Evil Ed

The title character is a mild-mannered film editor at a big motion picture company who is reassigned to their "Splatter and Gore" department to work on their highly successful "Loose Limbs" series. The horrific violence in those films drives him insane and he starts killing people in the style of the movie villains. You might think that Evil Ed is a moralistic tale warning us of the dangers of horror films, but the filmmakers are having way too much fun to bother with that. It's really more a satire of horror films, the movie business, SWAT teams, and what-have-you that combines gleeful mayhem, a witty visual style, and Scandinavian angst. All the actors in this Swedish-made film spoke their lines in English, but their voices were dubbed for this American release. Hard-core splatter fans may find it a little light on the gore, but hey, any movie that starts with a guy blowing off his own head with a hand grenade can't be all bad. Trivia factoid: The title is a play on Evil Dead, and the name of Ed's tyrannical producer, Sam Campbell, salutes that film's director, Sam Raimi, and star, Bruce Campbell. --Geof Miller