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61%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #6,167
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Edward is a friendly, harmless film cutter on the culture department. After an suicide accident, he is put on the mission to cut the "Loose limbs"-series. The blood, gore and violence makes him slowly goes insane. Edward slowly turns into Ed. Evil Ed...
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: January 10, 2012
It's only taken me about six years to get to it, but finally, I am filling a request for one of our dear site readers. Yes, Evil Ed was requested back in 2006, and this is why I generally do not take requests: it always takes me forever to get around to watching what you people want me to watch as opposed to watching what I want to watch. Funny how that works out, right? Anyway, this particular request was aided by the fact that I sort of wanted to see it anyway, but alas, there was always something that seemed a little better begging for my attention. That changed today, and thus, I give you the first requested review in years: a sleazy little slasher from Sweden.
We begin with an introduction to Eddie Swenson (Johan Rudebeck), a geeky film-cutter who mainly deals in German drama flicks. This changes when he is transferred to the "blood and gore" department and tasked with going through the entire Loose Limbs series of movies (think Guinea Pig) and cutting them down to be less graphic for a European audience. After all of this exposure to mindless violence and sadistic rape (one rape by a beaver!), poor Ed begins to lose his grip on reality and begins talking to demons who command him to clean up the world of all this filth. This causes our hero to finally snap, and he decides to clean up the world in the way that those films taught him to: by killing everyone and anyone he can, in as bloody a fashion as possible. Yes, it's true: the movies made him do it.
Now, don't get me wrong: Evil Ed is not a message movie that reflects on the effects of horror flicks on impressionable young minds. There is no hidden subtext or underlying meanings, it is merely used as an excuse to transform a nerdy guy into a homicidal killer in a somewhat original fashion. At its core, Evil Ed is just another slasher flick with an above-average amount of blood and a touch of black humor thrown in for flavor.
For a low budget mid-nineties horror flick, the special effects found in here are shockingly good. Just about every slash, stab, slice, and shot looks incredibly realistic, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the lengths that these filmmakers went to make their stuff look as real as possible. There's certainly no shortage of the red stuff either, so gorehounds will definitely be pleased with this perfect combination of quality and quantity. There are movies coming out today, almost twenty years after this release and with five times the budget, that don't look nearly as good.
I also enjoyed the performance given by leading man Johan Rudebeck. This actor was perfect in this role, and he is damned convincing as both the nerdy film geek as well as the sadistic serial killer that he quickly transforms into. Honestly, I didn't expect much after seeing him for the first time, as I felt that this guy would not be able to properly make the transition between character phases, but I was damned wrong. He is just as menacing later in the film as he is bland in the beginning, so I have to give a huge thumbs up for this fellow.
Honestly, the only negative thing I can say about the movie is that it starts to lose its way midway through the running time and the pace starts to drag a bit. I understand what the filmmakers were going for, a slow spiral into madness and all, and I will also concede that it would have been laughable to have him go from family man to killer after watching a single film, but it still seemed a little too slow for my liking. I have to admit that my interest did start to wander for a while, but to their credit, the filmmakers did reel me back in with a foul-mouthed puppet in the fridge and the movie was back on track from there.
Overall, Evil Ed gets a recommendation for fans of sleazy slashers with lots of gore and little substance. That is not a knock on the film, as sometimes, you just want to shut your mind off and watch the limbs fly and the blood spray with little thought in the way of messages or story. If that's the kind of film that you're in the market for, you'll find a lot to love here. 8/10.
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