In my piece about the movie House, I detailed the way I chose movies to rent from the video store when I was a kid all the way through to my early twenties. Roam the isles until something popped out at me. Evilspeak was not one of those movies. Remembering back, after I’d actually watched the film, it didn’t have a box cover that seemed interesting to me. A black background with a heavily shadowed half face on one or a TV on a black background with a version of that same face on another. To me that looked rather boring back in the day. And the tagline, ‘Remember the little kid you used to pick on? Well, he’s a big boy now.’ Didn’t help matters any. Seemed either lazy or something from a soft-core porn release in a section of the video store I wasn’t allowed to go into before my teens.

And then the film left my memory. Its didn’t re-enter my film obsessed brain until my late thirties after I saw a documentary on the Video Nasties where the film was mentioned as being on that, then, controversial list. That’s when my ears perked up. Where did I know this title from? It took me a few minutes before I remembered that terribly boring box cover. That film? Okay.

Now for those who don’t know the Video Nasties list was a list of video titles released and then banned in the UK by a conservative government, the Video Recordings Act 1984, and certain religious lobby groups for fear that the indecency of these films would destroy children and burn away the fabric of the British people. It didn’t and it hasn’t. Many of these films would go on to be considered modern or cult classics. It shows that people will bitch about anything they personally don’t like and cloth it in moral, religious or social outrage. This movement actually had filmmakers like Sam Raimi put on trial for their art. These crusaders can seriously fuck off.

So, back to Evilspeak. I went looking for this flick everywhere I could. Hey, it stars Clint Howard. Like I’m not going to watch it. I couldn’t find an old VHS copy, couldn’t find a downloadable copy that wouldn’t kill my computer with a virus, DVDs where not available and streaming services still weren’t thing yet. I just thought it was going to be one of those films that I just wouldn’t be able find in this country. Seriously, why is it so hard to get exploitation or cult films in Australia?

I finally saw it last year. Writing this is 2022, that fabled ‘last year’ was 2021. In the middle of lockdown. I came across it by accident on eBay, a DVD release from 88 Films. I was bought and watched in all its restored gory glory.

Then prologue to the story sees a demonic ritual taking place on a beach a couple of hundred years ago preformed by the evil monk Father Esteban (Richard Moll), complete with a human sacrifice from a willing female follower culminating in her beheading.

The flying head in intercut with an airborne soccer ball as the film jumps to the present day of 1981. Here we meet our protagonist Stanley Coopersmith (played by the always amazing Clint Howard), a cadet at the West Andover Military Academy. Stanley, while intelligent, is a quiet and shy boy, not at all athletic, socially awkward, and an orphan there on a scholarship. And because of these ‘social failings’, Stanley is mercilessly teased and harassed by his fellow students. Stanley is also seen as inept by his instructors and staff alike at the academy and dismissed out of hand as a lost cause. He doesn’t live up to their standards, being short, quiet and poor, they don’t even bother to teach him anything. His treatment at the hands of the so call institution of higher learning and were ‘boys are mouldered into men’, is like a prolonged torture session.

The only people to show Stanley any kindness are fellow student Kowalski (seemingly the only black student at the Academy) and the cook who befriends Stanley. Apart from these to bright points of light in Stanley’s life, it seems the world has it in for me.

This is, for me at least, the most frustrating element of the story. The lengths the other characters in the film go to, to torture Stanley seems almost comically mean. The venom aimed at this hapless boy boarders on the perverse. I mean, how much can these people hate this kid simply for being different? And he is not overly different to other students in the story. It always seemed heavy handed to me the first time I watched the film. But that has lessened over time. Because this is an exploitation kind of horror movie and the antagonists are caricatures rather than characters. I shorthand designed to initiate an emotional response and make you feel for Stanley. You realistically, you don’t have to go far to see this kind of actions and reactions in the real world. So much hate is directed at the outcast from the status quo. It’s in the news every day. I too, have been on the receiving end of such treatment. So, yes, it is heavy handed. But it is justified within the narrative. It gives some context to what happens to Stanley throughout the film.

After Stanley accepts punishment for something he didn’t do simply to keep the peace, he is assigned to clean the basement of the academy’s main building/church. While cleaning up the basement Stanley finds a hidden room that had been walled off centuries ago. The wall not crumbling behind stacked discarded furniture. The room was Father Esteban’s hidden room full of volumes of Satanic rights and rituals and tomes of forgotten and forbidden lore. Also, the evil monk’s personal diary, which Stanley takes with him being fascinated by it. Stanley would use this room as his sanctuary throughout the film. Something the evil Esteban also did. One of the many narrative pairings of these characters in the story.

The diary is in Latin. So, Stanley uses the computers in the academy’s computer lab, and its amazing software of 1981, to translate the book (an element of Evil Dead here). The computer technology presented in the film is the only thing that seems dated in this film. With most of the characters wearing military uniforms, workers uniforms or basic business cloths, the computers are the one visual element in the film that truly reveals it’s age, where as fashion would usually do the trick. And with kind of story being told and retold, it is kind of timeless. But these old school early 1980s PCs hang like a tacky neckless around its neck. But, even taking that into account, the mixing of the supernatural and the ‘computer age’ is a really interesting gimmick that would be explored in later films.

The translating of the diary’s contents releases an evil force into the school (which use to me a monastery) and Esteban’s spirit, which beings to possess Stanley. He even sets up a computer station in the hidden room, via a massively long electrical extension cord, to continue translating the books and later aiding him in performing rituals. And after more harassment and torture at the hands of the staff and students, culminating in the death of a puppy gifted to Stanley by the kindly old cook at the hands of the head bully Bubba (That 70s Show’s Dan Stark), Stanley finally snaps. His wish fulfilment/revenge fantasy is give power and form as the boy that was Stanley becomes a vessels for Father Esteban’s evil.

Stanley goes from just wanting to be left alone at the Academy, to being a most powerful being of nightmares, albeit through supernatural means. The cruel bullies and the indifferent staff get the comeuppance. In the most violent way imaginable. As consumers of stories, we are conditioned to love the underdog because we see ourselves in them, especially when they come out on top. Stanley does indeed achieve a greatness and a power over those who tortured him, but he losses his soul and his humanity in the process. Even the end text after the climax says as much. Stanley, the only survivor of a brutal tragedy, is not catatonic in an asylum. A place it is implied he will stay until he dies.

 For a forgotten film that is over 40 years old, it looks surprisingly good. I’m not just talking about the restoration, but the film itself. The cinematography and set design give a great deal to the story, utilising the locations and sets wonderfully giving a visual sense to Stanley’s journey into hell. And the performances are well executed. You wish the bullies to come to a bad end, especially the main bully Bubba. But it’s the performance of Clint Howard as the put-upon Stanley that is the focus here. And rightly so. He is amazing here. You feel for this character. You believe every emotion emanating from Howard.

While the film takes a while to get going, with almost an hour of set up, the effects once they are shown are well done. But it’s the gory set piece of a climax that gets the most attention in this film. The make-up effects and the SPFX are some of the best you will see in a horror film from this period of the 1980s, and was one of the reasons it was added to the Video Nasties list. And it is so worth the watch, especially if you are a fan of gore effects in horror films. This is worth the price on admission alone.

While not one of my favourites in the genre, it’s well worth a look. As is any film that stars the legend that is Clint Howard. Seriously, why has he never headlined a major studio film?

This story is one for the outcasts, in a genre made for the outcasts.