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976 EVIL II: The Astral Factor signifies that it must be time for more phone-philandering madness with that creepy-voiced bloke again.
Here, Robin (Debbie James, who according to Videolog starred in Die Hard 2 the year before but I don’t remember her and the IMDB doesn’t list her either.) is visited by an astral spirit (how inconvenient) – school principal Mr. Grubeck (René Assa) – and she gets to witness all the murders that he commits, but how to tell the cops? Ooh, that’s going to be a tough one so she has to enlist Spike’s (Patrick O’Bryan) help to conquer the bad guy and saved the world again.
However, if all the victims turn out to be anything as ditzy as the first girl who just screams and waits for a fake stalactite on a stage to fall and strike through her heart, then they all deserve to die and be put out of our misery!
“Ok, now I’m gonna do a rabbit.”
Again, a basic 4:3 print with even worse quality than last time as there are plenty of dropouts in the print. The average bitrate is a better 6.48Mb/s and occasionally peaks over 8Mb/s.
The sound is plain stereo, with dialogue a bit on the muffled side sometimes.
“Ok, so I lied about promising never to light my farts again!”
Chapters: Just a mere 8 chapters over the 87-minute running time which isn’t nearly enough.
Languages & Subtitles: English in stereo with no subtitles.
Photo gallery: Again, the sole extra – 10 simple stills from the film, 3 of which appear in this review. Fine to look at once, but not something you’ll go back to.
The main menu has a subtle animation of a blurry arm dripping with blood from the first victim.
“Please let me out. I can make a sequel that WILL work this time!”
976 Evil 2 is an equally-pointless film to sit through but it’s less of a chore if you FFWD through to the murders, of which there aren’t that many, although the man-meets-lorry death is a cool one to pause.
There are a couple of moments which raise the score slightly above that of the first. Firstly, who else should there be to run an out-of-town book store named “Lucifer’s” other than Brigitte Nielsen. Secondly is a scene when one of Robin’s friends ends up appearing in It’s a Wonderful Life, in which James Stewart‘s little girl says something different this time :
- “Every time you hear a bell,
a zombie takes us all to hell!”
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
2 2 3 1 |
| OVERALL | 2 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 87 minutes
Studio: Digital Entertainment
Cat.no: DED 6076
Year: 1991
Released: 1999
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 8
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Fullscreen: 4:3
16:9-enhanced: No
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 5
Director: Jim Wynorski
Producer: Paul Hertzberg
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland and Rhet Topham
Music: Thomas Chase and Steve Rucker
Cast:
Spike: Patrick O’Bryan
Mr. Grubeck: René Assa
Robin: Debbie James
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.