Reviews

This title popped up on youtube. I'm sure it was marketed for its titillating subject, a throwaway "adult" low-bill title. It's actually fairly well made, with decent acting and production values. The story is exactly what you might expect, but it's not bad. Except for the skin, this could be Disney film.

There is some padding in the middle, where we're treated to not one but two full-length songs. Maybe they were giving the drive-in audience a chance to go to the snack bar. Also, being very English and very 1960, it's extra shades of whiteness.

A pretty decent film with good production values and very good acting all around. Probably it's hard to avoid, but the story does suffer from the Hollywood effect - making every movie look like any another movie, since they all need to be sold somehow. In it's favor, 'Meeting Evil' starts out fairly loyal to its source material, and stays on track most of the way, despite some unneeded upping of the conventional stakes, and a couple extra back story complications. These don't really hurt the film, and it's a fairly exciting experience, up until the contemporary Hollywood twistiness at the end, which, though interesting, blunts the point of the Berger novel (at least as regards the main character). It tries to make its own point about evil in everyday life, and might have succeeded were it not for the logical problem it introduces with the Richie character's motivation. Though it's not in the book, I do think the concluding scene is actually pretty good; or it would be, if the viewer can get past the twist that doesn't really fit.

Update: Forgot I wrote this. Anyway, more time has passed, and a recent viewing has put more distance between any expectations I had from the book. I could see it more as its own experience, and that raises my estimation of the film. Give it a go sometime.