Evilspeak

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Film: C

 

 

Let’s face it, you know in advance that Eric Weston’s 1981 would-be Occult thriller Evilspeak because it oddly stars Ron Howard’s brother Clint Howard in the lead.  This is not because Clint is such an awful actor, but one who only does cameos in his brother’s films or in B-movies.  This one originally (supposedly) received an X-rating for violence and maybe some nudity.  This is that cut of the film.

 

Howard is the always picked-on Stanley Coopersmith, an outcast constantly picked on by his military school piers.  Faster than you can say Full Metal Jacket, young Stanley takes a “shining” to black magic when his model-T computer starts giving him dark answers to very satanic questions.  It takes almost the whole film, but the evil spirit arrives and all hell breaks loose.  Warner Bros. at the time, hoping for a cheap, quick cash-in, originally distributed the film conjuring up their connection to The Exorcist and capitalize on the new wave of such hits launched by John Carpenter’s Halloween.  It was they who had released Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining the year before, so Warner was trying to corner the market any way they could.

 

Howard captured the “TV innocence” that his brother was so strongly identified with as a child actor and the TV hit Happy Days was still on the air when this film came out.  This did not translate into a hit, but it is very amusing how many taboos of the time it was trying to break.  That will be lost on newer generations who know Ron Howard as a Hollywood producer/director, but for a low-budget film, it is far more competent than many of the big budget films we have seen of late, so it deserves some credit for some ambition.  It is never scary, but is interesting enough in parts and bad enough overall that only Anchor Bay could realize its value and issue it.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image shows its age, but is not totally bad, with a decent print and somewhat consistent color.  The age of the computer video effects cannot be helped.  Cinematographer Irv Goodnoff delivers a typical look of usually dark scenes, even when it is daytime.  The only extras are the trailer, a stills section that includes posters, and an audio commentary by Weston & Howard, joined by crewman Warren Lewis uncredited on the DVD box.  This is a big curio and is good for a few laughs.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo