All About Evil

Forget Crystal Lake. Here we have a whole different kind of blood-soaked camp with writer/director Joshua Grannell’s 2010 midnight masterpiece All About Evil. Finally getting its due with a Blu-Ray and digital release by Severin, it tells the story of shy Deborah Tennis (Natasha Lyonne), who isn’t quite right in the head due to a horrible onstage incident when she was a child. She works as a librarian by day with co-worker Evelyn (Mink Stole) and runs the old Victoria revival theater at night. Deborah inherited the cinema house from her father, but her wicked stepmother Tammy (Julie Caitlin Brown) wants to sell it. Tammy even went so far as to fire the Victoria’s ancient projectionist, Mr. Twigs (Jack Donner).

“As this snuff movie squad gets to bloody work, Steven starts getting blamed for the disappearances…”

But, when Tammy pushes Deborah too hard to sign away her share of the theater, she stabs her stepmom in the neck with the pen until she dies. Without faithful Mr. Twigs to run the projector, Deborah tries to show that night’s feature, Blood Feast, to the handful of gorehounds waiting in the audience. Instead, she accidentally projects the security footage of her stabbing Tammy. The audience eats it up, as does Mr. Twigs, who helps Deborah dispose of the body. Word spreads across San Francisco about the amazing horror shorts produced by a promising, new female director, Deborah.

More people start showing up, including the city’s top midnight movie drag queen, Peaches Christ (Joshua Grannell). High school film-lover Steven (Thomas Dekker) loves what he thinks are Deborah’s make-believe acts of violence, while his mother, Linda (Cassandra Peterson), doesn’t see the appeal. Feeling the heat of oncoming stardom, Deborah blossoms from a shrinking violet to a homicidal Venus flytrap. She and Mr. Twigs start finding victims to film their murders for more shorts. Soon they enlist the help of Veda (Jade Ramsey) and Vera (Nikita Ramsey), a psychotic pair of killer twins, as well as murderous street derelict Adrian (Noah Segan). As this snuff movie squad gets to bloody work, Steven starts getting blamed for the disappearances as he is a high school kid who likes drawing scary pictures. Deborah’s flicks skyrocket in popularity as she plans to make a killing.