There’s cheap horror, there’s confused horror, and then there’s Naked Evil, a film that feels like it was written on the back of a pub napkin after three pints too many and filmed before the hangover set in. Directed by Stanley Goulder and based on a BBC play (The Obi), it tries to mash voodoo mysticism, police procedural, and student‑hostel melodrama into something resembling a horror story. Instead, it coughs up 90 minutes of solemn gibberish that tastes like flat Guinness and smells faintly of chicken feathers.
The Opening Hex
The movie begins with a poor fellow finding an “obi” on his kitchen table—a bottle stuffed with graveyard dirt and feathers. He freaks out, the bottle smashes, and he’s immediately flung out of a window like he’s just seen his bar tab. That, we’re told, is only the beginning. Spoiler: it’s actually the high point.
From there we meet Father Goodman, a priest who spent fifteen years in Jamaica and has returned with a degree in Obeah Studies and a face that says “I’ve made terrible career choices.” He teams up with Inspector Hollis, the type of British detective who smokes grimly while staring at piles of paperwork, and together they head to a student hostel crawling with Commonwealth students, voodoo paranoia, and acting so wooden termites could set up shop.
Chickens, Students, and Dignam’s Stomachache
Enter Jim Benson (Basil Dignam), the hostel’s headmaster, who spends the film complaining about stomach pains and looking like a man who regrets agreeing to this paycheck gig. He keels over constantly, only to recover in time to fret about more obis. There’s also Dick Alderson (Anthony Ainley, years before he became the Master on Doctor Who), who alternates between being helpful and wandering around like he misplaced his motivation.
The students? Half of them are accused of dark magic, the other half are either dead chickens or in danger of becoming one. Seriously—dead poultry keeps showing up like the movie was sponsored by the British Egg Marketing Board’s evil twin. Everywhere you turn, another bloody cockerel dangles from a tree. It’s less “terrifying omen” and more “the world’s worst KFC promotion.”
The Obi Problem
The “obis” themselves—those bottles of dirt and feathers—get shoved around like sinister paperweights. People find them in liquor cabinets, bedrooms, random hallways. You half expect the movie to pan over to the craft services table and find an obi next to the tea biscuits.
Every time someone smashes one, nothing much happens except that another character screams as if the BBC sound department just dropped a microphone. At one point, Alderson smashes an obi in front of poor Danny, a Jamaican student, who responds by bolting out of the room like the script just told him to get lost. Which, in a way, it did.
Possessions, Exorcisms, and Pure Bollocks
Eventually Benson turns up dead, stabbed with a decorative spear. The police immediately blame Danny, because apparently he’s the only character under 50. But wait! The hostel’s caretaker, Amizan, is also mixed up in voodoo, selling obis to nightclub owners like cursed party favors. He’s found dead too—or is he? Because his body wanders off into the night like it’s late for another movie entirely.
The climax has Father Goodman conducting an exorcism where Amizan’s spirit leaps into Alderson, forcing Ainley to deliver lines in a “scary voice” that sounds less demonic possession and more “bad ventriloquism act.” Goodman shouts about the Devil, Alderson clutches his throat, and the audience clutches their heads.
The final message: evil walks the earth, chicken feathers are terrifying, and if you’re dumb enough to smash a bottle of dirt, someone will throw you out a window.
Production Values? Buried in the Graveyard
Shot in four weeks on a £60,000 budget, the film looks like it was produced for the cost of two packets of crisps and a pint of bitter. Columbia Pictures refused to back it as a color feature, so it limped out as a black‑and‑white B‑movie guaranteed to die on arrival in a decade of Technicolor psychedelia. In America, some genius tried to salvage it by tinting it to looklike color and re‑branding it as Exorcism at Midnight. That’s right—they literally tried to sell the same disaster twice, like reheating last night’s curry and pretending it’s a fresh meal.
Performances of the Damned
The acting ranges from stiff upper lip to outright rigor mortis. Basil Dignam delivers lines about stomach cramps like he’s auditioning for a Pepto‑Bismol commercial. Anthony Ainley, bless him, does his best with dialogue that might as well be written in disappearing ink. Father Goodman (Olaf Pooley) looks perpetually embarrassed, as though he wandered onto set by accident and decided to stay because it was raining outside.
The students, meanwhile, are handled with the kind of tone‑deaf “Commonwealth” stereotyping that makes you want to crawl under the sofa. They’re less characters and more props for the script’s half‑baked voodoo panic.
Final Curse
Naked Evil isn’t scary, isn’t stylish, and isn’t even camp enough to be fun. It’s a black‑and‑white lecture on how not to make a horror film. It promises voodoo terror but delivers nothing more sinister than dead poultry, bottles of dirt, and acting that could raise the dead purely out of secondhand embarrassment.
If you want genuine chills from British cinema, watch The Innocents (1961). If you want fun voodoo camp, try Live and Let Die. If you want to waste 90 minutes staring at the cinematic equivalent of damp laundry, Naked Evil is your hex in a bottle.
Rating: One out of ten exploding chickens. The only real evil here is inflicted on the audience.
