Evil in Clear River 2004 Horror Movie Review

EVIL IN CLEAR RIVER premiered 1/11/88 on ABC’s Monday Night Movie.


It’s the story of a small Canadian town that’s rocked by controversy and division when one concerned parent (Wagner) dares to challenge a popular high school history teacher (Quaid) who has an Anti-Semitic agenda.


Pete Suvac (he’s also the town’s mayor!) hides behind the Bible while drilling students with revisionist nonsense about the Illuminati, and the Zionists’ control of banks and ultimately the world. They’re also taught that the Holocaust is a hoax, Jews started WWII and they got what was coming to them.


After hearing son Mark (Brown) spout Suvac’s radical views, Kate McKinnon asks the teacher for his sources and receives from him several revolting neo-crazy publications. Kate’s extensive research in 100 other books proves irrefutably that Pete’s ideas are terribly wrong. At first husband Glen (Flynn) is reluctant to get involved, but once he sees the animus his boy harbors for people he’s never even met, Glen comes around to Kate’s point of view.


She shows Mark’s shocking class notes to the school board, which rules that Suvac must stick to guidelines and teach all sides of this issue. Kate wins a Pyrrhic victory, for Suvac uses their “censorship” to advance his skewed way of thinking with an adoring classroom of believers.


Again, Kate shows evidence that Pete still teaches hatred; he’s discharged by the board. Next she campaigns for a vote of “no confidence” against him as mayor. All along, Kate’s efforts have met resistance from other townspeople—now they openly despise her. The public meeting where she introduces a recall vote rocks with hatred and the evil sown not by Kate but by Pete Suvac, yet—she—is the target of nearly everyone’s anger, as Cheshire Cat-grinnng Pete savors it all from his chairman’s seat. The motion is voted down.


A prosecutor working closely with Kate then arrests Pete, and she’s star witness in the first-ever Canadian trial of a man accused of hate crimes.



Related item:

Released the same year as “Clear River,” SCANDAL IN A SMALL TOWN is a similar story of kids being taught revisionist WWII history and a mom (Raquel Welch) who fights against the school’s hatemongering teacher and principal.  (VHS only)



Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.


(6.4) Evil in Clear River (TV-1988) - Lindsay Wagner/Michael Flynn/Thomas Wilson Brown/Gloria Carlin/Randy Quaid