MY CALL: The best feature of this movie is our ability to laugh at its stupidity. There’s a teleporting murderer in a leisure suit, a dominatrix occultist store keeper, a strip club that serves lunch, and hardly any mention of that horrorscope 900 number after which the movie is named. This adds up to a crap movie, but a solid Bad Movie Tuesday submission. MORE MOVIES LIKE 976-EVIL 2: Well, the original 976-EVIL (1988) was WAY better than this sequel! Maybe it would be more fair to say that the original was actually “good,” whereas this sequel is anything but.
Director Jim Wynorski (The Haunting of Morella, Chopping Mall, Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans) likes nudity. He’s actually directed numerous adult films. So, it should come as no surprise that at 0:01:01—yes, the 61st second of the movie’s running time—there is a shower scene. But before you talk yourself out of watching this, I’ll remind you he also gave us the solid gold campy 80s classic Chopping Mall (1986). Back to the shower scene… she dries off, encounters a weirdo in the girls’ locker room, and runs screaming down the school halls with her hardly-covered breasts bouncing frantically. Keeping it classy, Jim? Still, the death scene that followed was decent. Like ‘proper 80s-90s horror quality death scene’ decent.
Oh, boy. Five minutes later we are reintroduced to Spike (Patrick O’Bryan; 976-EVIL). When we last saw Spike, he was sending his demon-infused brother to Hell in the abyssal fissure that opened in their front yard in part 1. Now… he’s strolling into the Mad Dog Inn strip club in broad daylight. Extra classy. I guess this is where a lot of you might pull the rip-cord and parachute safely away from this film. At this point, I’d stop defending our director. My Chopping Mall (1986) leeway only extends so far and now even I’m regretting this movie selection.
So here we are, those of you who dare to brave this Bad Movie Tuesday, wading into the stagnant waters of this sequel. And no, sadly this sequel did not bring back the demon-possessed Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys; 976-EVIL, Fright Night, The Chair) to return as our deliciously evil bad guy. No. Instead we get some guy who called the 976-EVIL horrorscope number. He gains the ability to astrally project himself to function as a demon lacky for the 976 evil hotline. This character is weakly written, weakly played, is a bit of a gross pedophile, and doesn’t do anything interesting… at all… like throughout the entire movie.
Moreover, the death scenes weren’t great. The cold open kill was decent. And the exploding truck death was pretty cool, I guess. But the extra long, extra boring possessed car sequence is awful. You’d hope that a cool cameo of Brigitte Nielsen running an occult store would lead somewhere fun… but it doesn’t. Nothing in this movie is particularly enjoyable. Except for mocking it, of course!
Hmmm… how to close. Well, why bother? After all, this movie hardly bothered to close strong. The ending was total dog shit. Some finale! Really, this entire movie is dog shit. Can that just be my rating?
The best feature of this movie is its mockability. From the teleporting, semi-undead murderer in his leisure suit to the dominatrix-attired 6’1” occult store keeper to the strip club lunch stop and, oh yeah, wasn’t there supposed to be a stronger plot tie to this horrorscope 900 number!?! Our homicidal astral projector basically calls the 976 number in the beginning of the movie and then becomes a kill-slave to a demonic force. He may as well have just bought a cursed piece of jewelry at an antique shop—as so many horror movies can begin. I guess the writer couldn’t be troubled to properly link the plot to the movie’s namesake theme. Yup. This all makes for a crap movie, but a solid Bad Movie Tuesday submission.