Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 6:2	Budget Medium

This is part one of a three part discussion on this movie, its sequel and a compare/contrast of the two.

After a pre-credits introduction featuring what appears to be a ritual virgin sacrifice to some sort of creature that is then walled up in a cave, an obnoxious scientist (Richard Hatch) is impatient to get going on an expedition. He gives his guide Dana (Cindy Pena) a hard time about everything including stopping off to let Ranger Chuck (Tim Thomerson) know where they are going. Suspicion is aroused when one of the party who is obviously not a college student knocks out Ranger Chuck. Soon it is revealed that the guys are planning on robbing an ancient site. The girls have their hands tied and are brought along protesting but still providing help in finding the site. Shortly after easily finding the cave and the treasure, the newly freed demon bypasses the guys actually robbing the site and kills Dana. Rats, I liked her. The monster tracks down the other defilers one at a time until it is killed twice (once at the cave and then once at the road) by final girl, Kate (Cindi Braun) and Mike (Frank Ruotolo). Just when it looks like someone beside Kate will survive, Mike is run over by truck.

So this is going to be a three part review: First I will review Unseen Evil as a stand alone, then I will review it's sequel, Alien 3000 as a stand alone and then I will do a contrast/compare of the two films. This is, of course, much more consideration than these two film merit, but there are threads that run through them that I find amusing.

The film is really pretty well done, a bit grainy but generally well lighted. The plot starts out as a standard "rob a grave site, die at the hands of a demon" theme but suddenly out a clear blue sky a spaceship lands and ET drops off a suitcase which morphs into our monster and apparently absorbs the virgin and then kills the guy who tries to save her.

The special effects are about what you would expect for this type of movie from 1999, kind of clunky and video game quality. Years ago when you wanted to save money on a movie, the trick was to make the monster invisible. This let you "show" the monster's presence by having things get pushed around. Actors would frequently grab at nothing and wrestle it to the ground. Unseen Evil grabs on to this philosophy with both hands. At one point final girl's boyfriend determines that the monster can't see in the dark and is homing in on their flashlights. So he recommends turning the lights off to "level the playing field". Yup, the old "Polar bear eating vanilla ice cream in a snowstorm" picture in reverse. Suddenly the screen goes black, but then lightens up enough for you to see them fumbling around.

The movie lurches all over the place. The Yuma creation legend does include four eagles including one named unseen, but they represent the compass points: Black, west; Brown, south; White, north; and Unseen, east. Indian sacrifice? Granted there were a lot of different Native American tribes and rituals, but I never heard of any of them sacrificing anything. Aztec maybe, Yuma no. Extraterrestrial visitations? Sure, why not. ET drops off a suitcase that becomes a demon and guards a few pieces of really clunky looking treasure.

Okay, so we start with a creation myth that does not mention any curses, treasures or demons. Then we go to a sacrifice that seems like it should be related to the initial screen about the four eagles, but instead seems to involve an insect-like creature. When we move to the present we are introduced to a scientist who somehow knows not only where the cave is and that there is treasure there, but that it has not been disturbed. One of his henchmen puts on the gold crown that the sacrifice was wearing and gets visions of visiting aliens. This seems to cover where the monster came from and maybe even why it was walled up in a cave, but why did ET drop it off?

I did love the way that final girl could read the cave carvings. It is a bit hard to say where the original wall was in the cave, but it looks like the monster, treasure and warning were all in the same place. Perhaps had the warning been on the other side of the wall, our heroes would have proceeded with more caution. Still the movie moves along pretty well even if none of it makes any sense. The movie is not terribly ambitious and does not rely on it's mediocre special effects but instead does focus somewhat on character development and plot. Nothing new, but nothing really bad either.

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