EVIL ED (1995)

DIRECTED BY Anders Jacobsson

SCREENPLAY BY Anders Jacobsson, Goran Lundstrom & Christer Ohlsson

STARRING  Johan Rudebeck as Eddie,  Olof Rhodin as Sam Campbell,  Per Lofberg as Nick, Camela Leierth as Mel,  Dannie Malmer as Zip,  Mikael Kallaanvaara as Tom McClane,  Goran Lundstrom as Bondage Face,  Kelly Tainton as White Demon, Gert Fylking as SWAT Team Leader...and featuring the voice of Bill Moseley.

PLOT - Eddie is a film editor. He is happy and content in his job until one day he's assigned to work on editing an ultaviolent new horror movie - the latest entry in the notorious "Loose Limbs" horror film series.

What he sees onscreen so shocks the mild mannered Eddie that he starts to hallucinate. First he sees characters from the horror film he's working on. They urge him to kill.

Eventually Eddie's mind snaps and he embarks on a full on psychopathic killing spree to rival anything that has been pruned by his editororial scissors. Watching too many horror movies CAN be bad for you...

DIALOUGE  - Sam Campbell  - "And remember, like we say here at the Splatter and Gore Department - "You keep them heads rolling" Y'hear..."

PERFORMANCES  - The late 80's and early to mid 90's where a strange time to be a horror movie fan. In the UK and Europe (I'm not sure of the state of play in the US) film censorship (particularly of the Horror and exploitation genre), seemed to be at fever pitch, you could almost say it was a full on moral panic.

Horror films where cut to shreds by the scissors of the censors, in the worst case they where outright banned. The tabloid press and bored TV news shows looking for a hot story went into a morally outraged meltdown. Police actually raided people's homes and seized and destroyed thier collections of horror movies in scenes chillingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany. People where actually jailed for owning and selling copies of (these days readily available) movies like Child's Play 3 and Reservoir Dogs. They where crazy, senseless and very, very dark days.

The main reason for this madness, for this draconian assault on people's civil liberties ? The age old (and very tired) argument beloved of well meaning self appointed moral guardians everywhere - that horror movies are a "bad influence". That watching them can turn a previously well adjusted, law abiding person into a crazed killer (as opposed to a pre-existing mental illness). I know...utter Bullshit isn't it.

So it's hardly surprising that sooner or later some enterprising and pissed off horror filmmaker would make a movie satirising this ridiculous situation and mindset. In 1995 a bunch of Swedish filmmakers decided to do just that - Evil Ed is the result.

The role of Ed is played by Johan Rudebeck, this being a b-movie black comedy Rudebeck naturally hams it up bigtime, he mugs to the camera and generally acts in a completely unhinged manner but it works. Initially Eddie is shown to be a quiet, mild mannered sort of chap - he's a loving husband and father, he's slightly nerdy, a bit "buttoned down" and loves his job. 

Eddie is assigned the job of editing the latest entry in the "Loose Limbs" horror franchise. Its at this point the hallucinations kick in, presumably caused by the horrors Eddie is witnessing onscreen. From then on Eddie becomes increasingly unhinged as he embarks on his killing spree. He initially accidentally kills his sleazy boss Sam Campbell  (Olof Rhodin) after hallucinating that he's a demon. The first killing could be argued to be in self defence but Eddie develops a taste for it. Firstly he employs slasher movie style killing techniques before eventually going on a gun toting rampage in a hospital where he takes on (and takes down) an entire heavily armed SWAT team.

The satirical implication of all this is clear - if these censors argue that violent movies can turn people violent then how come they themselves (who must watch thousands of violent scenes in an average working week) never turn into crazed psychos ? The fact that they don't speaks volumes for the validity of thier argument. Anyway, Rudebeck is very good and utterly sells the ridiculousness that we see.

The other performances are all fine, if a little one-note. These aren't meant to be fully fleshed out three dimensional characters though so that's fine. We get Olof Rhodin as the aforementioned sleazy boss from hell - Sam Campbell. Per Lofberg as Nick - a film studio worker who survives a nasty encounter with the newly insane Eddie and sort of becomes the movie's hero at the end by taking down Eddie with a shotgun. Theres also Camela Leierth as Nick's girlfriend Mel who Eddie also nearly kills after he hallucinates that she's become a vampire.

As a point of interest - the voice we hear coming from the Loose Limbs movie that Eddie is working on ? That's veteran horror actor Bill Moseley. Otis Driftwood and Choptop himself is in this movie (sort of) - its a nice little touch to have him there and I recognised his voice straight away.

SEX & VIOLENCE - At one point Eddie hallucinates that his elderly next door neighbour is really a hot blonde topless nymphomaniac.

We see plenty of splatter courtesy of clips from the Loose Limbs movie including one scene where an actress gets her foot and arm chainswed off.

We also get the "real" acts of violence committed by the crazed Eddie. At one point he beheads a pair of burglars. This leads to the the most unconvincing severed head ever (which is clearly just the actor sticking his head through a hole in the floor).

From then onwards Eddie beats, stabs, slashes, strangles and blasts his way through swathes of innocent bystanders. Eddie naturally ends up absolutely drenched in gore. He doesn't come off totally unscathed himself and sustains several injuries which only serve to add to his blood soaked appearance.

A nice touch (if you can call something like this "nice") is when Ed shoots the SWAT team's leader. As well as bleeding from the gunshot wound in his stomach he also gets a nosebleed. For some reason this just adds to the realism.

The best is saved till last. A shotgun toting Nick kills Ed by blowing off first his arms and then his scalp. Ed's bloody rag of a scalp flops messily to the floor.

All the gore is really well done and quite convincing, easily one of the highlights of this film.

SFX  - Apart from the excellent gore effects we get some decent looking monsters courtesy of Ed's hallucinations.

Theres the Mummy-like mental patient who first urges Ed to kill.

A rather goofy looking Troll monster that appears in Ed's fridge one night.

A White Demon that reminds me of Tim Curry in Legend.

A very Deadite-esque creature that Eddie imagines a lady doctor turning into.

And finally theres the vampiric Mel.

RATINGS - All in all this is a fairly decent little film. It's satire is spot-on and nicely pricks the pomposity of the subject it tackles. The violence is as OTT and gory as it needs to be.

Theres also some nice little nods to both classic and  80's/90's era horror movies - Eddie's boss Sam Campbell is clearly named after The Evil Dead's Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, one of the doctors at the hospital is Dr West (recalling Dr. Herbert West from the Reanimator movies) and Ed's wife is called Barbara (in honour of Barbara from Night Of The Living Dead I assume, Ed certainly "comes to get her" at one point). I'm sure theres probably even more of these little Easter Eggs scattered throughout the film if you know where to look. These little touches serve to make this film not just a satire but also a love letter to the horror genre. This is a film obviously made by fans for fans.

It's not perfect - theres some dodgy dubbing/sound mixing in places and I really didn't like the "comedy" music that played on the soundtrack during some of the more comedic scenes ("comedy" incidental music is one of my pet hates - I'll decide if somethings funny or not - I don't need "quirky" music telling me it's funny thanks !).

These gripes aside, not a bad effort. 3 and a half "Edcases" out of 5.

ART -