All About Evil

By: Amos Lassen

When Deborah Tennis (Natasha Leone), a mousy librarian inherits her father's beloved Victoria, a failing old movie house she knows that she has to save the family business and discovers her inner serial killer when she starts making a series of grisly shorts. She has a lot of fans but what they do not know is that the movies are very, very real. What her fans don't realize yet is that the murders in the movies are all too real. Thus we see that people are dying to see her movies.
If you love horror and twisted films this should be at the top of your list. "It is set in the world of a classic old horror movie-- and a love letter to classic movie houses everywhere!" Deborah quickly attracts a rabid legion of San Franciscan gore fans who help make her a local celebrity-- business booms and so Deborah has to hire people to help and does so by bringing on a full film crew of like-minded misfits. Her public, including Stephen, a high school student, do not realize that the murders they see on the screen are real. They do not realize that the actors are disappearing.
This is Joshua Grannell's (AKA Peaches Christ) first feature film. It starts with us seeing little Deborah Tennis getting ready to take the stage for her first performance at her father's movie theater, before a screening of "The Wizard of Oz". Unfortunately, the audience doesn't care for her and they jeer and heckle, as does her own mother. Then we quickly cut to today and Deborah has inherited the theater and it keeping in alive with real life (and death) horror movies. Her mother, Tammy (Julie Caitlin Brown) wants to sell the theater and make a quick profit and this argument leads to Deborah killing her mother (and with the pen that Tammy signed the takeover to Deborah).
Tammy did not know that the murder was caught on the security tape and Deborah accidentally shows it at the theater. The audience loved it thinking that they were seeing a horror film. Steven (Thomas Dekker) is a regular at the Victoria and quite a dotting fan of Deborah and he is there by her side as her reputation as a horror film direction shoots upward. Just to give you an idea of the kinds of films Deborah makes here are five titles---"A Tale of Two Severed Titties", "Gore and Peace", "Slasher in the Rye", "The Maiming of the Shrew" and "The Scarlet Leper".
This movie certainly could have bombed but director Grannell keeps everything on track and moving forward. The screenplay is clever and witty and Natasha Leone shines throughout. The film is sometimes horror and sometimes spoof but always fun.