Evil Hill

Though it's a bit tardy to be spoofing Austin Powers, Evil Hill (www.mediatrip.com) — the story of how a naif grew up to be Dr. Evil — is imaginative enough to deserve admission into the fanatic's Man of Mystery pantheon. Set in a town near Bavaria where Dr. Frankenstein would feel right at home, the young Evil, played by scriptwriter Timothy Dowling, is simply a misfit who runs a bookstore and scares everyone but his old pal Number 2 (Blair Hickey, in a decent young-Robert Wagner turn). The duo's plan to sell a cut-rate version of Curious George — ''for one dollar!'' — is diverted when starlet Marilyn Monroe enters the life of Evil, and the ensuing tale of love and pain makes the nascent world conqueror's dark side manifest. Director Ryan Schifrin commendably apes some classic horror scenes, but the pace of the 12-minute short is a tad slow, and it fails to honor one of the key traits of Mike Myers' original bad guy: that he's an homage to spy-movie villains like Goldfinger and Blofeld, not Boris frickin' Karloff. B

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