Equinox Reviews

Four teenagers go to a state forest to look for a missing scientist (played by Fritz Leiber, a noted sci-fi author), where they find a strange book of ancient Persian incantations. Forest ranger Asmodeus (Jack Woods), actually King of the Demons, threatens them with a series of giant monsters (a horned, winged demon, then a blue-faced giant) in an attempt to recover the book. People disappear, castles appear, and a dimensional barrier sucks them in. Told in a disjointed form and frequently confusing, EQUINOX does contain some fine moments. Genuinely weird--more because of circumstance than design--this was an amateur film shot on 16mm in 1967, after which Jack H. Harris saw it and bought the distribution rights in 1968. Keeping the impressive special effects by Jim Danforth and David Allen intact, Harris then added new scenes, which comprise more than half of the final footage. This bizarre little film has gathered quite a cult following over the years, mainly because of extensive coverage in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and the fact that the magazine's editor, Forrest J. Ackerman, supplies the voice heard on a tape recording. On videotape as THE BEAST.