It’s A No Brainer

C’s B Movie Reviews (republished with permission)

Evil Ed

Well, if you judge movies by the previews on the tape before the feature presentation, this one was going to be an odd one. It was a preview for the The Horror Shop, some cheesy video club, I think. Here’s a sampling of one of their offerings:
“It’s a movie with a lot of Gore, and I don’t mean Al and Tipper!” – That movie was called The Evil Within I think

They also offered a 100% t-shirt. No, not 100% cotton, just 100% t-shirt, for all we know it could be made from, well, I’m not going to type that in…

Story: Ed (Johan Rudebeck, I think) is a mild-mannered father of two, who also happens to be a film editor promoted to the Splatter and Gore department at some European film company after the previous film editor goes insane and decides to chew on a grenade in his office. As Ed takes the job, the soundtrack becomes distinctly Euro-dance. You might say it’s the requisite Euro-dance song. Combined with the song is mulching from the movie that’s playing in the office. I’m pretty sure there was axe-wielding going on in that one…

Well, as you may have guessed, Ed also goes insane. Quite early in the movie, actually, and the rest of the film concentrates on him rampaging through the streets, homes, hospitals and businesses of Jakobsberg, Sweden.

Yeah, that’s all you’re getting of the story from me. Now, I’ll get to the review. If I had to choose one word for this movie it would be gratuitous. Everything in this movie is gratuitous. Not convinced? Maybe this will help:

This movie contained:
A gratuitous fur-shucking scene (demented film editing scene)
Gratuitous Country Crock & Folgers placement
A Gratuitous Descent into Madness Scene
Gratuitous Limb Hacking
A Gratuitous mutant Tim Curry/James Earl Jones in Padded Cell Scene
Gratuitous Critters posters
A Gratuitous haunted fridge with a Garfield magnet
A Gratuitous evil, cackling, tomato chucking, beer guzzling, bird flipping lizard thing that looked like a slimy castoff from the TV series Dinosaurs with flower pajamas and a Speedy Gonzalez voice that lives in a refrigerator
A Gratuitous minotaur (almost triceratops) in jogging pants
Gratuitous neck-snapping
Gratuitous ‘Neck Bone’s connected to the backbone’ song playing while necks were being snapped
Gratuitous head-dunking (yes, head-dunking)
Gratuitous Brahms Lullaby playing while mauling a delivery guy
Gratuitous flashlight on stuffed bird in the dark with bird noise in background
Gratuitous breakaway plate smashing
Gratuitous severed head basketball
Gratuitous severed head bouncing off someone’s roof and scaring an old lady
A Gratuitous Ginger Spice look alike
A Gratuitous Critters Scene (yes, another one)
Gratuitous Warren G regulating in the psychiatric ward
A Gratuitous galloping insane people scene
Gratuitous phone cord sizzling
Gratuitous Swedish actors trying to do a U.S. Southern Accent
Gratuitous arm shrapnel
You convinced now?

OK, here’s gems from this movie.

Apparently that lizard thing from the refrigerator was named Fritz and its one line of the movie was “Shut the door you nazi or you’re going to die!”

While beating someone’s head on the floor, Ed asks them: “So you like head-banging, eh?”

Yes, Ed is too busy mauling people, that he misses his daughter’s birthday. Oh, I guess this tried to show the human side of Ed … or something …

During an interesting scene in the psychiatric ward at the prison, the alarm is on one minute, back off the next, and then back on again in the next scene. Hmm…

Yes, Ed has his demented manifesto at the end of the movie. It’s, well, it’s interesting…

Here’s some stuff from the credits (that rolled to way-too-chipper music):

screamer, zip head, and severed head effects by Anders Bratas
stabbing weapons by Benny Ihrsen
uzi guns from Lars Yngve Ekstrom

Oh yeah, don’t forget the Corpse Count: 12

Ratings

W – 7/10
– I spent half this movie trying to figure out what was going on, but when I did figure it out, it definitely held my attention. Definitely an interesting look at European horror movies…

HA – 5/10
– Although not really trying to be funny in very many spots, when it does shoot off the occasional one-liner or put the occasional lizard creature in the fridge, it’s pretty funny

UC – 5/10
– This movie was so demented, I couldn’t tell when it was trying to be funny, and when it wasn’t, so I’ll give it the same score as HA

C – 7/10
– Maybe it’s the fact it’s a Swedish movie, but there were definitely some new and strange ways to mulch people. It surely isn’t your garden variety horror movie.

This movie was REALLY STRANGE. And when you consider who that’s coming from, that’s saying a lot. Maybe if I was from Europe, I’d understand it more. As you can see, I think it was an above average B Movie. Let’s call it an A- movie.