EvilLaugh

Evil Laugh (1988)

This is yet another low budget 80s slasher movie. This time around a group of Medical students head out to an isolated house to do some home repairs. It just so happened that the house served as a foster home for unwanted children, until a caretaker when crazy and slaughter them all! But that was 10 years ago and now some kind hearted soon to be doctors want to reopen the place again. The problem is that someone doesn’t want that to happen. So the bodies start to pile up as not on the kids, but the locals start to get knocked off one at a time. But who is the killer and why are they so determined to stop the place from being reopened?

Well I’m not going to answer that question because I think that this movie is worth checking out. Now it does have a lot of the faults that most of the lower budget slasher flicks had, including some bad acting, mediocre kills, generic 80s music, and an absurd over the top reveal of the killer. But the movie also has a certain charm and humor about it that I like a lot. The cast might be a bit rough around the edges, but they do have a certain charisma and chemistry. If I had to guess I would say the must have had a great time making the movie. Also it doesn’t hurt that there are some attractive women who do show the “goods” which is a staple of the slasher subgenre. Plus what can you say about a movie that has a killer cleaning the house montage set to some pretty terrible generic 80s music that you will hear again and again! Oh and I’m pretty sure they ate some guys heart for supper, so that is sort of twisted and fun.

I also wanted to make special mention of some of the funny inside jokes that the movie makes. First of all there are several references to the Friday the 13th series, which is funny because the director of this movie, Dominick Brascia, is best known to fans as the fat kid who gets an axe to the back in Friday the 13th part V. The movie also references the Halloween franchise. Now these could have been stupid, but they are handled pretty well with the inclusion of a character who keeps warning people about horror movie clichés, and is also the guy that figures out something is really wrong. This might be one of the earliest appearances of that sort of hip character that represents the audience of the slasher movie. Again it is handled well and I really dug it.

So I do need to talk about the special effects. This was clearly done on a low budget and it shows. Most of the kills are fairly bloodless and when you do see an effect on screen (the microwave kill comes to mind) it looks sort of cheesy. So if you are one of those fans that is all about the gore then Evil Laugh is going to disappoint you. But for me with the tone of the movie being so goofy and fun I just didn’t really even notice the lack of gore.

I’ve been on a real slasher kick as of late and I have to say that Evil Laugh falls into that category of hidden gem that I somehow have managed to miss until recently. If you haven’t seen this and are in the mood for some good old 80s slasher fun then I recommend that you get your hands on a copy of this movie.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer