The normal summary for the movie includes that he goes through the ritual to raise some power or something, but the problem is… that takes up 80 minutes of the running time!
Yes, everything important happens in the last 10 minutes. Everything else is just setup. Scene after scene of the protagonist being bullied, the protagonist discovering things, the protagonist slowly taking steps toward achieving satanic power. It’s structured all wrong.
This came out in 1981, when computer visuals were still fairly new. They like using them, and I think they thought they were especially clever or interesting. They come across as especially dated, and a little strange in their understanding of how computers work.
There are weird things. One of the only exciting things to happen during the first 80 minutes is the death of the receptionist. She’s attacked by a bunch of pigs, and torn apart in her bathtub. But… no one seems to notice. It happens the night before the big finale, so maybe there wouldn’t have been time for it to get wedged into the story before the big finish.
There are two notable people in this. First, the lead is Clint Howard. He rarely gets leads, and he’s pretty young here. The other is Charles Tyner, playing the military headmaster. But I know him as Lyman Vunk from Hamburger: The Motion Picture.
I think the pigs are supposed to be boars, but they substitute pigs depending on the shots needed.
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