I’ve often said, and I maintain
that I’m correct in this, that I have never been what anyone would consider
cool. I don’t say this to be humble or to
be self-effacing or to be hip by being square.
I say it because this has been the accumulation of my experiences in my
life. I am too antiestablishment for establishment
people. I am too establishment for antiestablishment
people. I am too conservative for liberals. I am too liberal for conservatives. I am too smart for the low brows. I am too dumb for the high brows. Hell, I rode a skateboard for a few years and
never even learned to Ollie (yeah, I was that kid). Consequently, it has always been a very rare
thing for me to feel like I truly belong anywhere, and so I’m usually not
comfortable in most public situations (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it). Don’t misunderstand; I don’t think that this makes
me unique in any way, shape, or form (if anything, it should simply make me
average, but our own problems are always bigger and crummier than other people’s,
right?). In fact, I think the vast
majority of us have felt this way at one time or another, and it is precisely
the reason why we love films about underdogs and about outcasts taking revenge
on their tormentors. Even people who
have always seemingly been “on top” enjoy movies like these, because deep, deep
down (cue the Danger: Diabolik
soundtrack) they have insecurities on which these films touch. Plus, the very act of growing up ensures
that, at some point in their youth, damned near everyone has felt less powerful
than someone else. Movies like Eric Weston’s Evilspeak resonate with that ingrained, possibly even buried, crack
in people’s psyches. If you’re human,
you identify on some level with characters like Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard). You probably haven’t gone to the extremes
that he and his classmates do, however, but you understand why these events
transpire.
Lorenzo Esteban (Richard Moll) is your average sixteenth
century heretic who gets drummed out of Spain for turning his flock on to
Satanism and human sacrifices (and who immediately performs a black mass in
protest). Via a pretty clever form cut
we are transported to contemporary California, where the boys of the West
Andover Military Academy have lost yet another soccer match because Stanley
(whom they call “Cooperdick”) is incompetent at the sport (and having nothing
at all to do with their goalie being absolutely awful). Stanley endures the steady stream of threats
and abuse, both emotional and physical, from his classmates and superiors in
equal measure as best he can.
Inevitably, he comes upon the writings of Esteban in the school basement
(maybe sub-basement, but who’s counting?), and, with the help of a purloined
school computer, translates the how-to manual for his occult revenge.
The interesting thing that Evilspeak does is it incorporates the
then-burgeoning world of computers (or at least I personally knew of very few
people who owned a home PC at that time) with the world of occult horror. In this filmic world, as in so many,
technology becomes conflated with evil, even though Stanley’s computer is merely
a tool, a conduit for Esteban, not an active participant in any flagitious
behavior. That said, it becomes a
metaphor (not the most cogent in the way that it’s handled in the film, but
still…) for technology in modern life.
In much the same way that science fiction films of the Fifties and into
the Sixties warned us not to meddle with nature because of the dire results to
be wrought, this film warns us that technology, for as much as it makes certain
things in our lives easier (translating black mass rituals, for example), also
presents us with additional temptations that, if allowed to go unchecked, could
consume our lives. Bring this notion
into the twenty-first century. A great
many people today can’t go even a day without their computers, their
smartphones, and so forth. Rather than
engage in actual human conversations, many kids have abbreviation-loaded chats
(even when sitting inches from the person they’re talking with) where any conflicts
are devoid of actual discomfort because of the disconnect inherent in the
medium. Naturally, this makes neither
texting nor these kids “evil.” But what
it does do is insidiously detaches them from the real world where real people
deal with real emotions and real actions carry real weight. My polemic out of the way, Stanley untethers
from the normative world in a similar way through his interaction with Esteban
in the computer. What starts off for him
as a tool to help with a school project becomes a cookbook for evil, and it
becomes Stanley’s obsession and his downfall.
Bearing in mind my opening
paragraph, I feel that Evilspeak also
posits evil (or alternately Satanism) as being a form of individuality (even
though in this case it’s, you know, bad and leads to things like slaughter,
madness, and such). There are three
people at the academy who don’t traditionally fit in: Stanley, his one friend
Kowalski (Haywood Nelson of What’s Happening fame) who is seemingly
the sole black student at the school, and Jake (Lenny Montana of The
Godfather fame) who is the lowly, shirtless, neckerchieved cook who
befriends Stanley. You could argue that
Sarge (R.G. Armstrong) is in the
same class as Jake, but Sarge was in the military prior to his current state,
and he sides with the others against Stanley, so this makes him an
establishment figure (or at least moreso than it does Jake). All of the other characters are
conformists. The very idea of setting the
film in a military academy explicitly points to this idea. Characters from Colonel Kincaid (Charlie Tyner) to Coach (Claude Earl Jones) to Reverend Jameson
(Joe Cortese) are the ruling
class. They tolerate people like
Kowalski and Jake because they are useful in some way (Jake cooks, and I don’t
know what Kowalski’s saving grace is, but he must have one for the students and
faculty to refrain from punishing him like they do Stanley). For this same reason, they despise
Stanley. Stanley can’t even get out of
his own way, often tripping, dropping his books, and so forth. Whatever he attempts, he flubs. Because Stanley can’t conform (not won’t; he
tries and fails, and this is unacceptable), he is left with no respite from his
abusers than to turn to evil. Under Esteban’s
computerized influence, Stanley finds something that he can do. He distinguishes himself from the others at
the school (even while aligning himself with a drift of pigs [Esteban’s spirit
animal apparently]), and in this distinction he makes himself more powerful
than all of them. For a time.
Evilspeak is the sort of film in which almost nothing happens
between kill scenes (unless you count electro-Esteban messing around with all
kinds of computer-inspired animations and typographic designs). As a result, you find yourself asking
questions you really shouldn’t be asking of a film of this nature and picking
up on the logic gaps and plot holes that run rampant throughout the whole
thing. For example, how do Bubba (Don Stark) and his cohorts find out
about Stanley’s puppy without having seen it or heard about it (since I’m
almost positive neither Jake nor Stanley would have told them)? What school has a bikini pageant (dubbed
“Miss Heavy Artillery,” get it?) for its students, even if it is a military
academy? How did absolutely no one ever
find out about Esteban’s chamber and ancient apothecary, especially Sarge who’s
been sleeping practically on top of it for years? What was the purpose of the scenes with Mrs.
Caldwell (Sue Casey) being escorted
around the campus except to show us that she’s Bubba’s mother (a useless bit of
information that is never paid off or brought up again).
Speaking of characters, the ones in this
movie are completely undeveloped. If
Kowalski and Stanley are such good friends, why do they never hang out
together? The adult bullies are
irrationally cruel and don’t have a sympathetic bone in their bodies. The student bullies are arguably even
worse. Kincaid’s secretary Miss
Friedemeyer (Lynn Hancock) at least
serves the purpose of getting naked during the film, but we still spend an
inordinate amount of time watching her try to pry the medallion off of
Esteban’s journal (assumedly because she thinks it’s either shiny/pretty and/or
worth some money), and we learn nothing about her as a person. Everyone is strictly in this to get to the
big finale (or die beforehand). Jones states in an interview on the
Scream Factory disc that the film is a comedy, and I suppose that’s a good
possibility, because it is so over the top, you can’t take any of it
seriously. However, if it was actually intended
to be funny, I didn’t find much at which to laugh (this seems to be a trend in
my moviegoing experience of later). By
that same token, the mean streak running through the film would make any
intentional laughs uneasy. The film is still
interesting as a curiosity, and there are some standout segments (Miss Friedemeyer,
I’m looking at you), but its deficiencies and that the filmmakers allow the
audience the free time to ponder its deficiencies really drag it down.
MVT: The build up to
Stanley’s vengeance is the name of the game, and it is long and grueling. The filmmakers put the cherry on top with the
final insult, and I have to admit, by that point I wanted all of these pricks
dead, too.
Make or Break: The finale
cuts loose in a big way, and it is oh-so-satisfying watching these jerks get
their gruesome comeuppance.
Incidentally, the moment with the crucifix in the chapel scared the
ever-loving shit out of me as a child.
Score: 6/10
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