Thursday, October 19, 2023

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 19: Evilspeak (1981)

Is Evilspeak a shockingly prescient story about the forthcoming dangers of personal computers and the Internet? Or an all male Carrie rip-off with killer pigs instead of pig's blood?

OK just kidding, it's totally a male rip-off of Carrie. The movie even begins with a high school outcast being tormented during a practice game of soccer, and then dealing with even more teasing in the locker room after the game. Clint Howard is the outcast, a dorky orphan named Stanley Coopersmith who attends a military school built on top of an ancient Satanic temple, as those places usually are. He decides to use his computer skills to translate an ancient Satanic text, and all hell breaks loose. Literally! Also breaking lose are some man-eating pigs that happen to live on campus. Those bullies don't have a chance!

For the most part this movie is dumb fun but I'm going to spoil something for you here: that cute puppy named Fred does die, and it's a total bummer of a scene. So, maybe just skip that part when you see it coming.

Finally, the film has one bit of casting I found amusing: Charles Tyner plays some kind of colonel at the military school, and if he looks familiar its because he played a very similar role ten years earlier in Harold and Maude, albeit with one less limb.

I watched Evilspeak on Shudder.

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