Evil Laugh

Yeah, it's dreadfully bad, but in it's infinite badness is an enjoyable film, which one can watch with friends on a friday night and laugh your ass off. The dialogue is ridiculous, the acting is horrible, the death scenes are hilarious (one guys gets his head cooked in a microwave) and everything else is just lazy. I can't think of a funnier movie.

An on-the-cheap, shot-on-video and quickly made 80s slasher that's enthusiastically pitched and made the more interesting for being made by Dominick Brasica (which Friday the 13th fans would pick up as being the memorable first death in "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning") in what feels like a labour of love. It might not be ranking up their with the best the 80s had to offer and could be seen as just another slasher, but the quirky "Evil Laugh" had its moments. Even some creativity, as some elements actually reminded of Wes Craven's 90s slasher "Scream". Plenty of self-knowing quips feed the shonky script (mainly from a horror-buff character) and there's a plethora of references to other horror mediums (horror magazine Fangoira to "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th"). The story is simple, as it builds up the standard conventions and its over-the-top macabre (which includes some dancing while cleaning and jittery music score) where a group of young medical students decide help out a friend re-open an abandoned orphanage, although they don't know of its terrible past which saw ten years ago the custodian murder the residents. But this weekend is not going to be any ordinary weekend, as people start disappearing and find themselves at the mercy of a jump suit wearing killer with a mask and beanie. Yeah, sadly the murderer doesn't live up the illustration on the artwork and naturally the heroine points out the horror fan for being the murderer. The execution does match the budget, as it's a slapdash of blood, nudity and humour. Sometimes things would happen off-screen, but other times we get flashes of tatty gore. The random performances are acceptable with Kim McKamy making a solid heroine and a decent Steven Baio (who also produced and co-wrote). Nothing new, but it's full of spontaneous energy.

"No legend is going to scare me".

There are three types of bad movies: (a) the ones that are so bad they're boring, (b) the ones that are intentionally bad in order to be funny, and (c) the ones that are so bad they are hilarious. No one wants to watch the first one. The second type has no value since the only reason for watching a bad movie is to laugh at its "badness" and if they do it on purpose, what is the point? So, it leaves us with the third type. If you enjoy this third type of bad movie, you will love Evil Laugh. I've seen a lot of unintentionally hilarious movies, and this is one of the best, right up there with Gymkata. The plot is as follows: a bunch of friends meet at a dirty old house. People start getting killed by a masked person with an evil laugh (just wait until you hear the laugh). My favorite scene: the killer drags a guys head into a microwave, but can't close it since it's still attached to the body. So he pushes start, and magically the microwave starts working, which is followed by the requisite head explosion. Oh, and then there is the Breakfast Club-like cleaning scene to cheesy 80's music. See this movie! If you go the video store, I can pretty much guarantee that no one else has checked it out.

A group of med students spend the weekend fixing up an old house. Of course this was the site of a horrible massacre, and of course there is going to be a new slaughter this weekend with the med students on the menu.

I love horror movies frankly, so the plot of this movie doesn't exactly bother me. The slasher genre is the only one that can get away with using the same plot over and over again in my book. The problems with this movie is that once you move from the plot everything else is awful.

The character are written and acted like they come right out of a sitcom. ( one girl acts just like "chrissy" from THREES COMPANY) The actors are also very bad, but you can't blame then so much. Yes they can't act, but the script didn't help much. The dialogue is outright ridiculous.

The Gore is really unconvincing, and this looks to be filmed on video. Not that is uncommon today almost all horror movies ( and independent movies) are filmed that way now. But we have digital video, they have a 80's camcorder.

The movie also seems to be a showcase for Steven Baio, like every scene was structured to make him the focus even though he is not the main character.

What this film does have going for it is it's parallels to SCREAM. Some scenes are very similar. It does have one decent murder to it as well.

As bad as this movie is, I have to say there is something about it that made me rent it 3 times. of course it is because I found it to be hysterical, ( there is even a a spur of the moment dance number that had me on the floor crying from laughing) but hey, it put money in the producers pockets so I'm sure they don't care why I watched it.

Really bad ( 4/ 10)

Evil Laugh is a poor attempt at trying to jump on the 80's slasher band wagon. The gore factor is OK, but the cheese, oh my God the 80's cheese! The music is borderline unbearable, and the dancing doesn't help either. It does make you laugh though, as does some of the acting. The chest rubbing joke was cracking me up. Not the worst I've seen, and you might find it somewhat entertaining, but not because of scares. I dunno where the hooded skull character on the cover comes from either. The killer looks more like a 5 foot tall burglar wearing some type of wrestling head gear. This is the second "Lucky 13" flick I've seen, and they're not exactly winning me over.