Evilspeak

Evilspeak is an Eighties techno horror supernatural shlockfest about a boy at a military academy invoking demons via an obvious prop home computer. Exploiting both the rising fear of technological innovation and home computing (a fear well-grounded which we still, obviously, live with), it dashes that like a baby's head against the rocks, juxtaposing it against the apprehension of such cultural shifts as heavy metal music, Dungeons and Dragons, and weirdo straight-to-video gory Satanic horror flicks like Evilspeak.

The Eighties hid its horrors and apprehensions beneath the well-clipped hedges and green lawns of Reagan-Era affluence, but, like the crawling colony of bugs in Blue Velvet, all of those good, God-fearing, affluent Republican voters suspected that the infestation lurked just beneath the surface of their lives. (Unlike, say, those Eisenhower-Era folks who thought that American Moral Rightness and Benevolent Hegemony would reign supreme forever, and ever, amen. Vietnam disabused them of that notion.)

Here we take a voyage right from the beginning to 1535, on a sort of dream-like, desolate seaside somewhere I think is supposed to be Spain. Father Estaban (the late Richard Moll, once a mainstay of such malevolent cinematic shenanigans) is a godless heretic who is condemned by some other robed old priest before stripping some Black Mass acolyte down to her bare breasts and then lopping her head off. The head becomes a soccer ball kicked by young Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard, another bad movie weirdo from the era), a poor, sensitive, shlep with rather distinctive facial features that mark him out for bullying by the other cadets of Andover Academy (one of which is curiously obese). Stanley is always getting the what-for from the gang of rich boy snobs, and his only friend is the only black cadet, Kowalski, played by Haywood Nelson from "What's Happening?"

The assembly is rounded out by Colonel Kincaid, played by Charles Tyner, "Sarge," played by R.G. "Louis Vendredi" Armstrong (another bad movie veteran of yore), and the redoubtable Claude Earl Jones, who was in Porkys and who licked Tucker's ear as an incestuous-minded uncle in the toilet bowl Eighties Troma sex comedy Hollywood Zap. Finally, we have the academy chaplain, Jameson, played by Joe Cortese. (I suppose one shouldn't forget the creepy German pseudo-S.S. Man "Hauptmann," played with caricature-like grace by Hamilton Camp.)

The characters are a real rogue's gallery, to say the least.

Coopersmith (the name signifies a blacksmith, which may have some subtle relevance here) goes down below the academy, in the hidden tunnels where torches and candles seem to be always conveniently lit, and finds a hidden Satanic, altar, book, etc. The grimoire is stolen by an evil secretary, but she doesn't make out very good in the end.

Young Coopersmith uses a huge, fake-looking Eighties home computer with hilariously outmoded graphics to invoke the demons and open a dimensional gateway. He gets bullied some more by the jocks (and the one fat guy) on the Academy soccer team and then gets invited to eat steak with a mess hall cook who is huge and greasy, covered seemingly in sweat and baby oil, and walks around wearing only his apron (at least, from the waist up). Gross.

Coopersmith gets his demonic revenge after they murder his puppy. 'Nuff said.

There are several bloody killings, but, don't watch the YouTube version (although I'm embedding it in this review). Watch the one on Archive if you can, or somewhere, else, as the YouTube version has the bold, beautiful, beheadings CENSORED, baby. Wonk, wonk.

Hell and the Home Computer

Satan comes back through a computer. One could posit that our first communication with an extraterrestrial or simply alien intelligence will be through the modern vehicle of Artificial Intelligence. In a sense, AI has ALREADY made that a reality.

In the 1980s, fear of the techno-dystopia we were headed to, and mistrust of technology replacing mankind, led to such films as Tron (1982), and more humble cinematic leavings such as The Dungeonmaster (1984), and The "Bishop of Battle" segment from the movie Nightmares (1983) with Emilio Estevez. The films are all based on the theme of being "sucked into" a computer or video game world (even "The Bishop of Battle," which has Estevez getting trapped in the arcade game "maze"). Evilspeak, on the other hand, has Howard "opening the gateway" to a Satanic force by using his home computer to translate the cursed book. The film uses the technology of the time and slams it up against corny gothic horror and fantasy tropes.

The cinematography and special effects are about what one would expect for the era; the soundtrack is essentially an "evil choirboys" Omen rip-off. The film is entertaining, if only as a cheap, ridiculous, Eighties nostalgia trip. Anton LaVey is said to have liked the film, regarding it as "particularly Satanic."

Apparently, Hell is a Wi-Fi hotspot.