Shiryô no wana

After seeing The Evil Dead Trap, I'm not surprised at all that it has a rather strong cult following; as despite the fact that the plot is rather ludicrous and the film isn't particularly well thought out, it makes up for these problems with a plethora of special effects and a bucket of gore; and the result is a brilliantly fun piece of Japanese horror. The influence for this film is clearly far reaching, but the most obvious is probably the Cronenberg masterpiece Videodrome, though the oeuvre of Lucio Fulci seems to be an influence and of course the English title is a clear rip-off of a very popular early eighties horror film. The plot focuses on a late night reality TV show hosted a young lady named Nami. The show receives a videotape that includes apparently real snuff tape footage. This leads the team to go and track down the origin of the tape, and they arrive at an old warehouse. After gaining access to the facility, it's not long before the group begin being picked off by an unseen assailant.

The film could easily be seen as a slasher flick, but actually it's much more ambitious than that. The snuff footage at the beginning of the film sets the tone for the rest of it; the violence is extreme, but also rather realistic and that is carried on throughout. One of my favourite things about it was undoubtedly the atmosphere; director Toshiharu Ikeda makes best use of the location and the fact that the central characters are isolated from the outside world. The violence is often shown and extreme and this is what makes the film entertaining. It's also rather inventive and the film offers much more than merely another man with a knife. The problems regarding the plotting and character are somewhat condemning; I do feel that if a bit more time and attention were given to these areas then the film could easily have been a masterpiece. But even so, if you want a good gorefest then you really can't do better than this film! I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to all horror fans.

SPOILERS

Nami Tsuchiya is an ambitious young reporter who hosts a late night public access show. One day she returns to her office to find a mysterious tape sitting on her desk. She watches it only to see the directions to an abandoned factory where someone kills a young woman. Nami recruits several friends to go to the factory in effort to finally get the news story she's been needing to become famous. Once they arrive at the factory someone, or something, systematically picks off all of Nami's friends without mercy in a game of cat and mouse. Nami then meets a mysterious stranger that claims to be looking for his brother and knows the way out of the maze-like factory.

The first half of this film is outstanding. The gore is great, the plot is great and the pacing is great, but then after all of Nami's friends are killed and she meets the stranger the pacing just sort of dies up until the climax. It goes from being one of the best horror movies I've ever seen into a film that becomes, well, boring. There are several long sequences, of like three or four consecutive minutes, where we just have Nami walking around in a field sulking over her dead friends. I rarely say this, but The Evil Dead Trap would have really benefited by cutting about ten minutes off the runtime. Then it picks back up at the end for a rather twisted ending very reminiscent of the work of Larry Cohen, in sort of a mix between It's Alive and God Told Me To.

As I mentioned, the gore in this film is excellent. The opening murder scene features an example of eyeball violence and brutal close-ups that rival even the best of Fulci. As soon as the television crew arrives to the factory you get the feeling of a great 1980s slasher film, containing both spine chilling suspense and good gore once the killer makes his move.

Overall this was a great film surrounded by a decent amount of material that didn't need to be there. Had the pacing of the whole film been what it was in the first half then this would go down among my all time favorites, however it gets too dull and pointless to earn that honor. Instead, in my opinion it goes down as a good slasher film that I am glad I purchased but didn't live up to my expectations.

MY GRADE: B

Take a dash of atmospheric horror, add a huge helping of giallo, an equal amount of slasher films and a sprinkle of sci-fi horror. Filter through Dario Argento's 'Suspiria'-like soundtrack and use of primary colors and Shi'nya Tsukamoto's 'Tetsuo: Iron Man's frenetic black and white images and industrial soundtrack and you've got Evil Dead Trap. Throw in a pinch of B-movie horror ala Frank Henenlotter and Alain Roback to spice things up further. The English translation is top-notch and over all the movie is easy to follow. The lead actress comes across well and the deaths are inventive for the most part. The gore is fairly graphic, with squirting blood foreshadowing the Tokyo Shock films to come almost two decades later. Sure, it's not Oscar material, but cinephiles will enjoy picking out the various influences and the average viewer will get an over-the-top cult film. My only bone with the film is that the director didn't have to use EVERY influence, perhaps picking one or two themes only, but I guess that's one of the things that makes it over-the-top.

Sitting down and watching my newly bought EVIL DEAD TRAP DVD I was blown away at the scenes that unfolded before my eyes. This movie has gained a huge status over the years and now that it is available on DVD we won't need those crappy bootlegs anymore. I had heard much about the film's reputation and can say I was really impressed. The story is intelligent and well-thought out while the execution was played just perfectly. Evil Dead Trap contains an especially delicious array of gory delights including sliced hands, gouged eyeball torture, impalement by spear contraption, cranium cracking, and neck breaking. This is quite the twisted film and this is ONLY the beginning! The first half is your basic stalk-n-slash story (Japanese style) with one freaky looking killer dressed in a black raincoat. Later, the movie progresses into something a bit more complex, some would say silly, but I enjoyed the move the film made. Let's just say it's something you wouldn't have seen coming. I loved the final showdown between Nami, and...wait I won't tell you, but in my opinion it's one of the best scenes in horror history. Trust me, you will not be disappointed. After all, like most have already said, the director takes a strong influence from veteran Italian horror-meisters like Argento and Fulci and even has some Evil Dead-like camera angles thrown in there. You could even say there's a bit of Cronenberg's genius in here as well ;-) How can you go wrong?

Very very minor spoiler.

Plot summary: A TV crew get lured to a disused military installation and get stalked by….a killer.

After being introduced to Ikeda-san's work by his abysmal 2001 effort "Shadow of the Wraith" I had zero expectations for this, especially after I found out he also directed one of the later Meiko Kaji-less instalments of the "Female Prisoner Scorpion" series.

How surprised I was then, to see just what a solid film "Evil Dead Trap" is. The film certainly doesn't mess around; introducing the characters and setting up the plot in about fifteen minutes, all perfectly spliced around a videotaped Fulci-esquire eye slicing scene. The plot, initially owing much to Videodrome, takes a back seat as the TV crew get down to the business of walking backwards, running further into darkened warehouses when they should be going outside and having sex when they should be watching out for the psychopathic knife-wielder.

The ripped off plot and horror clichés aside, the film scores its points with an array of violent, gruesome and inventive deaths, with an abundance of blood, nudity and maggots. Whenever I thought the film was regressing into conventionality, it always surprised me by turning back on itself, usually with an aforementioned brutal killing. However the ending was what most shocked me; what seemed to be a conventional explanation for the "mystery" of the killer eventually culminated in a horrific gorefest that probably got David Cronenberg wondering if he'd misplaced a script.

This is mainstream 80s J-horror at its best, taking influence from the greats such as Cronenberg and Fulci. It makes up for its shortcomings with a shocking amount of violence and gore, the occasional graphic sex scene and a brilliant conclusion.

A must for all gorehounds and horror fanatics.