From the beginning city scenes where Robert Culp's character shows his dissatisfaction with the establishment by throwing a TV out a high window (omg it could have smushed somebody) to the funniest orgy you could ever hope to see this movie epitomizes the spirit of the times. I wish I had seen it then it would all have seemed quite sensible and topical. Today it's a marvelous window to the past, Robert Culp wears beads and The Best Nehru jacket and proudly shows his bits during the aforementioned orgy.The haunted house story is incomprehensible ... well okay the whole movie is pretty much impossible to follow but the visuals and the atmosphere make up for much IMHO. As long as you're looking for an odd slice of history or some giggling nostalgia you can like this movie.

This is one of those moments when you try to warn people about losing, perhaps, a good deal of their lives to this slopfest. I watched this "movie" last night in AMC, having nothing better to do. Alas, doing nothing would have been actually better, but I was NOT warned.A Name For Evil starts promising enough, about a bores-out-of-his-skull architect (or something like that) that inherits this wreck of a house, supposedly built during the civil war era. This is supposed to be a haunted house movie, but it suddenly degenerates into somebody's acid trip, when Robert Culp goes out for a walk and jumps into this white horse, goes to a hippie party, gets a blonde chick laid, goes back home, confronts his wife (who believes the guy never left), goes OUT again but this time in his car, goes back to pick up the blond chick, frolic in a pond... then the guy gets back home and kills the wife in a pseudosurrealistic scene, and in comes the credits... uh, forget about the shadows the guy saw at his home, or the tunnel in the basement from where air with enough pneumatic pressure knocks his lantern off his hand...I know some movie makers in the early 70s experimented a lot, but horror movies are pretty much straightforward affairs, so why in the world did the producers of this stinker see the need to change a well known and tried formula? I mean, gosh, the seventies WAS the decade of The Exorcist and The Omen... I do not know, but I guess the producers needed a good platform for the folksy singer that plays the guitar, accompanied by a full orchestra that happens to be invisible... well, lets say I do not think Mr. Culp remembers this stinker with much nostalgia.

***SPOILERS*** Sloppy and confusing haunted house movie that seems to have been spliced together by a bunch of film editors who were high on Johnny Walker Black.Nothing in the film "A Name for Evil" makes any sense including it's "Suprise Ending" which is no surprise at all since like the rest of the movie it predictably makes no sense to those of us watching it. Robert Culp as John Blake looks more confused and disoriented in the film then scared as the owner of "The Major's" place that was left to him by his great-granddaddy "The Major" who was a captain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. There's also a very unemotional scene, on John's part, at the funeral of John's younger brother Moss who was killed during the fighting in the War in Vietnam which has, or seems to have, nothing to do with the movie. At the start of the film "A Name for Evil" we have John quit his job as a big city architect and check out to the Vancouver countryside into his great-granddad "The Major's" place. John wants to get away from the dog-eat-dog world that he's been living in all his adult life thats been burning him out. At first you think that John's wife Joanna, Samantha Eggar, wasn't going with him since she thought he was a bit too hasty in his plans.Later Joanna pops up, like a ghost, at "The Major's" place and together with John they both start to get the place fixed up where they can live in it. John also gets Fats, Mike Lane, the local hotel manager car mechanic cook and all around handyman to have a number of the towns locals to also help fix up "The Major's" place. We later see workmen discover a hidden room in "The Major's" place where'The Major" kept his most secret papers and documents that hasn't been touched for some fifty years. Were never told just what was the reason for them being there in the first place, wasn't anyone interested in finding out what was in them? Later a bunch of John and Joanna's friends stop over at "The Major's" place for the weekend to talk about old times. John, bored with the meaningless chit-chat goes outside and sees "The Major's" white horse, who if alive must have been close to 100 years old. Without a second thought John suddenly jumps on it's back and rides into town as it dumps John inside the local bar. Getting up off the floor John parties with the people there in a drunken orgy! Was there supposed to be some hidden symbolism in this totally senseless scene? Striking up a friendship with local girl Luanna Baxter, Sheila Sullivan, John and Luanna end up both drunk and in bed together the next morning from the all night partying. Going back to "The Major's" with his car, not his horse, John is surprised shocked confused, like all of us watching the movie, and finally outraged by Joanna's accusations of him brutalizing and beating her up the night before! Being that John was with Luanna at the time he tells Joanna that she's nuts for saying what she did about him and that he could prove that he didn't. That truth by spending the night with Luanna was almost as bad, in Joanna's mind, as abusing and beating her. John in a fit of fury drives back to town to get Luanna to prove his innocence which sets up the films "Suprise Ending" that confuses you even more then you were confused already by the movie up till then."A Name for Evil" is both an eyesore and headache to anyone trying to watch and understand just what it's trying to tell you which only those who wrote the script really know for sure..I Think?

In the very beginning of the film, you view a man who walks on the grounds of his home and also looks out of his bedroom windows. This figure of a man vows that no one will live in his home. However, Robert Culp,(John Blake),"The Almost Guys",'04, decides to leave his job in the Big City and go to a home he owns far away from everything. He even threw his TV out the window and wanted to disassociate himself from the world of big business. John Blake takes his beautiful wife Joanna Blake(Samantha Eggar),"The Astronauts's Wife",'99, along with him to enjoy this home in the mountains. Sheila Sullivan(Luanna Baxter),"Hickey & Boggs",'72, plays a very cute and sexy role and goes skinny dipping in a wonderful falls in the mountains. If you love Robert Culp and wish to see his real wife( Sheila Sullivan) at the time of this filming, this is the film for you. The ending of this film will surprise you and make you wonder just what happened!