Evil Come Evil Go

Year releasted: 1972

by Noel Murray
October 5th, 2005

Tagline: "To know her is to love her, and to love her is to die!"

Plot: Cleo O'Hara travels the American Southwest, looking for street corners where she can play "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms" on her accordion while advocating against "pleasurable sex in any form." When she meets sympathetic lesbian Sandra Henderson, O'Hara takes her home, ties her up, strips her naked, and convinces her to join the crusade against "evil men." Together, they lure guys on the make, disembowel them, and save the money they find to finance an evangelical TV show.

Key scenes: One of O'Hara's victims complains that she's "singing hymns while I'm trying to give you head," then grumbles about his child-support payments and gripes, "You women are all alike... yak yak yak or bitch bitch bitch." She carves him up like a pot roast, then uses her lipstick to write, "God is 'love,' not sex" on his motel-room mirror.

Can easily be distinguished by: The grubby look (halfway between snuff film and avant-garde), the draggy pace, the ugly, hairy people, and some of the least convincing simulated sex in softcore history.

Sign that it was made in 1972: When O'Hara sets up shop in front of Grauman's Chinese in Hollywood, the theater is playing What's Up, Doc?, a movie that exists in an entirely different universe from Evil Come Evil Go.

Timeless message: Davis serves it up in his opening Biblical epigraph, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

Memorable quotes: O'Hara is a one-woman Bartlett's, from her insistence "There will be no begattin', 'cept for young'ns" to her explanation of her drink preference: "Even in the Bible, they used wine. So how about some Scotch? Straight." But for bone-chiller fodder, it's hard to beat this O'Hara nugget: "'Vengeance is mine,' sayeth the Lord. But I will help."

Available on DVD from Something Weird Video.