“Central to the effect and fascination of horror films is their fulfillment of our nightmare wish to smash the norms that oppress us and which our moral conditioning teaches us to revere.”
–Robin Wood, “Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan”
Aside from housing the consummate acting talents of a very young Clint Howard in his first starring role, Eric Weston’s gem of a production, Evilspeak, deserves recognition, not because it is classified as one of the notorious Video Nasties, but that it steadfastly challenges, not only cinematic and social convention, but also its audience at most every turn as it assiduously examines morality in a manner which would make Friedrich Nietzsche envious.
Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard) is an orphaned, ostracized cadet at the West Andover Military Academy. When he discovers a book of black magic written in Latin, he utilizes a translation program on a computer in study hall in order to decipher the 16th century text, revealing Black Mass Rites. After performing an incantation, he brings forth Estaban (Richard Moll), an exiled Satanic leader from millennia past, who proceeds to avenge the wrongs committed upon his present-day master.
Undoubtedly, in the wake of excessive, visceral gore and/or nudity, Evilspeak is unique in that it is one of the few films to be banned and subsequently listed as a Video Nasty on purely philosophical grounds. Ironically, this is the brunt of Evilspeak’s power, in that it refreshingly, single-handedly serves as a counter to the whole of the Hays Era of cinema as it unabashedly basks in its antagonist, Satan, who is not only cast as a Nietzschian liberator (we are even granted a line “Thus Spake [Zarathustra]”), but permits him to be a victor against the forces of the socially recognized notions of Good. Of course, an off-screen animal sacrifice; the deduction that “Satan must be God”; three individuals being eaten alive by rapid, demonic razorbacks; and the projection–through a priest’s head (Joseph Cortese)–of one of the nails used to crucify Christ undeniably helped the Director of Public Prosecutions pass the verdict that the marketing of Weston’s film should be restrained as much possible. Ironically, this is also one of the premises found within Evilspeak: Socially questionable material can be made into art.
Admirably developed and competently paced, Weston gives us Stanley, a character so frail and good natured that the audience is all but forced to sympathize with him, even when he consents to conducting a Black Mass, in that it is obvious that the impetus for his actions is based solely upon his desire to find someone who will not mock, belittle, or taunt him. As such, when our anti-hero’s plight arrives at its cathartic hilt, in lieu of the fact that Stanley is aligned with Satan, the audience has no qualms with urging Weston’s protagonist on, as we proceed to root for his victory.
Weston not only presents us with an iconoclastic revenge plot, but provides his audience with ample amounts of social criticism and satire throughout his narrative. Evilspeak is one of the earliest films to posit what, at first, appears to be a Heideggerian apprehension and dread of ensuing technology as Stanley’s computer directs the cadet in the Rites of the Black Mass. Though not as successful as the director might have hoped, the execution of said motif is nonetheless extremely poignant in its symbolic alignment. However, by the film’s finale, we are forced to question Weston’s technological stance in that Stanley’s computer aided in the young exile’s liberation.
Astutely, Weston juxtaposes his theme of emancipation with the subservience that a military hierarchy demands of its members. Impenitently, we are guests to an on-campus beauty pageant, for which its all-male audience stares animalistically on, thoughts of rape all but present in each members’ eyes, as the “Miss Heavy Artillery” crown is awarded to one of its three contestants. The audience members–which are comprised of tyrannical teachers who possess the same, and oftentimes less, moral fiber than their incompetent, callous students (which Weston poignantly reminds us will become tomorrow’s military)–display no pride or concern outside of potential self-aggrandizement. Interestingly, Weston does not content himself with merely providing absolute, stock characterizations, but rather complete psychological profiles: We watch as the leader of the student body, Bubba (Don Stark), succumbs to peer pressure as he slaughters Stanley’s puppy. The camera then lingers upon the teenager’s face as the epiphany of the weight of what he has committed becomes readily apparent while his inferiority complex nonetheless attempts to veil his guilt. As a consequence, not only are we readily identifying with Stanley by the film’s epilogue, but we are demanding vengeance upon the lost populace that is West Andover as it continues to hypocritically deposit its “Might makes Right” philosophy upon any and everyone in the name of God and Nation.
It is daunting to think that a film debut could convince its audience to–not only to ally itself with Satan (albeit metaphorically)–but, in so doing, reconsider what we deem to be moralistic. Evilspeak does just that by masterfully casting standardized mores and ethics in a such a light that is compellingly refutes the audience’s popularized ideals of God, Nationalism, and the Military by presenting such as oppressive, totalitarian, and overtly condemnable. Perhaps the Director of Public Prosecutions felt that Eric Weston’s film was a threat to socially acceptable ideals but, truth be told, more plausibly suppressed the feature on grounds that Evilspeak, not only glorified Satan, but permitted the Dark Prince to prevail at the end. Fortunately, we are now able to view Weston’s cinematic tour de force without the intrusion of–however ironic given the film’s premise and philosophy–an overseeing panel of aesthetic legislators.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with Director David DeFalco (Chaos) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Nathan Baesel (Behind the Mask: ROLV) - January 22, 2015
- An Interview with Bentley Little - January 22, 2015
- So You Want to Be a Movie Critic, Heh? - January 22, 2015
- Fearful Meditations: An Annotated Bibliography of Studies in Horror Cinema - January 22, 2015
- I Can’t Discuss Glen Morgan’s New Film, [Censored] [Censored], Because Liberty Counsel Says It’s Rude: Race, Religious Tolerance, Ethics, and Aesthetics and the 21st Century Holiday Horror Film - January 22, 2015
- Roger Ebert’s Bloody Ax: An Examination of the Film Critic’s Elitist Dismissal of the Horror Film by Michael “Egregious” Gurnow - January 22, 2015
- Defending the King: An Examination of Academia’s Reaction to Stephen King Being Awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - January 22, 2015
- Zarathustra . . . Cthulhu . Meursault: Existential Futility in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” - January 22, 2015
- The Evil - January 18, 2015
