneath!) and hero Dack Rambo. Interestingly, having preceded this with THE LEGACY (1978) – another Sangster-scripted mix of diabolism hits – it was amusing to note the interchange of components between them (for instance, horses and cats are involved in both, the girl is unaware of who she is while the boyfriend is an interloper, etc). Another moment that harks back to the Hammer legacy (pardon the pun) is the death-in-the-belfry of the priest (from Dracula HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE {1968}) – which follows one of the few effective moments in the film under review as Davalos throws an instant and unexplained chilly darkness over a church upon entering.Richard Lynch is always good value for money in this type of fare, but he is given little of substance to do except look sinister and make the occasional invocation to the dark forces (at one time, this occurs inside a cave!) – curiously enough, while he plays the leader of the cult here, he had also been a Christ-like alien in Larry Cohen's GOD TOLD ME TO aka DEMON (1976)! Still, why he seems so reticent to eliminate Rambo's character is baffling – he attempts to make the hero forget Davalos by throwing him back into the lap of a former girlfriend (a young Kim Cattrall): the fact that this leads directly to the introduction of Dan O'Herlihy's exorcist figure (since Cattrall's child is decreed as possessed simply for having drawn the sign of the demon Astaroth) seems to me a gross miscalculation on the villain's part! O'Herlihy's sudden appearance – in a state of agitation to boot – in the last act takes the film into its obvious center-piece, which is the battle for the soul of a little child: it does not matter that she has little to no bearing on the main plot but, then, the staging is so tame (indeed lame) that one is amused by the entire scenario, especially as the girl remains calm and composed all the way through it! I was literally thrown into fits of hysterical laughter when Rambo goes up to check on the priest and finds him at the mercy of an invisible hand suffocating him with a pillow!! With Lynch admitting defeat soon after the Devil is expelled and the unlikely team of Rambo and O'Herlihy keeping up the search for Davalos (while Cattrall offers herself in case the hero just happens to fail in his ultimate quest!), the film just ends: had one been completely unaware of its pedigree, we could say that the script was suggesting that the fight between Good and Evil is a continuing struggle and not easily won...

It's a romantic story that's as old as time – boy meets girl, but girl is destined to wed Satan. Seriously, that's pretty much the whole plot. A girl is born and raised to make the perfect bride for Satan. Her whole life has been carefully planned and mapped-out for her. So when love enters her life, those who have worked to protect her must put a stop to this new threat.Good Against Evil is a 70s television movie that looks like a 70s television movie. Acting, sets, and other technical aspects are just what you would expect if you grew up in the 70s huddled around the television waiting for the Movie of the Week. Most everything in the movie is safe and sanitized and ready for general consumption. The exorcism scene, the supposed highlight of the movie, is subdued in comparison with others that have been dramatized on film. In fact, the whole movie could be described as subdued. It's incredibly slow-paced and predictable. It doesn't take a psychic to spot the twists and turns in the plot. And the ending is about as jarring a finale as I've seen. It seems that Good Against Evil was meant to become a regular, weekly television series. So the movie just abruptly ends with several unanswered questions and was to be continued in the next episode. The problem is there never was a next episode.The exception to almost everything I've written is the opening scene of the baby girl's birth and the death of her mother. In comparison with what follows, it's quite creepy. It's a dreamlike sequence that doesn't look or feel like the rest of the movie. Had the movie followed the tone of the opening set-piece, it might have been a much better movie.

This is actually a really good TV horror movie. I viewed it in a cheap DVD horror set i found recently. It could be compared to the Exorcist with Linda Blair in some respects, but the plot is quite unique and interesting. It gets much better in the second half of the film and makes you wonder what's coming next in the story line. I hated when the movie ended since it left the doors wide open for a TV series. It could very well have been a great supernatural based TV drama series and it's a shame that it obviously never came to fruition.