Evilspeak
A disgraced priest who was banished for the pursuit of evil, Father Lorenzo Esteban washed up on distant shores, forming his own church on the Californian coast of America in 1520, the buildings of which would over the centuries grow to become the prestigious West Andover Military Academy, an establishment known to cultivate “good stock and breeding,” now obliged to accept admissions from less prosperous families due to failing finances.
Private Stanley Coopersmith an orphan, socially awkward, weak in his studies and clumsy on the sports field despite his continued attempts to succeed and be accepted, he is disliked by his tutors and bullied by his peers, and as punishment for his latest failing he is sent to clean out the crypt occupied by drunken caretaker Sarge, cleaning out the junk and finding an ancient tome in Latin which he uses the computer to translate.
Deemed a “video nasty” and withdrawn from circulation before a version cut by over three minutes was released in 1987, not only gore but all the text of Esteban’s Black Mass, finally released in its complete form in 2004, Evilspeak is a 1981 Satanic horror film directed by Eric Weston from a script co-written with Joseph Garofalo, starring Ice Cream Man’s Clint Howard as Coopersmith, still in his early twenties despite having been famous for over a decade, having appeared in Star Trek at only seven years old.
Well filmed for the small budget with location shooting in Santa Barbara and a condemned Los Angeles church, the effects are also impressive, perhaps justifying the overreaction they precipitated in the pearl-clutching guardians of morality back in the day, but are late to arrive, Evilspeak taking the Lord’s good time to arrive at the inevitable then releasing the wave of unholy carnage signposted from the opening act only in the final scene.
The first hour of the film concerned almost solely with Coopersmith bumbling through daily trials as he is taunted and abused by the quartet of well-connected rich kids, despite the screen time given to them they are never more than straw men waiting to be burned, defined solely by their shallow cruelty, while the more interesting performances of House’s Richard Moll and Race with the Devil’s R G Armstrong are limited in the peripheral roles of Esteban and Sarge.
Sentient computers having long been seen as a threat in science fiction not explored in the typically more traditional format of horror until later in Demon Seed, Ghost in the Machine of The X-Files and I, Robot… You, Jane of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which introduced “Technopagan” Jenny Calendar, the latter is of particular interest not only in its direct parallels with Evilspeak but in the final caption of the film, which states that after the Military Academy massacre the comatose survivor was taken to Sunnydale Asylum.
Evilspeak is streaming on Shudder now
