976 Evil Movie Review

976-Evil is a 1988 horror movie directed by Robert Englund and starring Stephen Geoffreys and Sandy Dennis.

Spike(Patrick O'Bryan) finds a card with a number on it. He calls the number. It's a fortune telling phone service, but it is something far more sinister than that. His aunt is called Lucy(Dennis) and she is very religious and her son is called Hoax(Geoffreys). He looks up to his cousin Spike and he follows him around. He is a total geek and he gets bullied by some of Spike's pals. Spike is the opposite of Hoax. He is cool and he gets girls easily. Spike saves Hoax from the bullies and he looks out for him. Spike calls the weird number again and it tells him to steal something. Spike won't do it and he tells it to get lost. Later, he almost gets run over by a car. Coincidence?

Hoax finds t he number and he rings it. It tells him to go to the cinema to meet his dream girl. He ends up  meeting Spike's girlfriend and they go for a pizza. Hoax gets beaten up by the bullies. They put in into a dumpster. He calls the number again and he listens to the voice on the phone. He gets out his spider and performs some sort of ritual and at the same time, spiders turn up in the girlfriend's dinner  and she freaks out and hits her head and she dies. Hoax is not happy with that. He only wanted to scare her. There's a private investigator called Marty(Jim Metzler) who is nosing around also.

Hoax begins to change. He is not looking himself and he has got a set of talons with which he attacks
one of the bullies. He begins to turn into something nasty. Marty is snooping around and he hears the call. Hoax is being possessed through the phone and he has turned evil. Marty answers the phone and he gets electrocuted but he is okay. Hoax deals with the bullies once and for all. Anyway, the gist of it is that Spike and Hoax face off. Hoax has turned into a devilish creature and he is going to kill Spike.
Hoax ends up falling into a pit of fire and being destroyed. Spike survives. The movie ends with the  evil phone line starting up again, waiting for the next victim...

I liked this film. It is very simple, but good entertainment. Englund did a pretty good job here. I remembered Geoffreys from Fright Night, which he was also good in also. He plays the nerd really well in this film. I like the idea of an evil phone line. That was interesting. I liked the way that Hoax turned from nice guy into some sort of evil devil thing! It was good fun, I thought and I will give it a 5/10.