Evilspeak (1981)

Poor Clint Howard. It must really be a pain in the package having ultra-high-profile Oscar-winning long-time American sitcom favorite goody-two-shoes talent-hog Ron as a brother. While Big Brother’s off making movies with Russell Crowe and collecting big fat residual checks from Happy Days and his various Imagine Entertainment products, you’re stuck playing insane shlubs in B-movie muck like Ice Cream Man and The Dentist II. And that glory-hoarding older sibling has to rub it in, handing out minor roles in his movies like pity dates (probably at the behest of the rest of the Howard clan) to his balding bro.

Though Clint claims to be content with letting his redheaded relative cop all the limelight while he basks in the dank, dreary coolness of the celebrity afterglow, one always senses a secret angst and/or anger whenever he discusses one Opie Cunningham. It’s not the Gentle Ben or tranya questions that seem to push his buttons, nor does he feel ashamed of such onscreen stinkers as Barb Wire, Carnosaur, or Leprechaun II. But mention the fact that “Ron” is making some big-budget epic about the actual discovery of the meaning of life, and Clint’s goofy gap-toothed smile goes just a little crooked. The glint leaves his eye and a deep-seated seething starts. Suddenly, he’s on the defensive and ducking even the obvious softballs lobbed at him. You just know Clint is an angry wannabe auteur just waiting for the world to recognize his own special gifts. Otherwise, why would he be so convincing as the put-upon orphan who’s the butt of all the jokes at his private military academy in Evilspeak? It’s got to be low-self-esteem sense memory!

Thanks to the do-gooders over at the welfare bureau, newly orphaned Stanley Coopersmith gets the privilege of going to school at the snooty West Andover Military Academy, whose motto is “Never Pick on Someone Your Own Size.” From the moment he arrived on campus, Stanley became the school’s resident scapegoat. All the teachers think he’s a slacker. All the students think he’s a wanker. And because he’s a government sponsored poverty case, he’s treated like an indentured servant (go figure).

Anyway, while cleaning out the basement of the chapel, Stanley stumbles across a couple of things. One is Sarge, an alcoholic arsehole who loves to torment the cadets. The other is a secret passage to an underground lair. Stanley discovers that it is the primeval domain of Esteban, a 15th century defrocked priest and certified Satan worshipper. Since our hero hates how everyone on campus treats him, he decides to call up the powers of Darkness to do his own unholy bidding. Besides, he’s really sick and tired of being called ‘Cooperdick’ all the time.

Hooking up the ultimate instrument of evil—an Apple II—and typing in Latin terms from an ancient manuscript, Stanley soon has the man-goat making down pat. Teachers are impaled on spikes, and crusty-curious old Sarge discovers the ultimate neck massage. But when the jock jokes of the school use Stanley’s pet pooch as a pincushion, all Heck really breaks loose. Stanley completes the CPU sacrifice and before you know it, his fallen-angel avenger has arrived to help him get all Evilspeak on their asses.

You have to acknowledge one thing about Clint’s character, Stanley Coopersmith, in this film. Even though he’s really a minor presence in the everyday running of the school, he has somehow managed to be at or near the core of every issue, both administratively and personally, for most of the staff and student body. Though he is no more portly than most boys, he is ragged on and called fat. Though there are dozens of other nogoodniks around, he seems to be stuck doing all the dirty grunt work. And while he does resemble a wild albino chipmunk with hairline issues, that’s really no excuse to treat him like an animal. He’s the reason why the soccer team is losing, why the school’s reputation is sullied, and why the pigsties still stink.

To West Andover Military Academy, Stanley is the dark cloud on Inspection Day, a Democrat in the White House, and freeze-dried peas in the K-rations. And yet, when mysterious deaths and disappearances start happening, and the once-reliable whipping boy goes missing for hours on end, no one seems the least suspicious. As long as he’s around to be picked on, Stanley has free reign to commune with whomever he wants. So, naturally, a date with the Devil is not so far-fetched.

If you were raised on the hackneyed horror of the late ’70s and ’80s, then Evilspeak will be like paging through the yearbook of Missed Opportunities High School, Class of ’81. This movie has so many good things going for it, that when it finally flops over onto its back and bares its soft, static underbelly, you get a tad perturbed. There is Howard’s unhinged performance, an odd reinterpretation of Carrie as a boy who shops in the husky department at Sears. Then we’ve got the homoerotic shirtlessness of Luca Brazzi, a.k.a. Lenny Montana, the only cafeteria chef at an all-boys school who doesn’t wear a shirt under his apron. R.G. Armstrong’s drunken dope Sarge is a miserable menace that doesn’t hear the numerous pranks and demonic spunk going on around him, but wakes up whenever someone drops a book.

And of course, who could forget, the Satanic Pigs of Hate! That’s right, for no real reason except to have killer porkers in the narrative, Evilspeak employs dozens of Hell’s heinous ham factories to feast on the flesh of infidels. They tear out organs and rip off heads. They chase a naked babe into a shower, giving a whole new meaning to “makin’ bacon in the bathtub.” And when Clint finally figures out the formula for resurrecting the excommunicated priest Esteban (no, not the sunglass-wearing, guitar-shilling infomercial king. That’s a whole other kind of evil), he sends the swine assassins to wipe out the entire soccer team. Let’s face it, this movie should have really been about Beelzebub’s badass blood-and-guts boars, and left all of the bullying boyhood trauma to John Hughes. No amount of the red stuff—and there is plenty here—can make up for what happens to this movie during its second act.

Evilspeak is indeed a film backheavy on gore. Coopersmith spends so much time getting picked on and blamed that you sit back and wait for his persecutors to pay. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait. Indeed, as the entire middle section of the movie meanders around from obvious grabs at sentimentality (the entire cook/puppy portions) to attempts to stay in tune with the demographic (a Miss Heavy Artillery Contest, the aforementioned nude bathroom romp) Evilspeak loses its spark. What started as a standard wish fulfillment/revenge scheme mixed with Satanism flounders with a lack of focus.

Not even the novelty of the computer (back then, about as sci-fi as the butt-kicking androids of I, Robot) conjuring up the Black Mass in easy-to-program PASCAL can save the slide. So when all the grue comes blasting at the screen (to ape a certain Texas Drive-In expert: “Heads roll. Intestines roll. Hearts roll.”), it’s a little too late. Actually, it’s a couple dozen gallons-full too late. With some of the deleted sinew restored in this remaster of the movie, the end elements of iniquity are particularly ooey, gooey, nasty, and fright-flick satisfying. But unless you find a way to entertain yourself until the soft tissue starts soaring, you’ll find Evilspeak as dull as a demonic quilting bee.