Evil Ed

Funny, bloody, gory! This movie is totally awesome and enjoyable! I laughed my butt off, and the killing scenes were good. There's a little lack of logic, like how Ed dodges a shotgun blast in a hallway, but the story is cool.

Eddie Tor Swenson (Johan Rudebeck) is a mild mannered film technician who is one day transferred to the Splatter and Gore Department at his company. His new job is to go through the MILES of gore footage assembled for a slasher series called "Loose Limbs", and edit it for distribution. Within a short time, the task has driven him insane and made him murderous. As Eddie suffers various hallucinations, one of his would be victims (Per Lofberg) realizes that he will have to play the hero role.

This viewer went into this one totally blind, not sure what to expect. What he got was basically what the ad copy asserted: an effectively gory love letter to some of the nastiest horror films of the 1980s and early 1990s. "The Evil Dead", "Re-Animator", Peter Jacksons' early output, etc. Horror fans are certain to be delighted, at least for a while. The movie has a refreshingly unpredictable quality (for the most part), and it does mix a healthy amount of surrealism into its outrageousness. After a while, though, it does lose a little steam, with the best material (like a WTF sequence with a hungry imp in a refrigerator) over and done with. In true slasher fashion, Eddie becomes a one man wrecking crew, making mincemeat out of the majority of the people who would foil him.

The makeup effects are quite fun. While it's never as truly over the top splattery as, say, Jacksons' "Braindead", it dishes out some choice brutality. On his way to becoming the hero, Lofberg takes more than his fair share of punishment.

Some of the performances are pretty straight-faced, if the characters call for it, but the ones who have the most fun are the ones who go the broadest. Rudebeck looks like he's having a ball as a horror-comedy heavy. And there's a respectable bevy of very sexy female cast members.

Pretty funny, overall, if never quite uproarious.

Director Anders Jacobsson plays a car driver; American genre star Bill Moseley is billed as giving a special guest star vocal performance.

Seven out of 10.

I didn't really rent this movie expecting a intellectual, philosophical movie. I expected a funny, gory splatter film, and I got just what I asked for.

Edward works for some television studio and cuts out violent stuff from movies and such. That's his job. But when he gets to watch an entire film series of "Loose Limbs" and cut out blood and gore. But after awhile he can't handle it anymore and simply goes insane. He starts to see visions of monsters and persons from the films, and in his dreams a bandaged figure tells him to start killing off the "unpure". It just so happens that everyone seems to be unpure. After this Ed goes after several persons in his murderous rampage, including his wife, his daughter, a delivery guy, two thieves and a SWAT team.

The film can be pretty damn gory at times, yet hilarious beyond boundries. Like the doctor scene! Holy crap, that scene is so damn hilarious its just... Hilarious! Its sick too, by the way.

Edwards boss (Samuel Campbell is his name, a homage to Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi) is also pretty funny with some funny lines. But Edward is the one with the real one-liners! THey are truly unforgivable!

Anyway, I cannot praise this hilarious movie enough. It gets 8 out of 10 from me!

Evil Ed rhymes with The Evil Dead. Coincidence? Of course not! It's clear that writer/director Anders Jacobsson is a fan of Raimi's work, because his film references The Evil Dead movies throughout. Evil Dead 2 poster in the background - check! Scenes that mimic those in Raimi's movies - check! Evil Dead soundbites - check! Evil Dead style camerawork - check! Someone transforming into a Deadite-style creature - check! Jacobsson also copies much of his visual style from the early work of Peter Jackson and includes a nod to Night of the Living Dead for good measure.

But is Evil Ed as good as the films it borrows so heavily from? That'll be a no, the film suffering from a weak script, terrible performances (with bad dubbing) and an uneven pace. It does, however, deliver an hour and a half of splattery silliness, the film poking fun at the myth that prolonged exposure to extreme horror turns viewers into uncontrollable psychopaths. Johan Rudebeck plays mild-mannered movie editor Edward, who is given the job of editing out the sex and violence from a series of gory horror movies in order to make them suitable for certain countries; doing so turns Eddie crazy, and he goes on a killing spree. Cue lots of reasonably well executed splatstick horror that'll go down a lot better with a few beers.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Ed (coincidentally an editor) is hired to cut horror films down to be favorable in Europe (where standards are much more rigorous). But he finds the films very mind-destroying and starts going a little bit mad. Okay, "a little bit" might be an understatement.

When you think of horror films, you may not think of Sweden. And if you are thinking of the goriest ones, maybe even less so. Which is all the more reason why "Evil Ed" exists and why it is both a great gore film and a brilliant satire. Sweden's State Cinema Bureau existed from 1911 until 1996, not officially disbanding until 2011. This made it the oldest film censoring organization in the world. Which explains Ed. While the film takes place in the United States, the job Ed has is clearly a reflection of what censors in Sweden actually did. (The United States has never had an official censorship bureau, though it feels that way sometimes if you want your film to get a R rating rather than an NC-17.)

Regarding the film itself, let it just be said first of all: best. opening. scene. ever. A man in an office who blows up his head with a grenade. His boss then says -- with a straight face -- "you're fired". The entire film does not keep up this level of intensity, but it certainly tries. And anyone who likes their gore with a heaping spoonful of comedy will be enamored.

Take the shotgun scenes, the decapitation, the clips from fictional film-within-a-film "Lost Limbs" (which one wishes were a real film). The writer-director of "Evil Ed" (Anders Jacobsson) thought up the idea of a woman who gets raped by a beaver and then immediately after gets shot in the face with a bazooka. That is something you won't find in any other movie (at least, unless there is a scene in "Zombeavers" that escapes the memory).

This film's biggest flaw is the quality. The picture is not as crisp as a 1995 film should be, and the sound could be touched up (though it is not bad). Because of the production value, you might feel like you are watching a 1980s film. Although, this criticism may also be one of the film's strengths -- "Evil Ed" also has the 1980s style of writing and directing in it: a sense of fun and giving the audience a little something extra over the top. We all miss those days.

The 3-disc Arrow Video Blu-ray is ridiculous, but this is the sort of title that deserves it. We have an introduction by writer/director Anders Jacobsson and editor Doc. An extensive making-of documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew, a featurette looking at the early filmmaking endeavors of the Evil Ed crew and a companion piece where the filmmakers discuss their careers following Evil Ed. There are deleted scenes and bloopers...

But the real gem here (other than the new, extended cut of the film) is "Lost in Brainland", a never-before-seen extended three-hour making-of documentary. Holy smokes, could there possibly be anything left to say about this film after all these interviews and three hours of investigation?