Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Let me float a few questions out there before you choose to watch this here movie ‘Necessary Evil’. If you’ve already wasted your time and watched it then you’re in the same boat as me and I can’t help you. The first question would be ‘Do you have ninety or so minutes of your life that you don’t give a rat-f**k about?’ ‘Have you ever thought about killing yourself via torture and are searching for a device you can use, for testing purposes, to see if this is something you might enjoy?’ ‘Are you a big enough fan of legendary actor Lance Henricksen that the man could put on a dress, play Eva Peron in ‘Evita’ complete with show tunes, and you would still watch?’ If you answered yes to all three of these questions then by all means run to your local video store or your online rental cue and move this movie ‘Necessary Evil’ to the top of the list.

Mr. Henricksen is the character of Dr. Fabian who narrates this thing. Rarely has a character narrated a movie with the narration actually making the movie more confusing. Dr. Fabian narrates as we watch a team of armed commandos, and some hot woman, in a cave looking for something. Leading this crew is the ubiquitous Danny Trejo. Danny Trejo AND Lance Henricksen. How did it all go so terribly wrong? I’m not quite sure what they are looking for but they do find it and it has super powers and really long fingernails and the ability to seriously mess you up. I’m not sure what happens next, but our commandos shoot this thing and its green blood gets on Capt. Sanders (Gary Hudson) which makes his eyes glow green and gives him super powers. Anyway, somehow our commandos subdue this thing and take home to Dr. Fabian who will proceed in testing it.

Fast forward sixteen years where things get really super confusing. Last time we saw Dr. Fabian he was in a wheel chair on deaths door, but now he still looks like he’s still on deaths door but the blood of this demon has at least allowed him to leave that chair behind in addition to giving him some minor super powers. Captain Sanders is now

CEO Sanders of some pharmaceutical company and is using his super powers and demons blood to make Viagra and stuff. Then there’s super perky pregnant journalism student Deborah Fielding (Kathryn Fiore) who is investigating this pharmaceutical company because her ‘gut’ tells her they are up to no good. We also have hard drinking, prostitute enjoying, unshaven, non-playing by the rules cop Russo (Eric Feldman) who knows that this pharmaceutical company is also up to no good, stemming from some missing girl case sixteen years ago, a case he sworn on the grave of his dead cop father to crack.

What does any of this have to do with anything in this movie? Dude, I don’t know. This could very well be one of those instances when a movie is simply to complex for my simple mind to understand. All I do know is that there is an IPO featuring the blood of Satan or something that needs to be stopped. Or not. Who knows.

Man, I don’t ask much of these movies I watch, I really don’t. Sure I would like them all to be good but we know that’s quite unrealistic, so all I really hope for is marginal entertainment. Anything above that is gravy. Didn’t get that from this one. Sure I would like all the movies I watch to make complete and total sense and to possess a semi-logical flow to them. Oft times this too is asking too much, so if we can get some consistent lunacy and perhaps just a working knowledge of the plot, then I’m happy. Nope, none of that here. What you will get is a series of seemingly disconnected scenes and confusing dialog and numerous characters which occasionally threatens to make some logical sense, but then veers back wildly out of control to leave those who can’t decipher cinematic gibberish dazed and confused. And while Lance Henricksen has a wonderfully smooth voice that could probably talk a nun out of her habit, his ‘narration’ here only made things worse. Truly at no point in this movie did I ever understand what the hell it was supposed to be about.

There was this one cool thing however and this is bit of a SPOILER so don’t read on if you really give a damn, but I think that beast that they were keeping in the basement, feeding spare body parts to and extracting it’s blood was supposed to be Satan and eventually Satan gets loose. But not to worry because Detective Russo has a lead pipe and he f**king beats Satan to death with it. And here we are all these years and generations thinking Satan was such a badass. Bitch-ass Satan.

Look, unless you’re on some kind of bizarre mission to see every single Straight to DVD movie that Lance Henricksen has ever made, a mission it looks like I’ve unwittingly signed on to, then you might want to give this Lionsgate licensed piece of horribleness a pass. Not that I’m telling you what to do.