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Evil Come, Evil Go (1972)

Dir: Walt Davis

‘Sister’ Sarah Jane Butler (Cleo O'Hara) is on a mission! Lets all join her…in Lordly verse!
Travelling along, with a Godly song, she seeks out sinners that are doing such wrong.
Fornicators are the evil here and she slits their throats from ear to ear.

“God is love, not sex” she cries, just after someone’s grim demise, and luring lustful men to bed she kills them off after they give her head.
Then one day Sarah just happens to meet, a rich young women who seems so sweet.
Penelope (Sandra Henderson) is this good Samaritan’s name and it turns out she and Sarah are the same.
Mad as a box of stoats they are, Penelope in her tight white knickers and Sarah in her half-cup bra.
“You will help me rid this world of pleasurable sex, and evil men” says Sarah over and over again.

And soon men are lured into their bed, sometimes even women and they too end up dead.
And plenty of blood does flow and flow as on their Holy mission our two ladies doth go….

 

Any film that starts with a quotation from The Bible (“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves”) just has to be a serious and worthy work…Surely?
Nah! This is whacked out Grindhouse movie making with one eye on the sex organs and one eye on the cash draw. God love it.

Sleaze ‘n’ craziness maestro Walt Davis (“Sex Psycho”) has done a wonderfully subversive thing here, mixing out and out prurient Exploitation with a lead character who believe she is as close to God as one can get without actually having to die and don wings.
Sure, we have had ‘mad’ Bible thumpers before (and since) but it’s the pure, out and out Sexploitation on show here that is being weaved around a character whose hypocritical moral stance probably mirrors that of many of the people who hate such films as this that you just have to love.

Sarah is a wonderful Grindhouse/Exploitation creation and the screenplay (also by Walt Davis) gives her many moments to shine, and O’Hara grabs them all with delightful relish.
From the start see how Sarah operates when she gets herself picked up in a bar and promptly guts the poor guy (off screen, but a messy aftermath) for being sinful enough to pick her up in the first place!
A later ‘pick-up‘, that we spend more time with, also gives Sarah some choice moments of Godly mirth. With the guy’s face buried between her legs she promptly starts to hum a Godly refrain, much to the guy‘s distraction;
“Hey! What kind of freak are you? Why are you singing hymns when I’m trying to give you head”?
O’Hara’s arrogant smile is a joy to behold and even when the man utters this sweet remark,
“Why don’t you give me some head, that way your mouth will be full and I won’t have to listen to your yakking”, she never once loses that air of total supremacy over this doomed fool.

Other, non-murderous, highlights are her sermon on a street corner (as she bashes out the Christian standards on her accordion while dressed in a frilly white dress and bonnet) which is delivered in such a way that you could slip the scene into a prime ear John Waters film with no problem.
But Sarah‘s ‘other’ side is soon back on display when we are shown she even tries to scam a free hotdog by charging it to The Lord!
And again her myriad vices are showcased when barmy Penelope offers her a drink of milk, she declines and asks for a straight Scotch (“Even in The Bible they drink wine”)!
Great stuff.

O’Hara also has fun in the (rather clumsily staged and edited it has to be said) murder scenes and her grin of manic, murderous excitement as she repeatedly stabs her victims (“Evil”! Evil”!) is what being a good Grindhouse psycho is all about.

Henderson is given less to do and has a far less showy character as well in the easily manipulated, lonely lesbian that is ‘lady’ Penelope. She plays off O’Hara well though and has a fine moment when Sarah initiates her into the Holy killing spree, “Yes! Yes! I will Sister Sarah”, she’s also not shy about baring all, which is nice.
And both of their characters, despite being so against pleasurable sex, sure do take great pleasure in doing much of it! Although when Penelope has had enough of one guy and calls for her guardian angel of death to rush in Sarah, it has to be said, is rather slow off the mark reacting as she’s taking rather too much interest in the noises of sinful fornication coming through the wall!

Male and female genitals (even a semi-erect penis) are flopped and displayed with great (and delightfully hairy) glee by Davis, sometimes in extreme, labia twitching close-up,.
And although Davis does not go into out and out hardcore like he did with “Sex Psycho”., there are still a few moments where real sex (especially male on female oral) is indeed taking place but without the hardcore close-ups and detail.
One sequence is even mildly erotic (hey, I felt a few un-Godly stirrings) in that open, naturalistic 70’s way. Here Rick Cassidy (sometime porn actor and regular of Davis’s films) plays a randy tenant of Penelope’s and gets down and dirty with a young lady on the patio! Much to the disgust of our ‘Sisters against Sin’.

Although quite bloody at times (with much crimson-smeared bared flesh on display) the violence is not as explicit as the sex. And although there is more bloodshed here than in “Sex Psycho” there is nothing as extreme or gory as that movie’s machete to the neck demise. But once again sex and violence do taboo bed-fellows make so what violence there is seems magnified as a result.

The score (original compositions by Dave Goodman and Jim Wingert) is a blend of stock (classical) music, hymns, warped minimalist noises and even an original song that hysterically sums up the basics of the movie…"Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane, Sister Sarah, you're insane."

Some of the dialogue gets lost at times due to the ropey live sound. And of course the picture looks as rough as quite frankly this sort of film should , but it is yet again another gem of a release (billed with “Hand of Pleasure” and “Terror at Orgy Castle” ) from those good folks at ‘Something Weird Video’

A semi-J-Lo look-a-like of all things (only with less ‘booty’) appears late in the film for a rare moment of boring, non-explicit outdoor sex played out just before the finale which slows the film down to a crawl just as it should be reaching a climax (as it were) and which also leads into a truly bizarre ending (involving a guitar strumming hippie who was been floating in and out of the movie) that quite frankly leaves the viewer with a stiff and unsatisfied feeling!
Perhaps though that is indeed Sister Sarah’s ultimate punishment for all the sinners that have been watching the movie!

The legend that was John Holmes worked as Assistant Director on this crazed slice of Heavenly Humping and that just about sums the entire thing up. Cheap, dirty, fun, camp, sleazy, cheeky and basically a fun ride for fans of the bizarre.