Evilspeak (1981)

Director: Eric Weston
Banned | 1h 37min | Horror

During the early 1980s, primitive home computers were presented as having almost limitless capacities. You remember the ones: green text on a black screen with the kind of graphics that made Ceefax seem positively futuristic. Whether it was kids embroiled in high-tech nuclear war (War Games), jealous operating systems (Electric Dreams), or adolescents of a hornier persuasion manufacturing beautiful women in their bedrooms (Weird Science), computers were God-like in their powers. With only a modicum of tech skills, a keyboard and a tray of floppy discs, average schmoes were able to redefine the laws of physics seemingly at will.

Not content with mortal acts of cod-modernity, the writers of controversial tech-horror Evilspeak went just that little bit further. Not only were these technological relics capable of giving birth to ludicrously hot, fully-developed women, they were designed to accommodate satanic black magic, acting as a conduit for malevolent spirits looking for bloodthirsty vengeance centuries in the making. If computers were strange and alien to Reagan-era parents tasked with restoring American family values, just think what movies like this must have done for their reputation. The future of technological advancement may have been bright as we raced towards a new digital age, but in the movies computers were little more than a convenient plot device made infallible by a generation who understood very little about them.

Banned in the UK as one of 72 ‘Video Nasties’ following the Obscene Publications Act of 1984, Evilspeak stars cult horror figure Clint Howard in an early big screen role, and, as is typical for an actor who would become synonymous with the weird and downright creepy, he proves central to the film’s peculiar appeal. Though only 21 at the time, Howard was already something of a veteran having spent the majority of his formative years as a star of the small screen (he even voiced the infant elephant in Disney’s 1967 adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book), though he was still something of a greenhorn as an adult lead. Not that it mattered in the world of horror. Aesthetically, Howard was the kind of misshapen cookie who proves essential to a movie that sees a shy kid transformed into a harbinger of otherworldly evil. He just has that aura about him.

Howard has made an impressive career out of his peculiar visage, his goofy mannerisms and distinct features seemingly made for the horror genre. One look at him is enough to send shivers up anyone’s spine given the right context, just ask the unfortunate lady who happened upon Howard one evening. The actor spoke of a real-life incident that occurred during the making of Evilspeak that may or may not surprise you. Having left the set still in his bloodied costume, Howard pulled up at some traffic lights and, unaware of his appearance, casually smiled at a woman who had begun staring at him, leading her to desperately lock every door of her car and wait impatiently for the lights to change. Imagine a blood-spattered Clint Howard smiling at you on a desolate road in the dead of night. Can you blame her for having such an hysterical reaction?

Here, Howard plays bumbling military school student Stanley Coopersmith, an orphan pushed into the arms of Satan thanks to a group of unlikely bullies who are beset on the usual gang-led torture. More dubious are a group of teachers who promote that bullying for the good of the school soccer team, the oppressive nature of military training damning him to a life of unreserved torture. To be fair, those responsible probably needed the back-up. When it comes to American High School movies — which is what this begins as — our protagonist’s tormentors have to be right up there with the biggest pussies ever cast in the role of bullies. Not one of them looks like they could fight their way out of a wet paper bag — though the ringleader’s penchant for sacrificing sweet little puppies in the school’s incongruous catacombs proves somewhat disconcerting. The things we do when we’re loaded!

While cleaning the parish cellar, Coopersmith, creatively dubbed Cooperdick, stumbles upon the resting place of a centuries-old satanic worshipper named Esteban, a former missionary priest who became a devotee of Satan. This is a seemingly endless space of Gothic masonry that no one else on campus seems to be aware of, despite the fact that the quarters of the drunken janitor are right next door. When a sultry secretary steals Cooperdick’s – sorry, Coopersmith’s – book of black magic after being drawn to its alluring emblem, the oppressed youngster uses the school’s shiny Apple II computer to decipher the rest of the puzzle, and when his innocent pup is ruthlessly slaughtered, our goofy-looking lead is pushed over the edge, unleashing a long-dormant evil that gives him the power to enact vengeance on his lousy aggressors and then some.

At the time, the primitive digital effects on show were probably enough to pacify audiences, and though Coopersmith is too bumbling a character to truly invest in, Evilspeak is a relatively ambitious horror outing that proves more interesting than the majority of derivative productions flooding the pre-certificate home video market. It has the same old bullied kid set-up, but all kinds of crazy shit transpires as we near the movie’s infamous final act, not least sexpot Lynn Hancock’s death-by-wild boar, one of the few scenes that had the film banished to commercial purgatory as moral panic ran roughshod over the industry. An extended cut of the scene, one that was purportedly even more graphic, didn’t make the final uncut version released years later, Howard and Director Eric Weston believing that the footage is likely lost forever. It’s such a shame when that happens.

Even so, you’d have to be pretty timid to be disturbed by a movie of Evilspeak’s cornball presentation; compared with some of the dead-eyed, cynical slashers banned along with it, this is about as realistic as a Mexican daytime melodrama entering its long-overdue final episode. It’s not alone in that regard. In an era when obscenely violent movies qualify for a 15 rating on the regular, the days of video nasty overindulgence seem somewhat quaint, very few, if any ‘nasties’ justifying their too hot for release stigma. Of course, those were different times, and the film is fairly graphic when it finally decides to up the tempo, brutal decapitations and still-beating heart extractions just a sample of the bloody delights on display, but ultimately the movie would offend for altogether different reasons.

Those reasons, as I’m sure many of you have guessed, all centre on the film’s rather indelicate handling of religious themes. I’m not religious myself, which may explain my immunity to the film’s more contentious scenes, but according to The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorised Biography of Anton LaVey, others were rather impressed by the movie’s satanic legitimacy, namely LaVey himself, an expert on the occult who had an unhealthy fascination with all things antichrist. The late founder and High priest of the Church of Satan, LaVay admitted to being a huge fan of the film’s sacrilegious content, which he found to be rather authentic in the realms of Satanism. Whatever the hell that means.

Those more interested with heaven and the word of god were equally convinced by the power of Evilspeak; not by the movie itself, but by one of its locations. In an overdramatic act that proves scarier than anything LaVey had to say, according to the movie’s DVD commentary, the dilapidated church superficially renovated for the shoot confused a resident priest to such an extent that he collapsed on his knees and prayed to God, presuming that the new décor was an act beyond the powers of mere mortals. Even more frightening, the church was burnt to the ground three days later. I just hope he’s not in a confessional box somewhere dishing out practical advice for single mothers.

Until Evilspeak‘s rather shocking climax, you’re kind of wondering what all the fuss is about save for the movie’s abrupt opening kill. For the most part it felt like a second-rate TV drama that could just as easily have been heading towards a mawkish, apple pie resolution, but boy was I off the mark! It would be almost a quarter of a century before Evilspeak was deemed worthy of public consumption, thanks to the kind of blasphemous finale that would have had Weston burnt at the stake in some quarters, with text images of the Black Mass and a series of sacrilegious practical effects that incorporate satanic rituals, religious iconography and a startling church-bound massacre instigated by an image of God himself. What on Earth were they smoking?

Coopersmith’s vengeful warpath, which includes the gruesome slaying of the church chaplain, is crucially without remorse, his role as a loner let loose on a school of teenagers proving unsettling viewing in a post spree-killer climate of high school violence. “We didn’t really understand the nature of the film until after it came out,” claimed the real-life Father Alberic Smith, who was in charge of St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, an historically catholic institution which oddly greenlighted location shoots despite Evilspeak‘s overtly sacrilegious nature. “It had lots of promise and the script looked okay, and several of us read that. But they kept adding [to the script].” A severely underhanded approach, but if you’re a low-budget filmmaker looking to get noticed, you can do worse than a transparent knock-off of Carrie‘s iconic finale, and nothing ruffles the feathers like a little blasphemy. In those terms, Weston procured the Holy Grail of censorship infamy. May God have mercy on us all.

Holy Hell!

Evilspeak‘s batshit finale certainly lives up to its religious-based infamy, one particular death taking the communal wafer.

Finally recruiting the help of Satan for the kind of viscera-strewn act of vengeance that horror fans pay to see, a levitating Coopersmith hovers along the parish isles holding Esteban’s sacrificial sword, striking down with such bludgeoning force that his victim’s head explodes like a blood-filled balloon.

Ouch!

A Dog’s Dinner

They say kids can be cruel, high school kids even crueller, but nothing will prepare you for Evilspeak‘s lousy act of animal cruelty, which plunges teenage hi-jinks to unprecedented depths.

Stumbling upon Coopersmith’s pet puppy during an after school piss-up, Bubba (Don Stark) and his troublesome cronies offer the poor critter up for sacrifice following an Apple II’s plea for consecrated blood.

The next day they resume college life as usual, without even the slightest qualm regarding Coopersmith’s secret cauldron of the occult or their gang leader’s serial killer tendencies.

I guess folk were tougher back then.

Hell Toupee

According to a 2017 interview with the movie’s star, an already balding Howard was made to pay for his own toupee by producers looking to save a buck.

Choice Dialogue

Worked to the bone by the parish priest, Coopersmith is reduced to scraps when he is finally granted permission to go to the canteen for dinner. Taking pity on him, canteen chef, Jake (Lenny Montana), fries him up a juicy steak and gets to knowing a little more about the pudgy little urchin hovering around his quarters.

Jake: You sure your mother and father didn’t send you here just to get you out of the way?

Coopersmith: My mom and dad were killed in an automobile accident.

Jake: You should have told me sooner. I would have given you an extra lump of mashed potatoes.

If you can get past the slow-building goofiness of the movie’s first act, ‘s outrageous finale is definitely worth sticking around for, proving a novel entry in the notorious ‘Video Nasties‘ list. If, however, you’re a fundamentalist Christian who believes that anything blasphemous is enough to see you banished to hell for all eternity, I suggest you steer clear of this one. You have been warned!

Edison Smith