Evil Spawn (1987) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Or maybe it's another one of those grade-z horror movies masterminded by Fred Olen Ray, and issued to DVD under the aegis of his "Night Owl Theater" format.

• There is a brief bonus feature filled with behind-the-scene shots.
• There are some photographs from the first version of this film, from which all the footage has been lost. Fred Olen Ray himself directed a few scenes at the beginning of production, but the special effects guys were changed, Ray left the direction to someone else, and the only evidence of the first version are the photos shown here, from a scene in which Pamela Gilbert was killed by an earlier version of the monster.
• There is a mini-featurette explaining how the unrelated scenes with John Carradine (filmed for another movie!) were worked into the plot.
• There is the Night Owl Theater intro for this movie, and bloopers from same.

Take those elements, stir in a handsome helping of nudity in the film, a little more in the bonus features, and you have an interesting look at how a grade-z movie gets made, as well as a titillating amount of flesh. 

The basic premise is that an aging movie queen takes some dangerous injections in order to restore her youth, with unfortunate consequences. Layered on that is the horror layer, because the injections do more than deform her. They turn her into some kind of insect creature, because the developer of the drug was a doctor who went insane (or something). The final layer is S/F. The doctor got his amazing formula, the serum capable of restoring youth and turning one into an insect monster, by using some microbes from outer space or something. I don't know exactly what was up with that layer, but the beginning of the film has some verbal slides which warn us against bringing back microbes from space and the film portrays some space ships and planets.

Now you're probably wondering why they needed those extra layers. Hell, couldn't you make a decent exploitation film on the premise of an aging movie queen so desperate for youth that she risks all on experimental drugs which eventually turn her into a monster? In fact, couldn't you actually make this a good script with important things to say, ala Sunset Boulevard with a spin? Yes. Of course, this isn't a Cronenberg film and they didn't want to say important things about how modern medical science turns us into dependent monsters, but the producer could have saved money without all the bug-monster effects, so why did they expand the concept? That had me going until I saw the Carradine footage in the special features, and then I realized that they needed something to tie together their basic plot with the Carradine lines, so they got wildly inventive. For marketing reasons, they wanted to be able to list Carradine in the cast, just as Ed Wood wanted to be able to list Lugosi in Plan 9 and other films, so they fit his lines in somehow, dammit!

It is hilarious to watch the trailer after you've seen the film. They show more space footage in the trailer than is actually in the film (no kidding!), and then the words appear: "John Carradine in Evil Spawn". (Carradine is in one brief scene at the beginning of the film.)

Fred Olen Ray was the first of three directors on this film, and I don't think that they actually used any of his footage except the generic Carradine conversation. The final cut was assembled by Kenneth J. Hall, who directed Dr Alien and Nightmare Sisters. If you saw those, this is about at the same level of sophistication, although it takes itself more seriously than Dr Alien. 

This film didn't produce any actors who are likely to take work from Kenneth Branagh, the F/X are laughable, the sound effects aren't co-ordinated right and you won't see any slick production values. In fact, the whole silly mess is narrated - by somebody who's "writing a book about the incident". It's just a grade-z film with a good amount of flesh from some attractive women, but when you see it in the full context, and with all the behind-the-scenes material, it is an excellent look at how and why these films end up the way they do. 

Tuna's comments in yellow: 

Evil Spawn (1987) is a Fred Olen Ray production written and directed by Kenneth J. Hall in his freshman effort. Kenneth came to Hollywood about 10 years too late, as he would have been perfect in exploitation. He loves making horror films, and loves using naked women in doing so. Evil Spawn is no exception. An aging actress starts taking an elixir to reverse the aging  process, and it turns her into a fly monster from time to time. The film was written tongue firmly in cheek, and has some real corn, such as an early scene where a monster tears a kid's arm off at the shoulder, then tries to beat his girlfriend to death with the bloody stump.

The DVD transfer is the pits. While it claims to be re-mastered from  the original camera negative, it looks more like a VHS tape. Many scenes are way over-saturated, some under-saturated, and all are grainy. The beginning is disjointed, and many of the performances are way over the top, but a nude swimming pool scene is top notch. Everyone hates this film, but,  for a low budget horror spoof, it has plenty of bad movie appeal, and is not that bad for a first effort on nearly a zero budget (Hall got $2,000.00 for writing and directing). I will give it a C-, mostly due to it's appeal in the get drunk and goof on it category, and because of the breasts.