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Review:Nice, pleasant, and funny, but not earth-shattering. It does a good job of showing the "behind the scenes" world of theater groups and the lives of the actors. The three witches are great- both on- and off-stage. I would assume the movie works wonderfully (lots of apparent inside jokes) if one was involved in theater (which I'm not).
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A: positive

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Review:Depending entirely on your own personal state of mind when watching this, "Christmas Evil" can either turn out to become an ambitious and innovative psychological thriller OR one of the most pathetic and infuriatingly lame holiday-themed slashers ever made. Me, personally, I'm tempted to opt for the latter because I didn't bother to do any research at all and simply anticipated a cheesy and undemanding early 80's slasher with a nutcase in a Santa Clause costume butchering people. Wrong! The movie actually handles about a bloke named Harry Stadling; who's obsessed with Christmas, works in a rubbish toy factory and considers it to be his responsibility to determine on Christmas Eve who deserves presents and who deserves punishment. Harry's issues all started when he witnessed Santa his daddy in a costume obviously caress his mommy's naked legs at a tenderly young age. After that he just developed into a social outcast, much to the irritation of his younger brother, who's bound to snap one (holi)day. I fully understand why certain fans appreciate this slightly eccentric horror movie, but did it really have to be so boring? There are several overlong and seemingly endless parts of the film in which absolutely nothing happens. I can forgive the shortness of gore and outrageous bloodshed, but this movie doesn't even benefice from an unsettling atmosphere or unexpectedly demented plot twists (with the notable exception of the finale, I must admit). Also, I would have taken the concept more seriously if the crazed protagonist would focus himself on lethally punishing the naughty children! He doesn't and exclusively kills misbehaving adults. How are you supposed to take wannabe controversial and original Christmas thriller serious when Santa doesn't even commit one miserable child murder? THAT would have made "Christmas Evil" a classic, whereas now it's just a forgettable and pitiable piece of junk.
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A: negative

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Review:I first heard about this film about 20 years ago when I was a kid in grade school(!), it just so happened that I was thumbing through the encyclopedias in the classroom one day, and under the entry for movies (or cinema, I don't remember), were several stills for different movies from mainstream to experimental, and one of them shown on the page was a still for OffOn. It really intrigued me, since it stood out the most on the page (it was a still from the film of the scene with the eye with other elements superimposed over it).

About 18 or so years later, the public library here where I live had available for checkout the whole 4-DVD set of "Treasures of American Film Archives" released by the National Film Preservation Foundation. So when I was reading the notes on the DVD cases for the set, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that OffOn was on one of the discs. After all these years, I could finally see the film! After viewing it, it slightly wasn't was I was expecting it to be (it tended to be a more organic-looking film, not that that's a bad thing, but I was expecting it to have a more electronic aesthetic), but it was still an impressive film, IMHO, considering the techniques Scott Bartlett used to make the film, including hand-tinting the film itself, and using video equipment for some of the film's scenes (filmed off of a video monitor), giving it a more distressed, lo-res look.

Don't get me wrong, the techniques used in this film were quite ground-breaking for 1972. That's why it's still one of my favorite short/experimental films, and a creative inspiration for me as well...
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A: positive

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Review:this movie was fantastic great movie all through scary as hell. and i mean it freaked me out as much as pulse and IT and the omen etc. but with a great movie comes a crap ending right? RIGHT! this movies ending was pathetic stuff. i mean a ghost turned back time in a chicks house and it thinks now i have done that it means i can call her and itll be the right time cause she thinks it is. right? wrong. my ass! i don't care if the ghost is Satan, it just doesn't happen. its a movie yes but most evil movies or praised movies like this are meant to make sense but it didn't. it just showed us what i just said and people don't think anything of it. can someone please tell me why you all haven't noticed that pathetic part. the movie for me ended in the hospital and that is all. check out number 3 its much more kick ass
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negative