Well, it's different -- you have to give Fear No Evil that, at least.

As soon as I saw a reference to "Lucifer in high school," I knew I had to watch this movie. I actually found it to be a rather interesting film, but it's actually the film's weaknesses and faults that make it interesting. Had there been any real cohesiveness to the plot, I suspect this would have been a really boring movie. You know a movie's weird when its greatest strength is actually a product of its faults. Some of the most memorable scenes here revolve around story elements that aren't really connected to the main plot and sometimes seem as if they were just thrown in for the heck of it (or perhaps for padding). Take the dodgeball scene, for example, a bit of surreal theatre that virtually ever viewer will remember long after he's forgotten the actual premise of the film. At one point, the film even goes zombie on us for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Maybe the filmmaker put these scenes in to distract the viewer from dwelling on the gaping holes in the overall plot. Then there's the whole homoerotic element, including a surprising amount of male nudity -- I don't know why director Frank LaLoggia pushed the envelope in that direction.

Filmed in 1979, Fear No Evil was released in 1981, when "demonic" movies were still all the rage in American culture. This film owes more to The Omen than it does The Exorcist, though, as the whole thing revolves around Lucifer being incarnated in human form. I don't know why Lucifer would need to be born to human parents in order to come into his power, but there you go.

God, of course, isn't going to let his rebellious former archangel run amuck on Earth, so he sends a trio of archangels down to thwart the devil's plans. The three can only keep their "promise" by working together, but for some reason one of the three was born in human form several decades after the first two. That seeming lack of foresight on the Lord's part does much to explain why Andrew Williams (Stefan Arngrim of Land of the Giants fame) -- Lucifer in his most recent incarnated form -- is able to grow into his powers at age 18 without being identified by any of the three angels (one of whom suffered and died in prison years earlier, while another had yet to show up at all) -- despite the fact that word of baby Andrew's disastrous christening must have surely spread all over the small town, where the other archangel in human form lived. Of course, no one would look at Andrew and suspect him to be evil incarnate, as he's basically a big sissy super-geek that gets picked on at school. Anyway, it's up to poor Mikhail/Margaret Buchanan (Elizabeth Hoffman) to find the MIA Gabrielle (Kathleen Rowe McAllen), link up with the spirit of Rafael (John Holland), find Lucifer, and destroy him.

LaLoggia does succeed in producing some very interesting iconographic moments, none more so than those juxtaposing a now-vamped up Lucifer calling forth his army of the undead with a traditional reenactment of the Passion of Christ that goes horrifyingly wrong. I can't complain about the soundtrack, either, as it features cuts from such punk and new wave artists as The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and Talking Heads. Unfortunately, the plot really is quite a mess, much of the acting is below par (although Hoffman turns in what I consider an inspired performance), and LaLoggia goes overboard with what are now some really cheesy special effects in the final part of the movie (up until that point, the special effects had actually been surprisingly good).

In this, his rather daring directorial debut, LaLoggia does manage to do some really nice things with a very limited budget, particularly in the cinematography and lighting departments. In the end, though, he just tries to do too much with too few resources. Still, despite its many problems, Fear No Evil does have some kind of unquantifiable "it" factor (which I'm going to dub "inspired mediocrity") going for it, which makes it worth watching even today.