Beaver Rape Scene?: Evil Ed (1995)

Evil Ed (1995, Sweden)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Johan Rudebeck, Per Löfberg and Olof Rhodin

No, this isn’t about that young fella in Fright Night (1985). The one who got excited bout' dinner in the oven? No, this is something made at least a decade later. In Sweden!

Welcome to Loose Limbs, A highly successful and disturbingly gory series of slasher flicks chock full of hyped-up sex and gory mutilations of proportions beyond imaginable. Sadly, the company that makes these movies have one problem: the European distributors want the films cut for their release and the last guy who did the editing was fired after he sticks a live grenade into his mouth, killing himself. (...Wait, does "firing" work that way?)

Meet Edward. Before he became Ed. 

So in comes Edward, a mild mannered and clean-cut editor who sincerely enjoys his job. When he’s put in charge of cutting every sex and violent scenes from every Loose Limbs movie made, he begins to see things that are not there such as evil refrigerator gremlins, scantily clad bosoms, and even Satan Himself. But all of this is in his mind and soon everybody else loses their heads, literally, as Ed, after all of that violence, finally gets in touch with his killer instinct and transforms into an unstoppable killing machine with wise-cracks!

Before he was just a head, he was a headbanger

What I find enjoyable in Evil Ed is that it pokes fun at the censor cuts made for hardcore horror/exploitation flicks and satires the morally panicking public (*COUGH*VIDEO NASTY!*COUGH*) and their government’s way of calming them down by blaming everything on movies. At that, Evil Ed gave much respect for the films that inspired people to go beyond the tame and fight the moral outcries of a panic-stricken society, all the while parodying them. Pretty much like how Ed suddenly becomes a parody of pure superman psycho just by viewing all of the violence he had to cut out.

Ironic, though, that the violence from the Loose Limbs flicks were more brutal compared to Ed's massacres but our evil editor's killing sprees were no short entertaining with the murders being extreme without going into the torturous territory, keeping a cartoonish over-the-top grue-humor to it. Sometimes I miss these days of swift yet gory deaths and Evil Ed, by far as a 90s entry, is one of the more inventive and innovative attempts made before the whole teen kill returned with Wes Craven's Scream (1996).

At least she has a good rack...no, I'm kidding, that's just horrible.

Production wise, I dig the blue-tint lighting working a dreadful atmosphere, the gore-effects that are just trippy and awfully messy, and the fast-paced plotting left no scene a total bore. The only downside I can see here is that the comedy may or may not work for everyone, especially those who doesn’t know the movies spoofed or paid tribute to. Other than that, I can’t really see any other defects with this one; I may wish for a better hospital massacre but I’m afraid it might just over-do the whole film’s take on violence.

So, is Evil Ed good? Really good?

I can’t make any promises that everybody will enjoy it. It might be just another senseless bodycount film with no solid plot for some but I did enjoy it as a slasher-comedy. It’s drenched in blood and I’m loving it, and so will any true slasher fans out there.

Bodycount:

1 male stuffs a live grenade into his mouth and decimates his own head

1 female had her hands chopped off with knife and stabbed to death (film within film)

1 male gets a pistol forced into his mouth and got shot (film within film)

1 male stabbed with knife (film within film)

1 female dismembered with cleaver (film within film)

1 male had his neck broken, later cut to bits with a wood saw

1 male bludgeoned repeatedly, later found beheaded

1 male had his head ripped off

1 female punched on the face, presumably killed

1 female strangling and thrown

1 male had his head bludgeoned with slab

1 male electrocuted with live wire

1 female and 3 males presumably killed

1 male machine gunned

1 male used as a human shield and got shot by machine guns

1 male machine gunned

1 male machine gunned

1 male machine gunned in Mexican stand-off

1 male shot apart and had his head blown in half with a shotgun

Total: 22