After Frank LaLoggia completed the film, the production still required another $250,000 to finish its special effects. Effects creator Peter Kuran and his company, Visual Concept Engineering, spent four months completing the elaborate final sequence, and the picture was finally finished in November 1980. When Avco Embassy Pictures acquired it for theatrical release, however, LaLoggia believed the distributor was uneasy about the film's explicitly Catholic and apocalyptic material: the story identifies its teenage protagonist as the Antichrist and builds toward a confrontation involving Lucifer, archangels, crucifixes, and religious visions. Embassy's January 16, 1981 advertising campaign instead emphasized the high-school setting, most conspicuously through a poster depicting a burning school yearbook. LaLoggia later complained that the campaign reduced the film to a youth-oriented horror movie because, in his words, Avco Embassy was 'absolutely terrified' that its religious angles would alienate audiences. The film nevertheless earned about $3 million domestically, though its marketing helped frame a strange religious fantasy as a more conventional teen shocker.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Embassy Sold Fear No Evil as a Teen Horror Movie While Hiding Its Religious Apocalypse
Avco Embassy Pictures and Fear No Evil / 1980s
After Frank LaLoggia completed the film, the production still required another $250,000 to finish its special effects. Effects creator Peter Kuran and his company, Visual Concept Engineering, spent four months completing the elaborate final sequence, and the picture was finally finished in November 1980. When Avco Embassy Pictures acquired it for theatrical release, however, LaLoggia believed the distributor was uneasy about the film's explicitly Catholic and apocalyptic material: the story identifies its teenage protagonist as the Antichrist and builds toward a confrontation involving Lucifer, archangels, crucifixes, and religious visions. Embassy's January 16, 1981 advertising campaign instead emphasized the high-school setting, most conspicuously through a poster depicting a burning school yearbook. LaLoggia later complained that the campaign reduced the film to a youth-oriented horror movie because, in his words, Avco Embassy was 'absolutely terrified' that its religious angles would alienate audiences. The film nevertheless earned about $3 million domestically, though its marketing helped frame a strange religious fantasy as a more conventional teen shocker.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.