Evil Dead Trap (1988)

A Masterpiece!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Take a dash of atmospheric horror, add a huge helping of giallo, an equal amount of slasher films and a sprinkle of sci-fi horror. Filter through Dario Argento's 'Suspiria'-like soundtrack and use of primary colors and Shi'nya Tsukamoto's 'Tetsuo: Iron Man's frenetic black and white images and industrial soundtrack and you've got Evil Dead Trap. Throw in a pinch of B-movie horror ala Frank Henenlotter and Alain Roback to spice things up further. The English translation is top-notch and over all the movie is easy to follow. The lead actress comes across well and the deaths are inventive for the most part. The gore is fairly graphic, with squirting blood foreshadowing the Tokyo Shock films to come almost two decades later. Sure, it's not Oscar material, but cinephiles will enjoy picking out the various influences and the average viewer will get an over-the-top cult film. My only bone with the film is that the director didn't have to use EVERY influence, perhaps picking one or two themes only, but I guess that's one of the things that makes it over-the-top.

I guess it possible to do a 'spoiler' when it be like nothing makes much sense anyway... but that's what's good about it makes 0 sense starting off with these dippy TV people ... could hardly have a more emphatic warning how "it might be such a good idea" to go into the factory of like eybeall knife torture and knifeball eye torture and ... then they split up in to vulnerable little groups and then all these various kills are done basically in these rube goldberg ways that seem to all go wrong but then eventually each victim ends up somehow accidentally going the way of all evil flesh uh and the "showdown" is like back and forth like it's never gonna end it's like please one or both of you just stay down so the movie can finish! but I did like the "very" ending and... uh. well it would have been more fun to share it with someone or an audience, all the silliness... and the men could have been a lot more attractive I'll give it a 3 for ... for the scenes in which they lost the tripod an thus did omse weird kind of . . . stop action stuff .... it makes no sense but then that's why this is a good review. evidently um Oliver Stone says "a daring and grim thriller - reveals Japan's twisted sexual soul one terrifying scene after another." this has got to be an example of an American director doing like one of those Japanese commercials that the stars do on telly for soft drinks and the like?

Shiryo No Wana, or Evil Dead Trap as it's more commonly known amongst Western audiences, starts at a Japanese cable TV station called Network 3 where extreme reality TV hostess Nami Tsuchiya (Miyuki Ono) receives a videotape in a parcel from a viewer. Nami plays the tape & discovers that it shows the brutal assault & murder of a young woman, thinking she may be onto a big story Nami gets permission from her boss (Shinsuke Shimada) to investigate the origins of the tape. The tape helpfully contained footage of how to get to the location it was shot in so with a few volunteers, a sound engineer Masako Abe (Aya Katsuragi), make-up artist Rei Sugiura (Hitomi Kobayashi), script writer Rya Kawamura (Eriko Nakagawa) & assistant director Akio Kondou (Masahiko Abe) Nami sets out to find her story. The location turns out to be an abandoned military facility, as they split up & search for clues Rei is brutally murdered. It's not long before the rest of the group discover Rei's fate & realise they are next! A sicko game playing killer stalks the dark damp corridors...This Japanese production was directed by Toshiharu Ikeda & is a bit uneven. The script by Takashi Ishii starts brilliantly, the opening mystery surrounding the snuff tape, the location & who's behind it is very effective & gripping as it builds. Unfortunately it cannot maintain this as Shiryo No Wana descends into complete lunacy with one of the silliest, lamest & most unsatisfying climax's ever. I was hoping for more but the last thirty minutes really let all of it's good work to that point down. It's also one of those films that never knows when to quit, just when you think that's it something else totally ridiculous happens. The character's are OK except for Nami, I mean there is some unidentified psycho running around an old abandoned military base & this smartly dressed mysterious guy (Yuji Honma) just happens to be there without any sort of reasonable explanation, seems to turn up just after a murder occurs & seems very relaxed when he finds a severed head. Would you not be even a little bit suspicious of him? I think I would. The film rapidly goes downhill as it progresses. Shiryo No Wana drags a little in places but there are some nice ideas here & it's certainly watchable especially when compared to the unoriginal teenage American stuff being churned out on a conveyor belt.Director Ikeda likes nice long shots which I do too, no ultra fast quick blink & you'll miss it editing here. He likes to place his camera above people looking down on them & their surroundings as well, the tension & atmosphere through the first two thirds of the film is excellent but that stupid ending really kills everything dead. The gore scenes are spread out but are very effective & quite brutal, the opening murder of the victim in the snuff tape is nasty with her eyeball being pierced with a knife in extreme close-up & from varying angles as liquid oozes out, ouch is all I can say! Someone is impaled on metal spikes, various stabbings, a severed head & another nasty bit when someone gets a huge blade implanted in the side of their head. There is also a fairly graphic & wholly unnecessary rape sequence.Technically Shiryo No Wana is OK if basic & somewhat economical. Did anyone else think the music ripped off Day of the Dead (1985)? I haven't got a clue about the acting as I can't speak Japanese but it seems alright, the UK DVD which I have has a few dumb grammatical errors in the subtitling including spelling mistakes, duh!Shiryo No Wana is a decent watch, it plays like a Japanese Friday the 13th (1980) type slasher that tries to be clever with it's ending. I liked it & it's memorable but not entirely satisfying, however it's still worth a watch.

EVIL DEAD TRAP is a pretty solid J-horror film with several cool elements. It starts to taper off and get kind of dull at the end, but overall a pretty strong film...EVIL DEAD TRAP starts off with Nami, a late-night TV show host, receiving a strange package in the mail. She opens it up, and it turns out to be a VCR tape. She pops it in and watches what appears to be a pretty rough snuff film of a chick getting cut up and poked in the eye with a knife (in true graphic "Fulci" fashion...). The "killer" filmed the drive to the location where the "snuff-film" was made, so Nami, smelling a hot story, packs up her film crew and heads out to check it out. Of course there are some strange goings-on at the abandoned facility where the snuff-film was shot, and the crew members start getting picked off one-by-one in pretty gruesome fashion. This leads up to the finale of Nami "unmasking" the killer and the completely off-the-wall ending...All-in-all, EVIL DEAD TRAP is a good film. The story is interesting, there are some novel gore scenes, and the photography, acting, and locations are all very good. The only real problem I had is with the pacing, which started off pretty hot and heavy, and slowed down noticeably in the second half. I actually fell asleep twice trying to watch this film - but that could have been the bourbon...The ending was also completely strange and unexpected - but anyone who watches a lot of this type of J-horror won't be too surprised by that fact. It seems that these films can never have a straight story-line, that they all have to feature some sort of super-natural or just super-strange element to make them work, and although the eyeball scene was rough and there were a few other notable kill scenes, I personally was hoping for a little more of the red-stuff...Definitely recommended for anyone who likes more underground J-horror. 8/10