EQUINOX (1970)

Holy crap. My dad suggested I check this out, because he used to see it on TV all the time growing up, so he picked up the DVD online. It’s put out by the Criterion Collection, who normally just do art-house stuff, so I was kind of wary of it being all slow and boring. But man, this movie is all kinds of amazing. There’s two different versions on the DVD, and they’re both pretty different, but the basic story is the same (and pretty much the same as THE EVIL DEAD) – college kids go to see their professor at his cabin in the woods, and there’s an evil book that conjures up demons and opens up portals to the “other side.” The story is really simple, the acting isn’t all that great, the effects are all classic stop-motion style but are really cheap…so you’d think with all this that it wouldn’t be worth watching. But like THE EVIL DEAD, it gets past all that and just works! You get the feeling that they made this movie just because they loved doing it, so if it’s not particularly scary or anything, it just makes you feel kinda good.