A first-rate piece of sleeze, Evil Dead Trap (Shiryo no wana, 1988) was well ahead of the J-horror boom from around the turn of the millenium.

It gets off the ground with an American-style gore opening, though it's going to turn into a lot more than just that.

The score is influenced by John Carpenter's theme for Halloween, & thematically the film's content goes well beyond Basketcase with the parasitic twin motif.

Television reporter Nami (Miyoki Ono) received delivery of a mysterious video tape which seemingly shows her own torture-death.

The slow-motion mutilation of the woman's eye is the centerpiece, & sufficiently gross that one expects the film to remain thereafter an early example of torture-porn, but it goes unexpected directions instead.

She begins to investigate, & manages to get her entire film crew picked off one by one by means of clever murderous traps & a gratuitous extended rape-murder inducing many a reviewer to make comparisons to Argento & Fulci.

And it's definitely the case that the Halloween-like score shifts in action moments to something closer to Argento's synthesizer rock band Goblin, as if nodding to gialo as a major influence.

For the first hour it's mainly a straightforward slasher/snuff film, with some of the cast coming straight from the Japanese porn industry. But the acting remains of high quality & at every level of production this is a signal horror flick, not just another hastily knocked off piece of trash. It's quality trash.

Certainly anyone who hated this film for its extreme misogyny would be justified in their feelings, & its had more than its share of killer-reviews. But there's equally no question but that it is an artful film with a lot of reasons to not dismiss it out of hand, especially in the last third of the film when originality kicks in.

For one also detects the influence of Cronenberg's obsession with the transformational body & physiological malfunction, & much else snatched from here & there from world masters of horror & re-blended into something rather original.

The brutality of the piece is extreme, but it's got a profound respect for the horror genre & transcends its own exploitation content.

As a 1988 film ahead of the J-horror boom, it isn't just another excursion into scary women & children with long wet hair. Evil Dead Trap is truly a shining example of international horror.

Eventually all Nami's buddies are done in as grossly as possible & only she remains wandering the extensive industrial setting, stalked by the psycho killer in a rain-slicker hoody out of I Know What You Did Last Summer. The abandoned factory is gorgeously designed, a work of horror-art in & of itself.

[SPOILERS ALERT!] When the hoodie comes off its the handsome young guy (Yuji Honma) with even has a streak of sensitivity to him. He's very different from anyone we would suppose could commit the gruesome acts that have mounted up one after another. He has been helpful in earlier scenes, & has implied the evil acts have not been his doing, but his brother's.

At this point we still don't know if he's possessed or a split-personality or if there really are two of them or if he has an as-yet unseen parasitic twin.

Since the latter is the grossest, that's the one. He's been heard periodically arguing with himself in his own regular voice & in a sweet little boy voice (Mari Shimizu), but the sweet little boy is the soulless psycho who eggs on his "big brother" & forces him to do great harm to people.

Nami has been selected for special terrorizing because she looks exactly like their mother, about whom the "twins" have issues. The last half hour of the film is the brothers' rebellion against one another, Hideki trying to break free of the parasite's influence, the parasite with telekinetic & firestarter powers trying to kll the mommy look-alike.

It builds to a crescendo of fire, water, & extreme goriness, & a truly insane battle against the maniac fetus-monster, whose umbilical cord functions like a boa constrictor & whose ability to burrow in & out of his big brother's body is one of the grossest cool things I've ever seen filmed. [END SPOILER ALERT]

Some fan-critics have focused on the film's weaknesses & dismissed it for all sorts of reasons, & I'll admit it took me a while to be pulled into the story. But patience was rewarded by that final third of the film & the revelations of the evil twin, who'll return in an inferior knock-off sequel.

Obviously it requires a fondness for gore flicks to enter into this one at all, but if now & then a gore-drenched slasher has struck you as a damned good film, I'd wager you'd feel that way about this one.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl