THE POWER (1984) **

A student makes fun of a professor’s Aztec knickknack and gets a psychic nose bleed for his trouble.  Later, after the students leave, the classroom fills with multi-colored smoke and an invisible force levitates the professor ten feet in the air and impales him on a flagpole.  Later, a colleague of the professor kills a couple of people to get his hands on a similar Aztec knickknack and pays the price.

We cut to a teenager who has another Aztec knickknack.  (Or is it the same one? I can’t tell, everything in this movie is choppy as fuck.)  He goes to a graveyard with some friends to mess around with a Ouija board.  Folks, there are some things that just aren’t done.  Anyone who brings a Ouija board to a graveyard is just asking for trouble.  Anyone who brings a Ouija board AND a cursed Aztec knickknack to a graveyard has a fucking death wish.  Before long, the Aztec knickknack causes everything in the kid’s room to fly around in a whirlwind.  This understandably freaks him out, so he buries it in the backyard.  

Frightened, the teens contact a tabloid reporter.  Oh good.  Just what this movie needed:  MORE CHARACTERS.  She doesn’t want the story, but her editor pressures her into doing it.  Meanwhile, a LOT of weird shit goes down with the Aztec knickknack, causing even more people to die is bizarre ways.

There might be a great movie lurking somewhere in The Power, but it just has too many characters, inconsequential subplots, and half-baked ideas to really work.  It also doesn’t help that it’s all cobbled together in a nearly schizophrenic manner.  It comes from the team of Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter (who had previously helmed The Dorm that Dripped Blood), who were obviously going for the same dreamlike, anything goes vibe that Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento are known for.  While they don’t pull it off, there are some admittedly bonkers highlights here.

The Power features a handful of atmospheric, oddball set pieces that get your attention.  A caretaker’s death is prolonged and gruesome, and there’s a well-done nightmare scene that could’ve come out of an Elm Street sequel.  These interesting moments almost (but not quite) compensate for the erratic plotting.

None of this successfully gels as the frustrating structure keeps it all from coming together.  That and the fact that there’s no real central characters, but rather a several peripheral ones.  There’s also the general feeling that the movie is making things up as it goes along.  Still, the finale where the possessed guy’s face turns to the consistency of Silly Putty, melts, contorts, and oozes is pretty damned cool.

AKA:  Evil Power.  AKA:  Evil Passage.