31 Nights of Halloween Horror part 27 - Evil Ed

Evil Ed
93 mins.
Dir. Anders Jacobsson
1995/Sweden

Evil Ed is a gore drenched black comedy of a film satirizing the Swedish film board and how they censored blood and nudity in Europe from 1911 until 1996.

Ed, before he becomes evil, works for a film company called European Distribution.  He spends his days editing boring ass black and white art films.  When the Splatter and Gore department of European Dist. purchases all eight of the film series Loose Limbs, they require Ed's assistance in editing out all the gore and sex scenes in the film, which there is a lot of.  Producer Sam Campbell, a nod to Evil Dead's Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, which there are a few of in this movie, including the title, sets Ed up in a house that we can work by himself.

Ed begins editing the films and as we watch the scenes he is cutting he soon begins to hallucinate thinking he is seeing scenes of gore and sex in every day life.  Eventually all the onscreen violence takes its toll and Ed snaps.  He soon goes on a murderous killing spree, hacking off heads and limbs of anyone that comes in his path.

This sounds like a great fun premise for a movie right?  And by every right this should be a cult hit on par with Dead Alive.  So how come you never heard off it? Sadly because it fails on too many levels to be the movie it needs to be to reach such a status.  Every actor in the movie's lines are dubbed over, making this all extremely distracting and much more goofy then it should be.  I would have much rather seen a subtitled version of this movie, but I don't know if one exists.  Secondly all the characters are extremely stereotyped and once Ed becomes Evil Ed, he does nothing but spout out the worst one liners.  If Freddy Krueger and Arnold Schwarzenegger had a love child, even this kid would cringe in the stupidity of the dialogue in this movie.  And then there is the gore, while there a lot of gore and it is nice to see, sadly it is just not enough to make this movie memorable.  Coming out three years after Dead Alive, you kind of know what you are up against and it really needed to go that extra mile to stand apart.

By every right I should like this movie, but it really misses its mark with me for some strange reason.  It is like the Nightmare Before Christmas of gore films for me.  I should love Nightmare Before Christmas, it is all about Halloween and has cool animation, but for whatever reason I just can't get into that movie.  It pushes no buttons for me.  Evil Ed is the same way.  If you like movies on a Troma level, (which I can not stand) you may enjoy this one.  And that is not to say I don't enjoy gory black comedies.  I love Dead Alive, I was a fan of Evil Aliens and Black Sheep as well.  But sadly Evil Ed to me misses the mark and this is my second viewing of the film.  I picked up the blu ray thinking, it has been awhile maybe my tastes have changed or I missed something in the initial viewing.  Nope, still rubbish.  Even at 93 minutes the movie seems to carry on too long.  But then again the plot is so simple how much can you extend the story before it just repeats itself.  And what makes him get super strength when he becomes Evil Ed?  When Evil Ed is institutionalized towards the end of the movie, there he is in a showdown with a S.W.A.T.team.  He takes them all out while these trained soldiers can't get one hit on a guy who is standing right out in the open.  I don't know, the stupid humor is just lost on me and not even the gore can save this film.

And what the hell is up with all the blue lights in this movie?  Was this filmed at Dario Argento's house.  It's like no one wanted to turn on the lights in any room they were in.  More fail.  Now I am just angry.