I never like to watch movies where I could be the best actor in the production.
Movies that reach this kind of low acting threshold are in trouble from the opening credits and ‘Equinox’ was one of those movies.
TCM recently ran this 1970 cinema classic and it became very clear why Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman were at the front of the line for A-list actors in the early 70s: they had no competition if the actors in this movie were any indication.
It was listed as a horror movie but the biggest element of horror in the movie was the acting talent and the second biggest element of horror was the script.
Yet this movie managed to save itself a little bit because it had a couple of interesting cars in it, including a Volkswagen Square-back wagon that revealed a Christine-ish quality to it after it ran over a guy. Wild guess here; Stephen King may have seen this bomb of a movie.
The VW victim was discovered lying on a road by people in a mid-60s Valiant convertible shortly after the car decided to terminate him with extreme prejudice.
The next scene in the movie became the highlight of this dud because it involved four people in a very rare and pristine 1960 Dodge Polara convertible.
1960 Dodge Polara convertibles are rare as good TV shows and expensive as a night with a Kardashian. In fact the finned beauties are now worth enough money to have funded acting lessons for everybody in this Hall of Fame crap-fest of a horror movie and, believe me, that would cost a ton of cash to get these people up to speed in the acting field.
However, the value of a 1960 Dodge Polara drop top in 1970 would have been minimal at best. The last of the fin-mobiles were an anachronistic novelty in 1970; not old enough at the time to be considered a classic and yet strongly considered to be extremely ugly and outdated to the average person in 1970.
Thus an odd-looking car in an odd movie about monsters and demonic control was well within the budget of this drive-in bound classic flick. I watched the movie in its entirety, driven by the vain hope that I would see a little more exposure of the Polara or the two female lead actresses.
I felt the movie owed me that much as I watched an evil Gumby clay-mation character battle with the human actors and deliver a much better acting performance. Unfortunately Evil Gumby was killed by the bad actors, presumably because it lost its will to live in the movie, so we were back to the bad actors to carry the show.
His evil replacement was a not-so-jolly green giant that disrupted the bad actors’ game plan long enough for the devil to replicate into one of the bad actors, although even the devil couldn’t improve his acting chops.
Eventually the devil simply assumed his traditional flying red horned bird of prey rubber suit disguise and subsequently threatened one of the bad actors with death a year after their encounter. He appeared to carry out his threat through one of the now-possessed babes at the end of the movie.
All the while I had only one question after this most pointless of pointless movies: what in hell happened to that beautiful Polara convertible?
Jim Sutherland
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