BA_Harrison Up until yesterday, it was Demon Wind (1990) that held the coveted top spot on my list of most blatant and bloody awful Evil Dead rip-offs, but that pile of dung has now been pushed into second place by Andreas Marfori' s Evil Clutch, a cheap and nasty Italian imitation of Sam Raimi's cult classic so flagrant that it even has the nerve to refer to its demons/monsters as 'the evil dead'!After perhaps the most tedious credits sequence ever committed to film—a seemingly never-ending series of Polaroid snaps with a couple chattering inanely about their travels around Europe on the soundtrack—it's straight into Raimi mode for the first of countless hand-held low-angle tracking shots, which follows a young couple into a barn where they begin to make out. The bloke doesn't seem to be put off too much by the fact his bird is a bit of a minger, but when the gnarly pincer that has been hiding up her snatch tears off his junk, he's clearly wishing that he'd had higher standards.Now, at this point, you're probably thinking to yourself 'Hey! This film actually sounds pretty cool', but trust me, it isn't, because after the 'claw in the cooch', it all goes rapidly downhill: Cindy (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) and Tony (Diego Ribon), the annoying couple who were yakking over the opening credits, make an appearance and spend most of the first half of the film wandering aimlessly around the Alps engaged in further dull conversation, occasionally bumping into a strange man with an electronic voice-box who tells them weird stories, and the woman who owns the vagina with the vice-like grip who turns out to be a witch. Any semblance of a plot vanishes completely.The second half of the film is a little more lively, with quite a lot of cheap-jack gore on display, including crushed hands, an exploding decapitated head, some chainsaw gore and a fish-hook in the face, but I found that no amount of unconvincing severed body parts and bloody wounds could possibly compensate for Marfori's derivative visuals and incomprehensible script, the dreadful acting, dismal lighting, or Cataldi-Tassoni's irritating non-stop hysterical screaming.

Woodyanders American tourist Cindy (cute Coralina C. Tassoni) and her Italian boyfriend Tony (likable Diego Ribon) decide to go on a peaceful and romantic hiking trip in the Alps. Things quickly turn sour when the couple run afoul of sexy, but lethal witch Arva (the alluring Elena Cantarone) and some kind of equally nasty supernatural force that makes the dead come back to vicious shambling life as crusty-faced grunting zombies. Writer/director Andreas Merfori cheerfully eschews basic logic and narrative cohesion in favor of an utterly over-the-top, ridiculous, and hence pretty amusingly atrocious anything-goes free-form story structure which becomes more increasingly absurd and laughable as the flimsy plot shamelessly copies "The Evil Dead" and fumbles toward a predictable anticlimactic "it ain't over yet" conclusion. Moreover, Marfori manages to build a fair amount of reasonably spooky gloom-doom atmosphere in the opening third and pours on the disgusting gore with considerable sicko glee (revolting highlights include Arva castrating a helpless guy with a claw from between her legs, Tony's hands being torn off, a messy decapitation, and a grisly chainsaw carving). The acting is surprisingly decent, with Luciano Crovato easily stealing the show with his gloriously loopy portrayal of Algernoon, a nutty local writer who speaks through an irritating electronic voicebox. Marco Isoli's dynamic and stylish cinematography makes inspired and invigorating frequent use of a madly darting to and fro Steadicam. Adriano M. Vitali's shivery score hits the spine-tingling spot. The dusty'n'desolate underground catacombs setting is genuinely creepy. While this flick suffers from a plodding pace and a meandering narrative (Cindy and Tony spend what seems like an eternity trekking through the woods), it still possesses a certain winningly clunky and pervasive cheesiness that's impossible to either resist or dislike. Entertaining nonsensical tripe.

drhackenstine I'm tired of reading reviews by people who constantly wanna compare this film to other films, and then say this is a step down. Yes, we all have seen The Evil Dead, and if we have seen this trash gore job, we know it's an Evil Dead rip-off. Basically, all low-budget horror films are rip-offs of other better horror films. Sorry. Anyway, Evil Clutch was just re-released on one of those Toxie's Triple Terror DVD sets and I watched it the other night. I saw this before about a decade ago on Cinemax when Cinemax had Troma Sunday Nights, or something like that.This is basic low-budget horror made to appeal to the gore fans. The story is kind of hard to follow and the first half is very boring, filled with long, pandering shots of the location it was filmed on, and endless babble between the oh-so-boring lead couple. The second half is relentless with the gore and violence, it's mean-spirited, nightmarish, ugly, and has people running around screaming, squirting blood, chopping limbs, and acting in a chaotic manner. I enjoyed this film for the fact that all it wanted to get across in the second half is violence and hysteria. The story never adds up but it's an okay view for the gore or '80's horror fan. I must agree with that one guy one here who said it had to have been shot by two directors. Features severed hands, chopped off heads and a scary vagina. Two and a half stars.

Thomas Langlotz First of all I was surprised to see that this film is not one of those typical TROMA-releases. It's an italian production and (sad but true) not one of those splatter-comedies like "Class of Nuk'em High", "The Toxic Avenger" or all the other funny flicks that made TROMA so popular. While watching this film, you won't even have a single chance for a smile. It's completely different from the flicks mentioned above. The story is one of the worst ever and the acting is nothing but amateurish. The only thing this film can offer is gore!!! So, if you're a fan of Ittenbach's "Premutos" or Schnaas' "Violent S***"-Trilogy this one's the right one for you! Decapitation, chainsaws, Zombies...- all that stuff a real gore-fan could expect. If you're not related to this kind of film, you better don't buy or even rent this splatter-flick.