Sometime in the 1500’s, Father Lorenzo Esteban (Richard Moll) and his followers were excommunicated and banished from Spain for crimes against the church. Esteban is a Satanist. Undaunted he establishes his own church and builds a chapel. Eventually Esteban was executed but vowed to return and seek his revenge.
Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard) goes to the West Andover Military Academy. Stanley is an outcast and is bullied by students and teachers. Stanley has only one friend at the school, Kowalski (Haywood Nelson). Stanley’s main nemesis at school is fellow cadet, Bubba Caldwell (Don Stark).
Bubba, and his minions, harass Stanley every chance they get. Their bullying often results in Stanley being in trouble. Their latest prank results in Stanley being assigned to clean up the basement of the chapel. In the basement he finds a hidden room that was used by Esteban to hide his books on black magic. Stanley begins reading the books. He comes across one book in Latin. Using one of the school’s computers he begins to translate the book into English. The book contains a ritual for a black mass designed to return Esteban from the dead.
Stanley tries to perform the ritual but is missing a couple key ingredients. He then loses the book. Without the spell book, Stanley is unable to complete the ritual. As he spends more time in the basement he is continuing to be bullied and tortured by his classmates. At least until Stanley completes the mass.
“Evilspeak” was released in 1981 and was directed by Eric Weston. It is an American horror film and part of the revenge style splatter generation of movies.
The film was previously banned in the UK as one of the "Video Nasty" films. The list of video nasties was created during the 1980s. The film was on the list for several years. In 1987 it was reclassified and re-released, however, it now had more than three minutes of video nasty cut from it. In 2004 is became available in both the cut and uncut versions. Why the film landed on the video nasty list is probably due to the excess gore, at least at that time, in conjunction with its satanic themes.
The founder and High priest of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, was a fan of the film and considered it to be very Satanic. It is considered by many to be a male version of the Stephen King film “Carrie”. I’m not sure how accurate that is. Many revenge style moves have a misfit that goes postal at the end. Clint Howard, who plays Stanley Coopersmith the tortured cadet, does a really good job here.
This was a pretty decent slasher style splatter movie. Most of the mayhem happens in the last fifteen minutes of the film but there are punctuations of gore and horror here and there. Criticized for its slow spots, the movie delivers lots of violence and blood in its fast paced and frantic ending. Some of it is a little over-the-top but that just adds to the wild ride. The combination of ancient demons combined with modern day computers gives the movie a nice little updated twist. It’s certainly worth checking out.