Way back in 1988, while Freddy, Jason, and Chucky were humoring American audiences, a dastardly little film called Evil Dead Trap was horrifying Japan. Naturally, it has nothing to do with the Evil Dead movies, even though it does throw in the shaky cam approach. I guess they were trying to cash in a little.
Evil Dead Trap feels more like Saw way before Saw existed. It is essentially a wickedly gory and violent slasher with a trippy Dario Argento look and feel—complete with a killer wearing a raincoat and a face covering.
A TV show host receives a sick clip of a woman being mutilated—a woman who looks just like her. This is some fucked up gore! Close up, skin-splitting slices and the absolute worst eye puncture scene I’ve ever witnessed (yes, worse than Fulci’s Zombie eye scene).
Of course the TV show host wants to go to the location where the clip was shot. She drags a handful of her co-workers to go with her. They arrive at an abandoned building and immediately split up! One pair goes off to have sex. And characters start to fall victim to some seriously gruesome booby traps. The special effects are amazingly disgusting.
But there’s something more sinister than a killer in a mask in this one. The TV show host comes upon a well-dressed man who says he is in the building looking for his brother. He also seems to show up any time she is in desperate need of help. And he keeps getting these odd attacks and sending her away to get out of the building alone.
Oh yeah. This is where the crazy Asian horror madness comes in, making this anything but a run-of-the-mill slasher. Evil Dead Trap is like the grandfather of all freaky Asian horror films!
Hideki – Evil Dead Trap II (1992)
Hideki – Evil Dead Trap II has one thing in common with the original…Hideki, the name of an evil entity plays a part in both films. This is just a hot bizarre mess that you can definitely watch independently of the first film.
There’s this overweight, butch film projectionist who has no friends. Well, there is a news reporter chick she hangs out with who introduces her to this weird married man. Thing is, the projectionist is also a serial killer slaughtering all the women that the news reporter is talking about on her broadcasts.
It’s a big psycho soap opera. The married man is in hot pursuit of the projectionist…but will bang the reporter if he can’t get a piece of the projectionist. The projectionist keeps seeing this mysterious boy in the background of the news reporter’s stories. There are pregnancies and abortions. There are multiple murders. There are knife and razor fights that go on forever yet seem to spill little blood.
It’s just really hard to feel any sense of fear or dread when the entire cast is insane. And even the nonsensical morbidity wasn’t enough to keep me interested.
The Brutal Insanity of Love (aka: Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer 1993)
Evil Dead Trap 3 has a character from the first film played by a different actress (not sure if it’s actually supposed to be the same character), and an actor from the second film playing a different character. So basically, it has nothing to do with either of the first two films. I’ve not seen it because it isn’t available on DVD, but from what I’ve read, it is a mystery with gore thrown in at the end rather than a horror movie.
I’d suggest watching and cherishing the first Evil Dead Trap and pretending the other two don’t exist.
