Classic Reel: Evil Encounter

 

Year of release: 1983 

Director: Jimi Odumosu 

This classic film was written and directed by Nollywood veteran Jimi Odumosu, who also provided us with the classic crime mini-series, The Fiery Force and the films, Head of State and The Mourning After, several years later. It has been cited as the first Nigerian horror film in English and left a lasting impression after airing on LTV channel in the 80s. Mr Odumosu was Programmes Manager at the time, so we finally know whom to thank for most of the scary stuff we were subjected to back then! 

From the little I could gather, the film crew were very enterprising back then; as a pivotal scene was shot at Atan Cemetery, AT 2 a.m.!!!

The scene, believe it or not, was of a teenage girl’s (then 13-year-old Tina Adewunmi) corpse rising from the bowels of her unknown grave. Scary stuff, no doubt and horror movie fans will want to know more. 

However, it's never going to be re-released on DVD nor uploaded on YouTube or Netflix. The sad reason? A fire at LTV studios destroyed the archive vaults where the film's tapes (and several others) were stored. 

Ha, what a loss!!! 

So what could've been the film's plot? As a writer and long-time cinephile, I'm using  the eerie poster and cemetery scene to work out this possible scenario:

A man is possessed by an entity, hence the 'evil encounter'. Maybe he got drunk one night and desecrated a shrine or a grave as a lark?  Anyway, this entity causes him to have a dual personality, his normal self and a monster which only manifests at night and goes about hunting and murdering people. In a 'Jekyll and Hyde' situation, the 'normal self' has no idea of what he did the following morning, but hears about the ghastly killings. Meanwhile, due to how they died, the victims don't rest easy, eventually rising from their graves. 

Readers... what do you think? 

The only person who can give us answers is Jimi Odumosu himself. 

In the meantime, unless a scriptwriter, producer and director come up with a MUCH-NEEDED remake- where we'll finally know the movie's actual plot,  Evil Encounter is a 'lost film'. 

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