Time to Rent “EVil Sublet”!

’tis the season for spooky, and I’m way into it this year, so expect plenty of horror and horror/comedy content here throughout the Halloween month. First out of the gate is a thing I have been eagerly awaiting for months, Allan Piper’s terrific new horror comedy film eVIL Sublet. Piper and half the cast are friends, so this is a plug as much as a review, although please know that if I don’t genuinely like a thing, I usually restrict such plugs to non-committal data. If I use modifiers, good or bad ones, to describe somebody’s work, rest assured I mean them.

Like the best high concept movie ideas, the clue to the content of this fast moving ride are contained in the title. “Evil” is a pun, meaning both malevolent forces and “E. Vil”, i.e. real estate neighborhood slang for “East Village”. The apartment from hell with the suspiciously low rent is literally that: a haunted flat where dozens of dead occupants conspire by countless methods to take the lives of whatever new suckers take the place. Their unprincipled human enabler is played by the one and only Sally Struthers in her first horror role. Jennifer Leigh Houston and Charlie Tucker are gleefully engaging as the gullible couple.

The principal shock for those who consume a lot of low budget horror (believe it or not, I consume a fair amount) is how well written, shot, edited, and acted this movie is. (Shouldn’t be a surprise given this film-maker, but low expectations are baked into the genre). I have no idea the budget, btw, but one just makes that assumption. I seem to recall that it was crowdfunded. It wasn’t $50 million, anyway. But it looks really REALLY good. One might almost say (if it wasn’t so welcome) unnecessarily good. The least spectacular element is perhaps the apartment itself, though even that has no shortage of delights and surprises. But there are uncountable gorgeous and loving establishing shots and other B-roll of New York (three boroughs, no less, plus the harbor) that set the movie several orders of magnitude above the schlock that typically categorizes the genre. It has that on TOP of the expected special effects, gore, jump scares, and gags of both kinds.

In fact, I would say it has everything but the kitchen sink, but this is about an apartment — so of course it has that as well. It is as though Piper took every funny and scary idea he ever had and put them all into one big Halloween bag. There are enough good ideas, jokes, and gimmicks here for, let’s say, 100 comedies and 30 horror movies, plus about 40 flicks from assorted other genres. It has murders, ghosts, side show stunts (and the entire Coney Island side show, come to that), a musical production number, creepy dolls, full frontal male nudity, nightmare clowns, and in-jokes about the voice-over industry. And some sly and topical political humor (no surprises with respect to any of that — Piper is the guy who directed and produced my “Now This” op-ed video about Trump’s place in the evil clown tradition five years ago).

And so many of my friends and past collaborators all playing at the top of their game: Michele Carlo, John Devore, Carla Rhodes and Cecil, Adam RealMan, Patrick David Wall, Piper himself (channeling Bela Lugosi) and, from beyond the grave, my late and much mourned friend Kenwyn Dapo, which added a third, unexpected emotion to the prevailing mix of terror and titters: a big wave of sadness. And I’ve even worked with Helen Hong, sort of (we did this podcast together a couple of years ago). She plays a cranky Chinatown psychic in the film.

Mandatory viewing. I am absolutely going to watch this one many times to catch some of what I missed. As of today it is streaming on Amazon and other platforms. Good goin’, guys!