Let me tell you ALL ABOUT EVIL (2010)

Posted by Daniel Metz

This weekend was surely a moment to remember in the Austin Texas film scene. We were visited not by one but by two screen legends: Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson, of Movie Macabre fame, and Mink Stole, the Dreamland doll who played Connie Marble, Taffy Davenport, and Peggy Gravel, among other notable roles. They were here to publicize All About Evil, a new film that has brought these two older women together. Shepherding these two icons was director Joshua Grannell, who performed as his drag queen character Peaches Christ. Needless to say, it was quite an affair.

Elvira and Mink were both marvelous guests: they were friendly, open-minded, and proud of their pasts within a cinema that is anything but high-culture. Peaches was fun, although, in comparison to our resident drag queen emcee Rebecca Havemeyer she could not hold a bejeweled candle. The question and answer session was informative and really fun. Being around drag queens really is a much better experience than being around straight people, I think.

Director/Host Peaches Christ

But, unfortunately, the personal moment ended and we had to start the film. All About Evil is an homage to horror films, a sort of Shaun of the Dead meets All About Eve in which a theatre manager is overwhelmed with the corruption of celebrity. The story: a young woman murders her mother out of rage, and when she accidentally screens the security camera footage of the butchery to her movie house, she realizes that they like it and she loves her newfound status as “director.” Soon she is killing strangers and acquaintances alike, creating literary short films like “A Tale of Two Titties” and “Gore and Peace.”

Sounds campy and fun, right? Well, it is. I really did enjoy this film, and I was smiling through most of it. That said, it is not without its flaws. First and foremost, the acting is wretched. Natasha Lyonne, who many will know from her early career in Slums of Beverly Hills, But I’m a Cheerleader and the American Pie cycle, plays the exhibitor-turned-auteur. In her entire career she has never looked so beautiful as she does in this film, her breasts pushed real far up and her hair flowing with a sinister twist a la the Bride of Frankenstein. She never looked so good but she never acted so badly, delivering melodramatic lines and puns with almost no motivation or conviction.

The other actors are really just as bad. Elvira plays a mom here, a straight mother who lacks any charm. As it turns out, if you take away the charisma from Elvira you are left with very little aside from a mop of red hair. Mink, too, is forced to play subdued and square and comes off helpless and lifeless. It doesn’t make sense to me why anyone would take two of the most successful and effective outrageous comediennes and have them play straight. Grannell/Christ needs to learn how to direct actors and how to cast them for their strengths as well.

Hey Elvira, where are your...charms?

The only performing saving grace, aside from Peaches’ own hefty cameo role which is quite considerable and works well, is Noah Segan. Segan is fastly become one of my favorite character actors, thanks first and foremost to his inspired turn in the 2008 shocker Deadgirl. In that film, he plays a robe-wearing necro-rapist who penetrates bullet holes and generally ruins peoples’ plans. Since then, he impressed me as the lead in Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. In this film, he plays a murderer who Lyonne recruits to participate in her film/homicide crew, and he gives off a manic, menacing quality that is nearly beautiful.

Take this to be a similar sentiment to my great thesis on Rooney Mara in my Youth in Revolt review; every once in a while a young actor/actress shines so bright that even though they play peripheral roles they exude star quality. As long as he stops making low-budget horror films, he could have a good future.

The camera work, story, dialogue, and pacing are all uninspired and flat. A great film this is not. It is a lot of fun, however, and it also reaches points of excess and subversion that are wonderful. For instance, Lyonne makes out with the elderly projectionist in a fit of egotism and erotic-power that is wholly unexplainable. This kind of outrageous scene pervades this film made by a drag queen with the largest wigs I’ve ever seen.

Lyonne and Mink Stole in a library torture scene. Notice how fab and far gone Lyonne looks. If only Peaches allowed Mink the same madness.

The film bears a striking resemblance to another film, a Terror Tuesday film that played this week last year: Nightmare in Blood. This triumphant feature is about a vampire who acts as a vampire in horror films, and when he appears at a horror convention in an old cinema, people start dying. The setting of an old movie house in addition to the plot point of horror fans not knowing that a cinematic murderer is actually a real murderer make these eerily similar works.

I guess its good to support independent, self-financed filmmaking. It just makes me think of our Rebecca, though. How great would it be if SHE made a movie…