balmakboor
10-14-2008, 01:02 AM
http://www.horror-extreme.com/images/slideshow/evil-dead-trap.jpg
“Evil Dead Trap” is one of those films where you sense very interesting and unusual things are happening. You don’t know for sure how it’s interesting because you can’t quite keep your finger on its pulse, but it sure is unusual.
The “plot” involves a female late night television show host for a show that’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos got horrific – and Japanese. She gets a tape in the mail depicting a gruesome death followed by images of her and preceded by a video roadmap providing directions to the scene of the crime. In grand Scooby Doo fashion, she rounds up her crew and heads out to meet the creator/killer of the video – she thinks it’ll be fun.
So, so far we have almost a parody of the slasher film setup. These people actually think going to meet their maker in creatively bloody ways will be a grand way to spend the day. And two of them even decide to have sex to properly complete the picture. And the tinkling piano score sounded oddly like John Carpenter’s keyboard noodling in “Halloween” – although I’ve read it was lifted from some Dario Argento film, which could well be true, I’ve only seen one, “Deep Red.” I do know that many shots of the faceless-until-the-end killer reminded me of Michael Meyers covered in a bed sheet lurking in the depths of the shot.
The film also loses some “I’ve never seen that before” points by often including rapid shaky-cam tracking shots straight out of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” (“Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead Trap”, I get it) and an ending all goopy and monstrously gory like an early David Cronenberg film – I’m thinking “The Brood” mostly although it also provoked a few “Videodrome” memories. I also read that shots of maggots falling from the ceiling are directly lifted from some Argento film.
But to dwell on such matters seems oddly improper – like, duh, director Toshiharu Ikeda knew he was paying homage to all of these films in all of these ways. He knew the plot was ridiculous. Even hinting that I am criticizing it for these things almost seems an insult to his intelligence and artistry. And there is a great deal of both on display here.
I’ll start with that “snuff film” that gets things rolling. It’s pretty graphic and all, but what really intrigued me about it is the point of view nature of it. It’s like the opening scene from Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” in how it simultaneously implicates and draws in the viewer. The knife blade that seems attached to the camera as if the camera itself is the murderer doesn’t seem so much to be slicing into the woman as it seems to be slicing into an image of the woman projected on a movie screen. The puncturing of eyeballs – repeatedly – seems to be an affront on the very act of watching cinema. I’ve heard the shots were inspired by Lucio Fulci. Not liking him very much, I prefer to compare them to Luis Buñuel.
The body of the film is highlighted by a series of creative killings and one in particular could well be my favorite slasher-horror-gruesome-killing-set-piece of all time. (Ok, I really haven’t seen all that many slasher films, but this one is still pretty damn cool.) It is a Rube Goldberg type setup involving a young, rope-tied woman in creepy, death-like makeup; a spear gun; string connecting the trigger to a door knob; and another young woman frantically trying to open the door to reach her friend. It is shot with great skill and considerable suspense – giving us every last detail of the setup in slow, tracking, extreme close-ups. The way the scene turns out is unsettling and cruel and brilliant – and not what I expected.
The final reel of “Evil Dead Trap” is where my finger slipped from the jugular of this odd film and I lost its pulse. I have no idea what I was watching exactly, though it was not without considerable visual imagination. It’s where the Cronenberg-like details enter the picture – you know, a man giving agonizing birth to something like a mutant baby, that sort of thing.
What did seem to be going on though was a sort of high-tech continuation of those slashed eyeballs from the beginning. Now, I may be totally out in left-field with this, but the heroine passed through a long corridor that felt like entering through those punctured retinas and traveling along the optic nerve to the brain. And the décor of the room where the final act plays out reminded me of the interior of a brain – or at least some sort of cyber-brain with all the tattered wires dangling everywhere.
Enough of those musings; like I said to begin with, there is a great deal to “Evil Dead Trap” that totally escaped my reasoning mind, but I feel it sank in none-the-less. And it will probably be worming around inside me for a long time – maybe to burst its way out someday when I least expect it.
“Evil Dead Trap” is one of those films where you sense very interesting and unusual things are happening. You don’t know for sure how it’s interesting because you can’t quite keep your finger on its pulse, but it sure is unusual.
The “plot” involves a female late night television show host for a show that’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos got horrific – and Japanese. She gets a tape in the mail depicting a gruesome death followed by images of her and preceded by a video roadmap providing directions to the scene of the crime. In grand Scooby Doo fashion, she rounds up her crew and heads out to meet the creator/killer of the video – she thinks it’ll be fun.
So, so far we have almost a parody of the slasher film setup. These people actually think going to meet their maker in creatively bloody ways will be a grand way to spend the day. And two of them even decide to have sex to properly complete the picture. And the tinkling piano score sounded oddly like John Carpenter’s keyboard noodling in “Halloween” – although I’ve read it was lifted from some Dario Argento film, which could well be true, I’ve only seen one, “Deep Red.” I do know that many shots of the faceless-until-the-end killer reminded me of Michael Meyers covered in a bed sheet lurking in the depths of the shot.
The film also loses some “I’ve never seen that before” points by often including rapid shaky-cam tracking shots straight out of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” (“Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead Trap”, I get it) and an ending all goopy and monstrously gory like an early David Cronenberg film – I’m thinking “The Brood” mostly although it also provoked a few “Videodrome” memories. I also read that shots of maggots falling from the ceiling are directly lifted from some Argento film.
But to dwell on such matters seems oddly improper – like, duh, director Toshiharu Ikeda knew he was paying homage to all of these films in all of these ways. He knew the plot was ridiculous. Even hinting that I am criticizing it for these things almost seems an insult to his intelligence and artistry. And there is a great deal of both on display here.
I’ll start with that “snuff film” that gets things rolling. It’s pretty graphic and all, but what really intrigued me about it is the point of view nature of it. It’s like the opening scene from Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” in how it simultaneously implicates and draws in the viewer. The knife blade that seems attached to the camera as if the camera itself is the murderer doesn’t seem so much to be slicing into the woman as it seems to be slicing into an image of the woman projected on a movie screen. The puncturing of eyeballs – repeatedly – seems to be an affront on the very act of watching cinema. I’ve heard the shots were inspired by Lucio Fulci. Not liking him very much, I prefer to compare them to Luis Buñuel.
The body of the film is highlighted by a series of creative killings and one in particular could well be my favorite slasher-horror-gruesome-killing-set-piece of all time. (Ok, I really haven’t seen all that many slasher films, but this one is still pretty damn cool.) It is a Rube Goldberg type setup involving a young, rope-tied woman in creepy, death-like makeup; a spear gun; string connecting the trigger to a door knob; and another young woman frantically trying to open the door to reach her friend. It is shot with great skill and considerable suspense – giving us every last detail of the setup in slow, tracking, extreme close-ups. The way the scene turns out is unsettling and cruel and brilliant – and not what I expected.
The final reel of “Evil Dead Trap” is where my finger slipped from the jugular of this odd film and I lost its pulse. I have no idea what I was watching exactly, though it was not without considerable visual imagination. It’s where the Cronenberg-like details enter the picture – you know, a man giving agonizing birth to something like a mutant baby, that sort of thing.
What did seem to be going on though was a sort of high-tech continuation of those slashed eyeballs from the beginning. Now, I may be totally out in left-field with this, but the heroine passed through a long corridor that felt like entering through those punctured retinas and traveling along the optic nerve to the brain. And the décor of the room where the final act plays out reminded me of the interior of a brain – or at least some sort of cyber-brain with all the tattered wires dangling everywhere.
Enough of those musings; like I said to begin with, there is a great deal to “Evil Dead Trap” that totally escaped my reasoning mind, but I feel it sank in none-the-less. And it will probably be worming around inside me for a long time – maybe to burst its way out someday when I least expect it.