The film depicts an evil scientist's (Dean Jagger) campaign to achieve eternal youth, through synthesizing a drug derived from human pituitary fluid. In extracting the fluid, he creates mindless zombies from the donors. Because the local town residents are in on the plot, to achieve immortality, they help the scientist, by abducting visitors who come through town.[6]
In 1973, director Curtis Hanson, with the pseudonym Edward Collins, shot a film called And God Bless Grandma and Grandpa. Producer Peter S. Traynor wanted to shoot new scenes. Which he did with actor Dean Jagger, in 1974, who played a character named "Dr. Shagetz." It was renamed God Bless Dr. Shagetz. In 1975, a litigation started between Traynor and the film's financial investors. It is rumored that with the name God Bless Dr. Shagetz, it had limited released in 1977. In 1983, a producer named Mardi Rustam, bought the films rights.[7]
The film went into production in 1984 and went through numerous re-writes and re-edits before release in 1987.[3] It is made up of footage of several older films, with major footage coming from the unfinished Dean Jagger film God Bless Dr. Shagetz (1974). When the pieces of the various older films were patched together, there was inclusion of some new footage, including some with Jillian Kesner and nude scenes with Playboy PlaymateLynda Wiesmeier.[8]
Pre spin-off
When beginning work on Evil Town in 1984, director Mardi Rustam liked the story enough to make his own version, which he released as Evils of the Night (1985),[8][9] two years before the release of Evil Town.
Reception
Cavett Binion of All Movie Guide called it a "silly horror film" and noted that it was an assemblage of parts of earlier films, including an unfinished one from the 1970s, and that it was "spiced up with some gratuitous nudity courtesy of former Playboy playmate Lynda Wiesmeier". While remarking that the editor's efforts to maintain continuity were commendable, he concluded that "the end result seems hardly worth the effort".[10]
Release
The film was scheduled for release on June 3, 1987, but due to the high level of anticipation for the movie, many theaters began showing it on the evening of June 2, 1987[citation needed]. It was released in the United States on VHS in November 1987.[11]
^Evils of the Night was shot in June of 1983, but not released until 1985. If Rustam shot "additional scenes" for Evil Town in 1984, he would have been borrowing the concept from his own yet-to-be-released Evils of the Night.
Mick Martin; Marsha Porter (1990). Derrick Bang (ed.). Video Movie Guide 1991 (6, revised ed.). Random House. ISBN978-0-345-36945-1.
