Paul Sharpe (Winston Rekert) is a director whose specialty is commercials. He is married to Jennifer (Patty Talbot) and has a young son, Matthew (Andrew Bednarski). Despite having everything, Paul is dissatisfied with his life and begins to experiment with the phenomena known as astral projection. He was first introduced to it by a woman named Janus (Karen Black). Paul’s psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Meister (Tom Rack) believes it is all nonsense. Paul and Karl have an argument about it and Paul storms off.
That night Karl is found dead. Although the cause of death is labeled as a heart attack, it appears that Karl’s heart burst out of his chest breaking his ribs in the process. Detective Kauffman (John Novak) is assigned to the case.
Paul continues to have his out-of-body experiences. The next person to die is his father-in-law, Bill Pearson (Philip Spensley). The man’s neighbor tells Kauffman that he and Bill saw a ghost a few nights before. Bill said that the spirit looked like his son-in-law, Paul. Kauffman then finds out that Paul had also been a patient of Dr. Meister. Kauffman begins investigating Paul.
Kauffman learns about Janus and her connection to out-of-body experiences. In his investigation he learns about a couple, William and Monica Duval (Michael Sinelnikoff and Lois Maxwell), who claim to have used the phenomenon to transfer their souls to host bodies. Kauffman begins to wonder if the Duvals are behind the murders and are preparing Paul to be one of their host bodies.
As the murders continue, Paul’s son has become aware of the spirit he calls the Blue Man.
“Eternal Evil” AKA “The Blue Man” was released in 1985 and was directed by George Mihalka. It is a Canadian horror film.
I found the movie snail crawlingly slow. A lot of nothing happens except for some dream-like scenes where you never actually see the Blue Man. This would explain the title change from “Blue Man” to “Eternal Evil”. There are a few deaths, but things don’t really happen until the last twenty minutes or so of the movie. Before that it is confusing and the plot is a little muddy, which doesn’t help the pace of the film. It ended up feeling more like a psychosocial thriller than a horror movie.
The main character came off like a whiny entitled white guy. Karen Black, who played a creepy woman called Janus, was correctly cast. I find her to be freakish to begin with and with her frizzled hair she appears to look like the crazy cat lady who is also demonic.
The only real plus to the film was a bit of a twist at the end. If they had at least shown me a blue man, I might have enjoyed the movie more. As it is I only liked the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the film.