"I command you, Prince of Evil, heed my call. Give life to the instruments of my retribution."

I'm going to go on record here and say bullying does not cause school shootings.

There may be a correlation between bullying and taking an interest in Satanism and personal computing, but no causal connection has yet been proved.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Evilspeak.

This 1981 William Asher film opens with one of the most beautiful ritual sacrifice sequences I've ever seen. It's set on a beach and the waves crash against the rocks. Then, just as the virgin's head comes off we cut to present day 1981, when young Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard) makes an error that loses his team the soccer game. 

Coopersmith is an orphan attending West Andover Military Academy, and his teammates, coach, teachers, the chaplain and the colonel all hate him. Even the colonel's sexy secretary seems to have it in for the guy. There aren't a lot of scenes in which Coopersmith isn't being bullied by his peers or unfairly punished by an authority figure.

One day his punishment is to clean out the chapel's basement. There, he finds some cool Satanic paraphernalia buried in the wall. He hangs on to a particular, leather-bound book written in Latin, and develops an interest in conducting a black mass. 

Later, he leaves the book in the colonel's office, and the secretary lies right to his face when he comes back to ask for it. 

Without the book, how is he to overcome his struggles and find peace and happiness in Yours Truly? No need to panic, he can look everything up on a computer.

Now, we're talking about a 1981 computer that a student might use at a prestigious Christian military academy built on the desecrated grounds of centuries-past Satanic rituals. He's working with a computer that can't really do anything, until you accept that it is also a computer in a movie in 1981, so it can do everything, especially when it's possessed.

Coopersmith's torments keep piling up and everybody just keeps pushing and pushing him and pushing him, and the cafeteria chef gives him a puppy, and everybody just keeps pushing him some more. 

Something's gotta give, right? Boy, does it ever. I usually try not to say too much about the third act because I hate to spoil anything, but it is too highly satisfying to not talk about. I'll keep it vague by reducing what I liked about it to a haiku:

   Decapitations

   Killer pigs in catacombs

   The chapel burns 

Nothing spoiled? Good! I will let slip though that the fun really starts when you see the nail fly out of the Jesus statue's hand and bury itself in the chaplain's forehead. 

It's a good movie. 

Evilspeak streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube.