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.

Holocaust 2000 (1977)

The end of the world; we all knew it was coming sooner or later.

And it's certainly happened to us more than once.

We've had The Late Great Planet Earth destroyed by storms, volcanoes, evil scientists, irradiated animals, marauding aliens and even (on more than one occasion) gigantic asteroids.

But what about Satan?

Yeah, that's right; The Devil himself has even tried to destroy our beloved planet. With nuclear energy, no less. Boy, those anti-nuclear protesters missed a bet by not propagandizing THAT tactic.

In the end, however, when it came between the life of Mother Earth and Nuclear Satan, who would come to save us?

Spartacus.

In 1976, Richard Donner's film The Omen was such a damned hit (see what I did there?) that many others wanted to hitch a ride on its flaming coat-tails. And who could blame them; The Omen earned $60 million in the U.S. alone (on a $2.8 million budget) and scared the bejeebers out of everybody. Who wouldn't want to have some of that rub off on their project?

Certainly Alberto De Martino wanted it. As director and co-writer (with Sergio Donati and Michael Robson), Alberto was a veteran of such well-regarded projects as Operation Kid Brother (aka: Operation Double 007) and The Pumaman (aka: The Puma Man), he knew that this particular gravy train wouldn't run forever, so might as well hitch a ride while you can. Which he did.

Better not make it the exact same thing, though, he rightly figured. And so Holocaust 2000 has this for a story:

Rich and powerful industrialist Robert Caine (Kirk Douglas, He of The Chin) supervises the construction of a nuclear power plant near a sacred cave in the Middle East. That'll teach 'em to build a Mosque near Ground Zero, amiright? (I kid! Live and let live! We are the world!)

Once Caine himself blows up the land to start construction, strange things begin to happen – the plant’s computer spouts symbols that a priest (Romolo Valli) interprets as the name of the Anti-Christ. Of course.

Caine's wife is then killed by a terrorist aiming for Caine himself. The murderer's later dying words warn Caine of a horrible prophecy about to be fulfilled. Right.

Caine realizes that the plant has 7 turbines, 10 commutators and 10 control systems which correspond to the 7 heads, 10 horns and 10 crowns of the Beast prophesied by the Book of Revelations. Naturally.

So this could only mean the plant he is building may be capable of triggering a chain reaction of nuclear explosions that would destroy the entire world. There ya go.

Caine also comes to realize that someone close to him may well be the Anti-Christ. Is it his son Angel (Simon Ward)? Is it his new girlfriend Sara (Agostino Belli)? Isn't that always the way?

So with all of that in motion, they certainly make the story busy enough, and there are enough "accidental" deaths of characters to make it seem the right tone for this style of film (Satansploitation, let's call it), what with people getting stabbed by assassins, chop-topped by helicopter blades, sliced in two by sliding glass doors, blown up in planes, even nurses feeding babies with medicine "FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY". It's all horrible and seems to happen for no discernible reason...but hey, we watch enough Satansploitation movies to know who's really behind it, don't we?

These Italian productions definitely have a European sensibility behind them; from the idea of a dream-like flow to the story, the off-balance feel of characters swirling wildly about you, right down to the overall look of the cinematography (by Erico Menczer), which gives one the idea that we're looking at something that could well have been conceived by a Fellini or a Zeffirelli. Or maybe that's a tad of a stretch.

I'm not giving away much when I tell you these types of movies are all absolutely hilarious in their over-the-top presentations, histrionic acting and over-extrapolation of the religious significance in the numbers, dates, personal acts and holier-than-thou predictions and interpretations of what what has come before as compared to what will be.

Certainly Kirk Douglas can do no wrong, acting-wise; jaw clamped tight, eyes steely and determined and still fit and trim enough to do battle with The Forces of Hell, no matter what they throw at him. He certainly comes through as a man forced to question his beliefs, his sanity and who exactly he can believe in the end. Can he even believe in God? Well, he better unless he wants Satan to blow up the world!

I already mentioned Romolo Valli (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) as a monsignor, and he's not the only other big-name in this endeavor. You expect Holocaust 2000 not to roll out big names when The Omen had no qualms about doing the same? Certainly not; they also have Anthony Quayle (Lawrence of Arabia) as a professor, Adolfo Celi (Thunderball) as a doctor and Alexander Knox (Wilson) as another professor, all of whom figure prominently in the proceedings.

Did Holocaust 2000 make money? Who knows? And who cares; this is not a movie that was simply made for profit (cough cough); there was a message in all of this. Several messages, actually, and they all came through with crystal clarity:

Review your Bible before ordering parts for your nuclear facility.

Make sure all of your family members have pulses and brain waves.

Get right into the helicopter.

Make sure you look at every label before you mix their contents into your baby formula.

And perhaps the most important lesson of all...

Don't build nuclear power plants near Jesus' tomb, stupid.

What I can't for the life of me figure out is how, in the instance of Holocaust 2000, anyone could interpret this as a serious endeavor. I know there's a lot of earnest acting and serious platitudes tossed about, but with all the glass rooms, overly-elaborate sets, blinky lights, intense faces and grimacing bad guys, all tossed in at random with one of the most blindingly insane dream sequences even committed to film, if you take Holocaust 2000 seriously, you missed the point.

Which is...?

Kirk Douglas is awesome.

He can do anything.

Overcome any obstacle.

Even Satan.

So rest assured, citizens of planet Earth; we need not fear any evil because Kirk Douglas will vanquish it.

Besides which, have you heard of anyone else being stupid enough to build a nuclear power plant near Jesus' tomb since Kirk and company proved it shouldn't be done?

Exactly.

Now that Holocaust 2000 is officially out on DVD (albeit under the title Rain of Fire), you should watch it and see for yourself just why it is we owe our lives to Kirk Douglas who, all by himself, beat back the Anti-Christ.

Thank you, Kirk. Amen.