Producer Jack Harris is best known for birthing The Blob in 1958 and sending it forth on its path of gelatinous destruction. But that was not his only nightmare horror spawn of Satan. Tremble mortals! Tremble before—The Equinox!
The Equinox had a slow, sinister journey from the abyss to the big screen. It was first shot as a short by special effects artist and director Dennis Muren on a shoestring budget of about $6500. Originally titled The Equinox: Journey Into the Supernatural, it was picked up for theatrical distribution, at which point Jack Harris came on board. In true horror movie fashion, Harris used his bloody scalpel and lopped off the bit of the title after the colon, leaving just The Equinox. Then he employed film editor Jack Woods to direct some additional footage, padding the movie out to an 82 minute run time.
The final version of the movie retains much of its original indie amateurish clunkiness and charm. The narrative foreshadows, and may have inspired, Sam Raimi's 1981 classic Evil Dead. A bunch of teens go wandering off into the woods, where they find an evil book and are possessed by the devil (here incarnated in a creepy park ranger named Mr. Asmodeus.)
As in Evil Dead, too, much of the joy of the movie is in the special effects. Dennis Muren went on to work on Star Wars and Terminator 2. His effects on Equinox are nowhere near that slick or realistic, but they have a characteristic inventiveness and zest. There is some great claymation animation, including a giant Kong-like ape and a wonderful sequence in which a giant land-squid demolishes a cabin with its enormous tentacles. The highlight is probably a vision of hell featuring red-filters, a convincingly animated skeleton, and black-robed priests walking beside darkened pits. It's a vivid depiction of an alien landscape: you can see why George Lucas was a fan.
Though the acting and plotting in Equinox are both rough, to put it kindly, the movie does have virtues beyond the effects. For science-fiction and fantasy fans, it's a hoot to see author Fritz Leiber show up playing Dr. Arthur Waterman, the geologist who initially discovers the forbidden book. And director Jack Woods is genuinely creepy as Asmodeus, twisting his mouth into a horrible grimace as he assaults Susan (Barbara Hewitt) in a queasily sexualized act of demonic possession.
The film also, somewhat inadvertently, picks up on the dynamics that would make the Blair Witch Project a phenomenon a quarter century later. As in the later film, the character's in Equinox are so incredibly irritating and frustrating you almost start rooting for the Devil to get them. Male lead David (Edward Connell) in particular is insufferably obtuse. Speaking with the patriarchal assurance of a sit-com dad, he treats the increasingly panicked women with blank condescension, even as the evidence of supernatural apocalypse mounts. When the extent of the disaster finally penetrates his hair-do, it is of course, and satisfyingly, far too late.
Oh, and as for that Blob battle: Asmodeus is a flying demon devil creature who can call monsters into being and possess other's minds. But the Blob doesn't have a mind to possess, and dissolves monsters into piles of goo. It's not looking good for the incarnation of evil, here. Even the Devil has to give the Blob his due.