Evilspeak (1982)

What is it about Satan that makes film-makers and screenwriters alike return to dip into the fiery pit of Hell time and time again?

Because Satan is evil (duh) and nothing but nothing makes people plunk down their soul-destroying money more than to see the forces of evil put the hurt on good...and win.

Look at The Exorcist. Look at Behind the Door. Look at Behind the Door 2. Look at Holocaust 2000. Look at the Omen of your choice. All of them featured Satan, The Devil, Beelzebub or a minion thereof and their destruction of the Holy Church, youthful innocence, condemned souls and other such extensions of the human condition.

They did it all the time, and made money with it, so why not keep on doing it?

Naturally, there's a problem with this age-old setup: after a while, people were going to get wise to the old "possession" rap and find better more effective ways to guard against it. Fool me once, shame on you - fool me 867,248 times, shame on me.

So it seems that Old Scratch was going to have a much harder time of finding new souls to grab hold of.

...unless he has access to his own Tandy TRS-80.

Director Eric Weston and co-writer Joseph Garofalo realized there was a resource that had not yet been tapped and used to its utmost: computers. And so with a little judicious study and research, they created Evilspeak - a movie that not only spoke to the Exorcist/Omen crowd but also to the "Wired" Magazine crowd.

Not to mention the fact that this was Clint Howard's finest hour.

...hmm? You've never heard of Clint Howard? Oh come on...of course you have. Clint Howard has had more cinematic face time than brother Ron and dad Rance combined. You've seen him, I know: he was the voice of Roo in all the early "Winnie the Pooh" cartoons, the title killer in Ice Cream Man, Johnson in the Austin Powers movies, Kate the Caterer in The Cat in the Hat and if you've seen Rock 'n' Roll High School you remember him as Eaglebauer. Yeah. HIM.

Small wonder that Evilspeak wasn't his first movie, but for a lot of people, it's the one of his movies that is the most memorable.

Shall we review the plot? Oh yes, let's: maladroit military cadet Stanley Coopersmith (Howard) is the textbook example of a complete and utter outcast at West Andover Academy. He continually stumbles over himself, can't do anything right, and is the favored target of abuse and humiliation by cruel classmates. And as if that wasn't enough, Stanley also gets badly treated by his teachers, his coach, the Academy colonel and even from the school reverend (Joseph Cortese)! Good lord; how bad a luck must one have when they're put down by a priest?

One day, Stanley finds a book of Black Mass hidden in the catacombs below the Academy - a book that belonged to the evil medieval Father Esteban (Richard Moll). He translates this evil tome into a computer and finds that not only can he use this PC to perform a digital Black Mass and conjure Satan and other neat stuff but he can also revive the spirit of Esteban himself in order to exact revenge on his many harassers.

Another movie that I didn't mention earlier was Carrie, which Evilspeak resembles more than anything, what with the put-upon outcast that no one likes and is able to harness the powers of Satan to bring about a fitting vengeance for themselves. And where pig's blood figured heavily in Carrie, actual boars figure in our movie here, and on more than one occasion.

What gets me is the fact that EVERYBODY in this movie is down on poor Stanley. He doesn't even get any prerequisite understanding from the resident man of the cloth. And the one cadet who does show some pity for our man Stan just disappears part-way through. Maybe because there wasn't any time in this script to come up with a fleshed-out Amy Irving character.

But yeah; for someone who is yelled at, browbeaten, spanked, punched down, has anything that he loves either taken away from him or destroyed (the scene with a puppy was especially hard to take) and spends nearly every moment of screen time with his face twisted up in pain, confusion, sorrow or anger, Howard makes this his show from beginning to end. It's interesting to watch how he changes from an awkward kid a the beginning into something that is so twisted and nasty at the end that the viewer doesn't fear him as much as they feel bad for him - even when all is said and done.

A word about the ending: I won't say too much about it except that it is one of those sequences of film that makes the viewer either repulsed, overjoyed or appreciative that the makers followed through. And there's a special appearance by The Son of Man's right wrist.

Besides Howard, you'll recognize a lot of people in the cast. We have the aforementioned Cortese (who was also in such movies as Windows, Monsignor, American History X and a whole slew of made-for-TV dealies) and Moll (for whom TV's "Night Court" would be his shining beacon of light outside of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn and many other low-budget Eighties flicks), but also esteemed cowboy actor R.G. Armstrong, character actor extraordinaire Claude Earl Jones (best-remembered as the hick who dies in a hail of dumped grain in Dark Night of the Scarecrow), Don Stark as cadet Bubba (whom I KNOW you know as Bob Pinciotti from "That 70s Show"), lanky Charles Tyner (whom I remember as the dean of Busterburger University in Hamburger: The Motion Picture), ever-versatile Hamilton Camp (past master of cartoon voices and small-but-memorable parts in movies like American Hot Wax, Heaven Can Wait, City Heat and Meatballs II) and Jim Greenleaf as one of the tubbier bullies (who had a short career but was typecast in all of them as the comedy relief fat guy, especially as McDorfus in that paean to arcade games Joysticks).

At least we can agree that Weston's direction is sinister and clear enough to let the nastiness flow in scenes of abject humiliation, sweaty faces, hysterical netherworld-ly attacks and lots of snuffling boars snorting and squealing about almost as much as their victims. And this is a good thing, since you can make out all of the special effects employed and see that they were all put to good use.

In fact, all the effects (both special and makeup) are done so well and to such an effect that there are times throughout Evilspeak that we feel we're witnessing a snuff film. I'm not going to give anything away here but, seeing as I got a version of this film that has just about all of the effects intact, I will go as far as to say that it is all well done and effective, from the first bit of blood to the last (non-)beating heart.

So is Evilspeak a good movie? CAN it be a good movie, what with it being just another walk down Carrie lane only with an MS-DOS as the doorway to Hell? To tell you the truth, it is effective, Howard's Coopersmith elicits sympathy and fear in equal halves and the roles are all done to the hilt; we even have some hysterical high-pitched screams of terror - only this time they are generally all done by the MALES of the cast. Give the girls a break from all that horror movie screaming, you know....

Besides which, this was at one time a proud member of Britain's Video Nasty List for many years because of its excessive gore (which was necessary, methinks, to the story) and the Satanic themes (making this also a favorite for no less than Anton LaVey, the late founder and High Priest of the Church of Satan, bless his heart...), and there were no doubt many protests from concerned parent groups across the country (the good ol' USA, in this case) deriding the teachings of Satan and how they are corrupting the youth and so on...presumably just to keep those groups busy until Silent Night, Deadly Night came out.

Evilspeak delivers the goods for a movie that cost $1 million to make - I'm sure it made back its budget one way or another. Everyone involved seems to have gone on to bigger and better things for the most part and Clint Howard's still out there, making more and move movies (with brother Ronnie's help or without it, doesn't matter). And for all of the controversy and darkness surrounding it, little wonder this is something of an underground hit and anyone who follows this school of film-making (Satansploitation) marks this film as a higher point in such a genre when compared to your Daughters of Satan or Beyond Evil or other lower-budgeted forays into such deviltry. That alone makes it worth your time.

In ending, you may be asking how I can be so sure that Evilspeak made back its budget. Because it earned $400,000 its first week of release. And seeing that its opening week it was only shown in Los Angeles and New York, that's one hell of a profit.

Sorry.