Dean Stockwell was a great actor as a child (Kim), teenager (Compulsion), and adult (Blue Velvet, Quantum Leap) but here he's terrible. He plays a mysterious chap who's meant to be charismatic (the script gets characters making several references to his looks and appeal), so much so he cons undergrad Sandra Dee into lending him a copy of the Necronomicon. This is a Bad Thing, apparently, because it enables Stockwell to raise the dead or something. (Peter Fonda was meant to play the lead and he would've been better.)
There are some interesting bits: the novelty of Sandra Dee writhing orgasmically under the thrall of Stockwell; the groovy opening credits (by the same guy who did Three in the Attic); an attack on a friend of Dee's (which results in her clothes being ripped off under way-out visuals).
But there's not nearly enough. Director Dan Haller was an excellent designer for Roger Corman in those Poe films but isn't much as a director (in his defence, this is contemporary not a period story so he doesn't have that to fall back on). It badly lacks atmosphere and there simply aren't the actors to pull it off - not just Stockwell but also Lloyd Bochner and Ed Begley.
The ending hints at Rosemary's Baby but this is nowhere near that league.
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