Evil Dead Trap: Video Search of Miami (bootleg)
Rating: Australia: Banned/ Netherlands: 18

No, the title isn't a typo. If you're looking for an in-depth commentary of Sam Raimi's cult classic EVIL DEAD, then look elsewhere (like my review here at Epinions). Instead, let's take a look at a rarely seen Japanese horror film called EVIL DEAD TRAP--a well-made movie with some interesting ideas but some flawed execution.

When late-night talk show host Nami (Miyuki Ono: BLACK RAIN, THE BLACK ANGEL) receives a videotape showing a woman being brutally murdered, along with directions on how to get to the scene of the crime, she loads up her crew (comprised of three other women and a guy) and sets out to discover what's really going on. Nami and crew arrive at a deserted warehouse, and while exploring, are stalked by a masked killer.

Director Toshiharu Ikeda (EVIL DEAD TRAP 3, ANGEL GUTS: RED PORNO) gives us a stylish film that shows a lot of Argento influence in the cinematography, the setpieces, etc. From the film's opening sequence all the way through to the climax, there's a palpable sense of dread throughout this movie. Much like Wes Craven’s Scream (yeah, I bet Scream was one of the last movies you expected to see mentioned in a review of a Japanese exploitation flick, eh?), Evil Dead Trap opens with an incredibly brutal sequence—the woman on tape being tortured and dismembered—that sets the tone for the rest of the film by raising the tension to a fever pitch. However, like Craven’s film, the rest of Evil Dead Trap has a hard time living up to this opening sequence. That’s not to say the film drops its brutal approach (although Scream did after that opening sequence for the most part), but it is to say that Ikeda and company have a hard time following up such disturbing imagery with anything as equally gruesome.

Acting-wise, the film isn’t anything special. Miyuki Ono is decent, as is the man who plays the killer (and you’ll have to forgive me for not telling you who he is—there’s almost no cast information about this film online). Everyone else is the standard ‘spam-in-a-cabin’ (or, in this case, ‘spam-in-an-abandoned-warehouse’) type of character—which basically means they’re marked for an extremely gruesome and brutal death at the hands of our maniacal slasher. If anything can be said about these performances, I suppose you could give them credit for conveying the look of real suffering as they’re skewered and sliced into so many pieces, but that’s about it.

The film itself starts out strongly, and remains interesting until the climax, where it then takes a veer out of slasher territory and into Japanese monster movie country. The first two and a half acts are essentially structured like a giallo (see my review of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage for a more detailed discussion of the gialli)—there’s little actual mystery as to who our psychopath is, but we’re never really sure of the motivation. And, to Ikeda’s credit, he does make us wonder on several occasions whether the killer is actually human, or some supernatural presence. Keeping with the giallo tone, the killer appears to be mentally unbalanced as well (ok… it’s probably a safe bet to say that anyone who films themselves cutting up a young woman is mentally unbalanced, but this is a horror flick, and that kind of unbalance almost doesn’t count)—repeatedly talking to a videotape and someone who doesn’t appear to be in the room.

Still, even though there’s only a minimal amount of actual mystery in the film, Ikeda does manage to throw us one last curveball during the (overlong) climax sequence. It’s this curveball that essentially makes this a 4 star movie as opposed to a 5 star classic. The ending is absurd, to say the least, and just feels wrong for this kind of film—it sucks the wind right out of the film’s sails and had this viewer looking at the screen saying ‘huh’?

Yet even though Evil Dead Trap drops the ball at the climax, it’s still good enough to be one of my all time favorite slasher flicks, mainly because it’s so damn brutal. This is a mean-spirited little film in almost every way, and it makes American slashers like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street look like Romper Room in comparison. I’m not an expert on Japanese exploitation cinema, but I have to say, based on the few films I’ve seen, that the Japanese take their onscreen carnage more seriously than any other country in the world. This film features the aforementioned dismemberment (complete with a segment of brutal eye violence that rivals the work of Lucio Fulci), a woman skewered on sharp blades thrust up through floor, another woman who meets a grizzly death at the hands of a Rube Goldberg-esque death contraption (opening a door throws it all into motion), a fairly graphic (and overlong) rape scene, and one of the most gruesome machete murders of all time (although, I still think the one Bava used in Bay of Blood is the best). Simply put, gore fans will want to own this film—and everyone else will most likely be put off by the grue.

In the end, Evil Dead Trap is a fine addition to the slasher canon. Toshiharu Ikeda has crafted a disturbingly violent little film with a mean streak a mile wide. However, it rises above many of its exploitation film brethren because it’s shot in a manner that actually shows some style and understanding of what constitutes good filmmaking. Yes, it cribs from Argento in various places (particularly in the construction of its setpieces—which are basically the film’s calling card), but it often tends to come across more as homage than theft. The ending is a major letdown, but even in spite of that, the film has a real sense of menace running throughout it—and that tension at least helps to counterbalance the weak climax. Evil Dead Trap isn’t for everyone, but if you’re into hardcore exploitation, Japanese horror cinema, or just a gorehound looking for something a little more daring than Urban Legends, then this film is well worth tracking down.




Recommended: Yes