Evil Laugh

Mark tells Johnny to rub himself to make Connie horny. The little details like Mark having sex and planning to have more sex with his girlfriend, and that Connie is engaged to Jerry, who is still conspicuously missing, don't seem to bother Johnny. He's one cool cat, that Johnny. Connie and Tina are fixing up the nursery. It is still the first day that they are at the house, and both of them are in their fourth outfits. Tina is wearing the first top so far that does not show off any cleavage. She makes the horrendous mistake of remarking that Martin didn't kill the babies. I don't know why she says it. Connie never even hinted that Martin spared the babies. Well, that just sets Connie off. She goes quickly and quietly insane, slipping into the "eerily knowledgeable about obscure details" mode that one character must have in every horror movie. She tells Tina that there were six babies, what the colors of their blankets were, when in the night they were killed, and EXACTLY how each one of them died in excruciating detail. She claims to be fascinated with the case. I don't give a baboon's nipple. No newspaper is going to report all that. Even if she got access to the actual police reports, there is no way in hell that she could possibly know all of those details about the murders. The only way she could have possibly known is if she was the real killer. But she's not, so don't go feeling like you just got some insider tip. However, judging from the numbers Connie gave earlier, there were a whole lot more than ten kids in the house. There would have to have been closer to twenty. Whatever. Tina changes the subject to something that makes her a little more comfortable. She runs down a list of the guys she'd have sex with (all of them) and under what circumstances (any).

Yes, that is a man's ass, and yes, that is a knife coming out of it. Believe me, I don't like it any more than you do.

Mark, Johnny, Connie, and Tina say that they're going to go skinny dipping, but they all keep their bathing suits on. What a wild and crazy bunch. Tina is back to her boobily ways, wearing a one-piece bikini that gives anyone taller than her a clear view of her navel. Barney remains inside, wielding a bat. Burns shows up to fix the hot water. Barney convinces him to give him a ride back into town once the boiler is working. Burns goes down to the basement, where the killer sneaks up behind him. As Burns turns around, the killer takes off his mask. Burns recognizes him, but doesn't manage to spit out the name before the killer stabs him through his stomach and out his ass. Barney sits on the couch to wait for Burns. He sees the black tape sitting next to the stereo, so he takes the white tape out and puts that one in. When he presses play, it's the old woman/wigger voice. WRONG. The voice was on the white tape, "Party the Whole Night Long" was on the black tape. Come on, Brascia, you can do better than that. Barney freaks out, as I would if the tapes were magically reversed, and runs down to the basement to find Burns. Instead, he finds only a toupee. The killer runs past him and locks him in the basement. Barney screams for a far too long and comes to the conclusion that the killer is none other than Martin himself! Meh.

Outside, Mark tells Connie that Johnny has a bad rash. As a dermatologist, she pledges to do whatever she can to help. Johnny finds her and starts talking to her while rubbing himself. Connie thinks it's the rash, even though Johnny's skin isn't even remotely irritated, so she invites him up to her room so she can take a look. With Johnny gone, Mark seizes the opportunity to hit on Tina. He had no problem telling Johnny he was going to have sex with Tina earlier, but now it's a complicated game of subterfuge. Mark, you rogue! Your treachery will not go unpunished. For the first time in her life, Tina refuses sex. Mark whines that he's getting painful blueballs - I swear this is true - and since Tina's studying to be a nurse, she has an obligation to help him out. Let's clarify - they all call themselves doctors, but they're actually medical students who are just getting internships. Johnny isn't even a student anymore, he quit to be an X-ray technician, and Tina is studying to be a nurse. I have plenty of respect for X-ray technicians and nurses - I've had a lot of experience with both - but they are NOT doctors. If nurses were doctors, you'd call them freaking doctors and they wouldn't go to nursing school. In summation: hate world, all die. In any case, Mark's persuasive argument has little effect on the stalwart Tina, by which I mean that she doesn't actually have sex with him, but she does jam her hand down his bathing suit like her life depended on it. However, she still maintains that she won't have sex with him because she doesn't want him to think she's a slut. Refer to the earlier conversation for further details. End result: they go inside to have sex.

Johnny tries to score with Connie, but she realizes the confusion and turns him away, mentioning that she's a doctor seven hundred sixty-one times in the process. Mark brings Tina back to his bedroom. Again, she decides that she won't have sex because she doesn't want him to think she's a slut. Again, Mark promises her that he won't so she agrees to screw him brainless. Mark also assures her that they don't need a condom because he got a vasectomy when he was seventeen. I'm going to repeat that, in case you didn't catch it all: Mark also assures her that they don't need a condom because he got a vasectomy, a surgical procedure that makes it impossible for a man to father children and that requires the shaving of the testes, when he was seventeen years old. Uh...... huh. Well, Tina doesn't think there's anything strange about it, so I guess it's okay.

 She tells him to check under the bed in case Barney's under there again. Mark checks under the bed, behind the curtain, and in the closet. Lo and behold, there is someone in the closet, and that someone is the killer, who hits Mark in the head three times with an axe. And how does Tina, who was so frightened that she had to make Mark check the room for any hidden people, respond to seeing Mark's head split open like a casaba melon with a fucking axe? "Hey guys, come on. Stop fooling around." She assumes that it's just Barney playing around again. Allow me to point out that when she saw someone in the closet, she immediately thought of Barney. I don't think I have to spell this one out, kiddies. But I will anyway. Barney's gay. Tina is so convinced that Mark isn't really deal, despite the huge pool of blood surrounding his massive hole in his corpse's skull, that she offers her neck to the killer, telling him to kill her. She is shocked when the killer actually does wrap his hands around her neck. The killer strangles Connie to death in a little less than two seconds (i.e. one second).

No one can escape the microwave! Wriggling... is useless!

On his way out of Connie's room, Johnny takes a sledgehammer to the face, courtesy of the killer. Barney listens from behind the basement door as the killer drags Johnny into the kitchen, ties his hands behind his back, then sticks his head in the microwave, which is conveniently located on the floor. Johnny wakes up and rather than attempting to escape the fiendish deathtrap through complex maneuvers such as "twisting a little to the side" or "bending at the waist," he tries reasoning with the killer, whom he assumes is Martin. At one point he shouts, "If you're getting revenge on doctors, I'm just an X-ray technician." THERE. Finally, some freaking admission that not everyone who is remotely associated with the medical field is automatically a doctor. Amazingly, that doesn't placate the killer, so Johnny tells him, "Martin, you can't use the microwave with the door open!" The killer is too smart to be confused by Johnny's mind games, and he turns the microwave on anyway, setting it to one minute. In the span of that minute, Johnny rambles endlessly about how it's not working. Then he starts saying crap such as, "I'm Johnny. I'm three years old. I'm young again!" Then his head explodes. I've conferred with experts on the matter (read: ICQ'd Lowtax while we were both drunk) and we still couldn't come to a definite conclusion on whether Johnny's life was flashing before his eyes, if he suffered massive brain damage from the microwave radiation, or if he's just an idiot. Considering he wrote the damn script, I'm leaning toward the third option.

Kiefer Sutherland met an unfortunate demise during the filming of 24. The audience didn't notice any change in his acting. Oh, I am such a bitch!

Connie is roused by the sound of the microwave ("Ooh, popcorn!"). Going down the hall, she comes across the bloody sheets in Mark's room, but no bodies. She desperately tries to call the sheriff, but the phone goes dead. In a panic, she grabs her standard issue doctoring magnum, which, as luck would have it, was laying on a table in the hallway. She makes her way to Sammy and Betty's room, and finds blood there, too, but no bodies. She is startled by a noise, so she screams Martin's name and fires two shots down the hall without looking to see who's there. Gee, it's a good thing it wasn't any of your friends who you don't know for sure are actually dead, wasn't it, Connie? If that had been Tina, who's death was bloodless, looking for help, or Barney, who she hasn't even bothered to look for, or God forbid Jerry, she'd have shot her friend twice. You see, that's why women shouldn't handle guns. 

In actuality, there was no one there, so all Connie did was put two slugs in the wall of the orphanage she's trying to open. Well done, there. She goes downstairs and finds a shitload of blood on the floor around the microwave. She goes down to the basement and finds the bodies of Jerry, the delivery boy, and Mr. Burns, but no sign of her other friends or Barney. The killer appears on the stairs. Connie shoots the killer at point blank range, sending him flying back against a wall. The killer is not slowed in the least by this, which he proves by throwing his knife at the gun, knocking it out of Connie's hands. You'd think with aim and strength like that, the killer would have just thrown the knife at Connie, but then you'd be using far more brain cells than went into the production of this cinematic aneurysm. Connie begs Martin to spare her, but the killer pulls off his mask, revealing that he is not Martin at all, but actually Sadie Burns! Ha ha! I had you so fooled with my use of male-specific pronouns that you never suspected the ONLY OTHER SURVIVING CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE. Well, to be honest, I don't think the male-specific pronouns were that far off. I mean, look at this woman.

Sadie reveals that Martin was her son from her first marriage and she's pissed for some reason that anyone would try to reopen the house where her son killed himself and a whole mess of other people. She prepares to stab Connie, but Barney crawls out of his hiding place (God, he's a wuss), grabs the gun, and shoots Sadie twice in the back. She jerks slightly when the first bullet hits, but not at all for the second one. This is the same gun that sent her flying back eight feet into a wall two minutes ago. Ah, acting. The lost art. Barney explains that Sadie didn't kill him because she thought he was already dead. I don't know why she would have thought that. She only locked him in the basement for an hour or so. Most people can tough that out. As Connie and Barney embrace, Sadie's eyes open, and she smiles and laughs her revolting clown laugh, then promptly dies again.

We cut to two weeks later. I know what you're saying - how could we have gone throughout this entire movie without a shower scene of a woman rubbing her breasts? Well, Brascia threw that in right here. The shot holds on Connie rubbing her breasts, or rather on her body double rubbing her breasts, for a good long while. Finally, Connie gets out of the shower and listens to a radio news broadcast that says that "Sadie Burns, the alleged killer, apparently tortured her victims before killing them." No, I'm pretty sure she didn't. In fact, compared to some of the other movies I've seen, the deaths were all relatively quick and painless. Even the strangling was over pretty damn fast. Well, whatever. There is a knock at the door of her apartment, so Connie turns off the radio and goes to see who's there. When she opens the door, the hallway is empty. She closes it, but it swings open again and the killer lunges into the room, stupid mask and all. The killer chases a terrified Connie throughout the apartment, knocking over lamps and ceramic ornaments. The killer finally traps Connie up against a wall and stabs. The knife folds to the side, as it was made of cardboard. The killer pulls off his mask. It was just Barney. He collapses in laughter. He thinks it was the funniest thing since he fed Mark those testicles, even though he was more frightened by the killer than anyone else. Connie is justifiably pissed. She grabs a pair of scissors, and as the shot fades to the credits, we hear Barney getting the stabbing he so sorely deserved.

The first time I saw "Evil Laugh," it kept me in stitches the whole way through. I fell out of my chair during the "blueballs" scene. I was certain that this movie had to be intentionally terrible. On the second viewing, though, my opinion changed. There were clear signs of effort. Somewhere along the lines, someone really thought they were making a serviceable movie. That saddens me to no end. This movie was stupendously bad in so many ways. The plot twists were ridiculous, the dialogue was pathetic, and the sound jumped in levels so much, I had to adjust the volume on my TV constantly throughout the whole thing. One moment, the sound would be picked up on one microphone, and the next it would jump to a different mic that was set for a totally different level. An amazing number of lines were clearly redubbed. At several points, characters mysteriously say lines without moving their mouths at all. At other points, the actors had clear trouble remembering their lines. "Evil Laugh" was utterly hilarious, and yet, I still hate it so very much. I find myself in quite a quandary.

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Ben "Greasnin" Platt