EVIL JUDGMENT

Directed by Claudio Castravelli. Canada. 1984.

EVIL JUDGMENT is the most Italian Canadian slasher film ever made. In fact, it doesn’t feel much like a mid-80s slasher at all. It feels like transcontinental giallo. It eschews the typical past trauma-based motives that ran rampant in the slasher film for something much more conspiratorial. Slasher villains are usually Norman Bates-esque momma’s boys or guys with serious hang-ups about the opposite sex. Rarely do they have anything to do with mob bosses, missing judges, and corrupt cops. This shift in tone from loosely plotted exploitation fluff laden with nudity and ludicrous murder set pieces to something you actually have to pay attention to if you have any hopes of understanding the final act twists makes EVIL JUDGMENT an iffy recommend for slasher fans. But if you're a fan of giallo films, this might just hit the spot.

And let's be honest, if you're a giallo devotee like myself, well, you could do a lot worse, especially in 1984. The giallo had already suffered a pretty serious dent to its popularity, with yearly release totals no longer in the dozens by the end of the 70s. Argento was still around, giving us TENEBRAE in 1982, PHENOMENA in 1985, and OPERA in 1987. We even got a couple of Fulci efforts with NEW YORK RIPPER and MURDER ROCK. But for the most part, the gialli of the 80s were weak sauce, mostly directed by lesser figures like Lamberto Bava and Carlo Vanzina. While not a total train wreck of a decade, the gialli of the 80s felt more like routine cable TV thrillers than the deliriously kitsch, kink and violence-laden films of the previous decade.

EVIL JUDGMENT lacks the wonkiness of mid-80s slashers and the high energy of the 70s giallo film. It instead feels like someone took an unmade giallo script from 1972, transplanted it into the cold Canadian north, and dressed it up in mid-80s slasher movie clothing. Like some exploitation film chimera, it feels like it was Lego’d together from different eras. Sometimes, you can’t really see the seams and the film operates at a decent level. Other times, it feels positively alien, like a movie badly imitating another movie. But those moments don’t ever truly derail the film. They’re mostly just brief, off-putting glitches in an otherwise solidly constructed flick.

I guess I should describe the plot now...

The movie opens in typical slasher fashion with a mental patient escaping the hospital, leaving a doctor and nurse dead in his wake. We then jump forward an unspecified amount of time to meet our lead, Janet, a waitress at a greasy spoon. Janet and her seriously chauvinistic boyfriend Dino are not having a good time right now. It mostly stems from Janet not wanting to sever her friendship with April.

Who is April? Well, she’s a hooker. We know this because it’s all April talks about. Currently on a break from her toxic relationship, Janet is pressured by her friend into joining her for a threesome with a rich recluse living in a mansion somewhere in the city. Janet goes along with the plan, meeting chubby, old Ron at his luxury estate. Janet is put off by the thought of having to touch either of her companions, but we’re put off for an entirely different reason. Doesn’t Ron look a tad bit like that guy we saw breaking out of the nuthouse at the start of the film? Nah, it can’t be, can it?

As the night wears on, Janet’s cold feet turn to ice. She wants to back out and go home, but April persists, slipping her a sedative for the nerves. Relax, she tells her. They’ll barely have to touch him. He mostly only likes to watch. Janet slips out of her top and climbs into bed. Right as things are about to get sticky, the lights go out.

Ron goes to check the breaker while Janet passes out in the bathroom. When Ron doesn’t return, April goes looking for him, only to have her throat slit by a black-gloved assailant. Janet finally comes to and stumbles across Ron, his throat cut ear to ear. She rushes outside, desperately trying to get to safety, but is grabbed from behind and knocked unconscious. Waking up in the hospital, she finds her wrists bandaged. The killer had sliced them open, leaving her for dead. Despite Janet’s insistence that April and Ron were murdered, the cop assigned to her case, Inspector Armstrong, doesn’t believe her, writing her off as just some “two-bit junkie whore” who tried to off herself.

Dino believes her, though, which is shocking considering his general distaste for hookers, drug addicts, and women. After Janet is attacked in her apartment by the killer, the two begin investigating in earnest, eventually breaking into the old mansion after dark. Curiously enough, they don’t find any evidence that anything odd occurred at the house. The crime scene had been wiped clean. They do come across something interesting: news stories detailing the successful prosecution of several high-profile mafia figures. And who was the judge that presided over those trials? None other than Judge Ron Robertson, the chubby, old perv Janet found murdered the other night. And who aided Ron in his crusade against organized crime? That would be Inspector Armstrong, the man who seems dead set on not believing a word Janet has to say about what she experienced. Is this revenge? And if so, who was that man we saw in the beginning? Maybe a mafioso dead set on putting his prosecutors in the ground?

In typical giallo fashion, this leads to a series of murder set pieces where everyone in Janet’s orbit finds themselves cut to ribbons by the killer. We even get a few potential red herrings. Maybe the killer is really Armstrong. After all, Janet and Dino do find a surveillance tape in Ron’s house that shows Armstrong in the house on the night of the murders. But then how do you explain the real mystery on that tape? It seems to show, clear as day, Ron leaving the house in the aftermath of the attack, very much alive. Is this really a case of revenge or is something far more sinister afoot?

EVIL JUDGMENT is readily available on streaming services, so I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who might wish to track it down. While it definitely isn’t a world-class mystery, and you’re likely not going to care much whether or not Janet lives to the closing credits, this is a solid little giallo-infused 1980s murder mystery. It keeps the twists and turns coming, even if the murder set pieces are flat and unexciting. All of the deaths are fairly well telegraphed thanks to a relatively tiny pool of characters. Dino is the quintessential giallo male lead, a chauvinistic, rough-talking asshole who still somehow manages to be the hero if only because everyone else with a dick is somehow worse. If the film has a fatal flaw, it’s Janet. I don’t lay the blame for this at the feet of Pamela Collyer. She does the best she can do with this character. It’s just not a well-written part. She’s far more reactive than active, never rising above a damsel in distress.

But those issues aside, this is a much better film than you would ever expect. You only need to walk into it with the proper mindset. This is not going to be 90 minutes of balls-to-the-wall tits and gore. There’s a lot of talking, some really bad dancing, lots of awkward ethnic stereotyping, and a narrative that demands you pay attention to the details. An unsteady mix of influences, sure, but a welcome respite from the usual 1980s brainrot slashers.