As far as horror movies go, this one is above average (definitely not warranting less than four). Yeah, there were some drawbacks. Some scenes were a bit drawn out and others were completely irrelevant. What was up with that homoerotic male shower? That was over the top and pretty much as gratuitous as most female shower scenes. Lucifer's character shows flashes, but never really seems inherently evil as you would think. It's clear that he knows who he is from the start, but the role is written as if he's going through the puberty of devilhood. If Julie/Gabriel had been required to be nude, I would have given this a 10. Sadly, her clothes stayed on. The gym teacher overacts with a hilarity of epic proportions.

I remember a friend taping this for from a TV movie channel back when I was too young to watch these type of flicks (must have been at age 11). Anybody else of you who first saw it at that age, must know "Fear No Evil" tends to stick in your memory. In 2007 I managed to pick up the US Anchor Bay DVD edition and re-watch it. It will always remain very much a flawed affair all the same, but it's a guaranteed fun watch. You'll just have to be able to handle 80's horror cheese. A whole lot of it. "Fear No Evil" is a pretty ambitious movie (and the same goes for the story and the orchestrated score). Some tension, sometimes frightening, sometimes shocking but safe to say that most of the time it doesn't make a lick bit of sense. Unbelievable how many songs by 80's bands they managed to put on the soundtrack (great stuff like The Ramones, Talking Heads, Sex Pistols,...). So what do we have here? We've got the Devil incarnated, naked breasts (obviously), angels and demons at play, zombies, some weed-smoking, basket balls that crush & kill, (and for the ladies) we got an all-boys showering scene with all the dudes generously flapping around their ding-dongs (and some male/male kissing with almost deadly consequences). Not nuts enough yet? We also got a solid on-screen hint at female masturbation with a gun. More? How about immensely enjoyable make-up effects & some highly psychedelic, colorful animated effects... 80's Horror rocked, simple as that.

Fear no Evil is on the whole a drab little early eighties horror movie but it does have a number of bizarre and/or memorable scenes buried in it, particularly toward the end. For a low budget eighties horror movie it sure sets it sights high, revolving around the battle between Lucifer who has been reincarnated in human form on earth after his fall from grace and three arch angels- Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, who have also been born into human form. However, it is an obviously cheap little film and is unable to pull of the story with any of the grandeur or scale you might expect.Very little happens for most of the movie. Lucifer hangs around acting evil (Well dorky and non-expressive) but does very little. Apparently we are partly meant to think is weird and creepy because he gets good grades and isn't a pothead loser like the rest of the 'kids' at his school. We spend a fair bit of time watching some of his various school mates arsing around- drinking, screwing, showering etc, although these characters don't end up playing a particularly big role in things to come. They aren't really set up as opponents or even tormentors of Lucifer (Other than one rather odd scene) and are rather quickly dispatched in the end movie carnage.There is a tiny bit of Omen style shenanigans, including a death bu doge-ball scene, but other than in a couple of instances Lucifer/Andrew doesn't really use his powers until the climactic conflagration. It seems almost like they were trying for a tormented loner vibe to go along with the satanic theme, trying to combine Carrie and the Omen, but if so it was badly done. There is a bizarre homo-erotic shower scene which is really the only overt humiliation we Lucifer suffer at the hands of his school mates, other than a few other scenes in which they are shown to be cold and unfriendly toward him but not overly cruel or aggressive. They understandably seem more wary of his cold and creepy demeanor. A large amount of running time is devoted to the reincarnations of Michael, the old woman and Gabriel, who has taken the form of a teenage girl, one of Lucifer's schoolmates. Having two of the nominally male angels take the from of women is an interesting plot development for the movie- this and some other bits in the movie make me wonder if the makers were trying to tap into to some themes of gender roles and sexuality but I have absolutely no idea exactly how or why. Things get a bit more interesting toward the end as Lucifer unleashes his powers upon the mortal realm. The dead rise from the grave, a passion of the Christ pageant goes bloodily wrong, people go crazy, one individual undergoes a truly bizarre transformation, animals are sacrificed and there is an over the top light show for the climax, complete with bad eighties visual effects, which makes very little sense.It's a pity that most of the movie is so tedious as there are a lot of over the top bizarre scenes, such as the shower scene, the dodge-ball scene and most of the climax which are amusing to watch even just for the WTF factor. As the video box and most reviews of this movie boast it has an impressive soundtrack for such dreck featuring music from popular bands such The Sex Pistols, U2, The B52s, The Ramones, the Talking Heads and others. Also of note is the fact that although he only made two other movies writer/director Frank LaLoggia apparently had a small role as a thug in The Wizard of Speed and Time, perhaps the most evil movie ever made. Just what kind of satanic connections did this guy actually have?

I recently picked up FEAR NO EVIL out of a bargain bin of cheap DVDs because the cover art looked vaguely familiar, but I could not recall if I'd ever actually seen the movie. After sitting thru FEAR NO EVIL last night I came to the conclusion that I must have missed it back in its heyday, because I definitely would've remembered seeing a movie this BAD!! FEAR NO EVIL is a story about Andrew, a young high school genius who also happens to be the reincarnation of the Antichrist. You'd think that having supernatural powers would make high school easier on a kid (You're getting picked on by other kids in the locker room? Make their heads explode! Why doesn't THAT ever happen in a teenage-Satan movie?), but Andrew is a rather wimpy, effeminate looking Satan-in-waiting, surrounded by the usual stock characters that populate nearly every early 80s high school horror film (the tough Vinnie Barbarino clone, the greaser girls who smoke dope, swear and meet guys in the school boiler room for "quick and dirty sex," etc.), all of whom make Andrew's daily life a living Hell (sorry, I had to say it). After a lot of seemingly unconnected scenes that show these characters going around in circles without doing much, Andrew eventually kills a dog, drinks its blood, and goes out to the creepy old castle outside of town (where his predecessor was killed by Priests back in the olden days) to accept his Satanic birthright, while two Archangels (in the form of a crazy old lady and one of Andrew's high school classmates, whom he has a crush on) prepare to destroy him; all the while, there's a local Church production of the Passion Play happening in the background. (??) If this sounds like a mess, it is. Due to absolutely wooden acting by all involved, poor editing, and shoddy script writing (to say nothing of the Atari 2600 style "Laser" special effects), we never get to know enough about ANY of these characters to really care much about what happens to them, and the few disturbing gore sequences that DO work feel like they were tacked on at the last minute to briefly wake the audience up before everything slips back into talky, pretentious oblivion. The last 20 minutes are somewhat interesting, when Andrew unleashes his army of the Undead on his high school tormentors, the guy playing Jesus in the church Passion play suddenly starts bleeding REAL blood all over the first ten rows and general chaos ensues, but even those disturbing images aren't enough to save this movie after sitting through the absolutely craptacular first hour. Especially hysterical is when the Archangels finally encounter Andrew in his full Satanic regalia, which appears to be a black evening gown and dark lipstick. He looks more like a Goth club kid than the Lord of All Evil. Trust me, the effect is more likely to invoke laughter than horror. I turned to my wife and said "That's the gayest Antichrist I've ever seen." Even Dr. Frank-N-Furter from "Rocky Horror" is more macho looking than this guy!! I could go on about the unusual amount of male nudity in FEAR NO EVIL (some of it frontal), the male-on-male kissing scenes (One of which causes a guy to grow breasts!!) or the hilariously wide-eyed, vacant performance of the girl Andrew has a crush on (seriously, was she on Valium during filming?)but I think I've wasted enough time describing this mish mash to you. Suffice it to say that the highlight of this movie for me (aside from the end credits) was when Andrew's father ordered my favorite beer (Genny Cream Ale) in a bar. Apparently FEAR NO EVIL has become a cult film over the years, but I'll be damned (sorry, I did it again) if I can see why. Avoid, avoid, avoid!!!