| Evil Ed | |
| Director: | Anders Jacobsson[1] |
| Producer: | Göran Lundström |
| Screenplay: |
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| Starring: |
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| Music: | Henriksson & Lindh |
| Cinematography: | Anders Jacobsson |
| Editing: | Anders Jacobsson |
| Studio: | Evil Ed Productions |
| Runtime: | 93 minutes[2] |
| Country: | Sweden |
| Language: | Swedish |
Evil Ed is a 1995 Swedish horror comedy film directed by Anders Jacobsson and starring Johan Rudebeck, Per Löfberg and Olof Rhodin. The film's plot follows film editor Edward Tor Swenson, who begins to go insane and embark on a murder spree after editing too many gory horror films.
When the original editor of the Loose Limbs series of splatter films commits suicide, the head of "The Splatter & Gore Department", Sam Campbell, assigns Edward Tor Swenson, an editor for European Distributors, to finish what the original editor was doing, and allows Edward the use of his private country cottage so Edward can go about his work in peace.
Over the course of a few days, Edward begins to lose touch with sanity. One night, he dreams about a mental asylum patient telling him to kill others to "correct the world". When Nick, a young employee of European Distributors pulls up to Edward's house to deliver developed film to be edited, he is rudely reprimanded by Edward. Edward begins to have hallucinations about demons, monsters, and other creatures. When Sam comes to check up on Edward's work, Edward hallucinates that he is a white demon, and accidentally kills him by snapping his neck in a panic.
The next evening, Nick comes by Ed's cottage to deliver more developed film, but is attacked by Ed, and left in critical condition. After this, Edward kills two intruders who break into his house. Worried for her husband, Edward's wife, Barbara, and daughter go to visit him, but are almost killed by Edward, until Barbara shoots him in the shoulder with one of the intruders' revolver. He is taken to a psychiatric ward immediately after the attack, while Nick, who managed to crawl outside where he was noticed by a passing car, is taken to the same hospital.
In the mental ward, Edward is sedated by doctors, but he hallucinates that the attending doctors are demons and kills them. As he leaves the ward, he also kills a mental patient, which catches the attention of a security guard, who quickly calls a SWAT team. Edward assaults Nick in his hospital room, and abducts his girlfriend, Mel, who came to visit him.
Edward sedates Mel and props her on a hospital bed. Edward soon gets into a gun battle with the SWAT team, killing all of them, and gets into a stand off.
Edward kills Mel by impaling her with hospital equipment. As he's about to perform surgery on Mel, he hallucinates that Mel is the mental patient, who tells Edward that he has to pay for his terrible job of correcting the world. As he's about to stab Mel again, Nick shoots Edward's hand off with the SWAT Team Captain's shotgun. He shoots him again, blowing his arm off, and finally his head, killing him.
Nick walks up to Ed's dead body, and then to Mel's body, revealing that Edward had only hallucinated killing her. A voice over of Nick is heard telling the audience that one day the world will be a happy place, and "it will happen" eventually.
Cast adapted from Arrow Video release.[3]
Evil Ed was originally titled The Censor and made over the course of three years. Initially intending to make a grander film, the lack of money involved led to it being developed as a low-budget horror film. The film was shot in four-weeks on 16mm and finished shooting in late 1992. Evil Ed was filmed in Länna-ateljéerna, Jakobsberg and the former Roslagstull Hospital in Sweden in 1995. Anders Jacobsson began editing while Göran Lundström began work in the United States on horror films like Necronomicon, Lurking Fear and Shrunken Heads. Lundström returned to Sweden when the filmmakers decided they wanted add more material to their initial cut, adding the opening McClane scene, and a new final act at a hospital. The film was completed in 1995.
Evil Ed premiered on November 11, 1995 at the Stockholm International Film Festival as part of the "Twilight Zone" genre section. It was released theatrically years later on May 4, 1997 in four theatres in Gothenburg, Stockholm and Uppsala.
The film was released direct-to-video by A-Pix in the United States in September 1996 in both an R-rated and unrated version. It was released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 1998.