Fiend (1980)

directed by Don Dohler
USA
90 minutes
4 out of 5 stars
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Don Dohler is known for being a director with some cult success who made low-budget films with a singular enthusiasm. Fiend is a departure from his other works about yokels running from aliens, but it still maintains a regional, down-to-earth vibe that makes it great. 

I also enjoyed that it's emphasized that the antagonist is a fiend and nothing else. I love the word "fiend". He's not a zombie, he's not a revenant, he's not a vampire or a wraith or any other creature, he is specifically a fiend. And he looks like a fiend, too- he's got a bushy mustache and penchant for dark clothing, he says stuff like "I'm not superstitious, that sort of thing is for children and women", he plays the violin, and his name is "Longfellow". I apologize to the non-fiendish Longfellows out there, but it is just such a dastardly name.

Every actor in this acts like they're in a commercial for a local car dealership or mattress store. I'm trying to find out if the two people playing Marsha and Gary Kender were/are married in real life because the dynamic between them is so sweet and adorable that it felt more genuine than just generic married-couple acting. As a horror movie, this feels unusually relaxed; it's not overly concerned with constant action, and it feels like while evil is definitely present, there's never a point where that evil seems unable to be stopped by regular people who dedicate themselves to eradicating it. The whole apex of the film rests on the testimony of a child, which goes to show how thoroughly this movie avoids making its good guys super-powered.

The special effects in this are also really charming & really make me remember the "animation" part of the term "computer animation". Our friend the fiend glows with red light that looks hand-drawn onto the film reel whenever he's in the middle of his fiendish doings. It reminds me of the electric zaps and energy pulses in Hellraiser that were done with such slapdash DIY-ness that they ended up looking amazing. I don't know if the red glow around Longfellow was done by hand or not but it looks really good. This is one of those films that I think is unironically great even though a lot of people might only be able to enjoy it through a lens of irony. It isn't perfect, but for what it is, including all its raw edges, I liked it a lot.