Halloween Horror: The Evil Dead

Hello everybody! Today we have one of my personal favorite horror/comedy films The Evil Dead.

THE EVIL DEAD

STARRING: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Hal Delrich, Betsy Baker, Sarah York

DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi

GENRE: Horror, Comedy

YEAR: 1981

COUNTRY: United States

Five friends go to a cabin in the woods for a vacation. They discover a volume called “The Book of the Dead” and a tape recorder belonging to a professor, who also owns the cabin. One of them plays back what is recorded on the tape– which just happens to be Candarian resurrection passages translated from the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead) by the professor, which unleashes an evil force from the woods. The people start turning into evil deadites, and the others soon learn from the tape that the only way to kill a person who is turned into a deadite is by total body dismemberment. People are dying left and right; one girl early in the film looses control and runs off into the woods, only to be raped by the trees.

 

This film is one of the most gruesome and gory films I’ve ever seen. Yes,  in a industry overrun by movies such as Saw and Hostel, this movie still happens to make me cringe, even thirty years after its release. The down right lack of ability of the newcomer actors didn’t hinder my enjoyment of this film in the least.

Most films in this genre nowadays take things much to serious and end up failing in being believable. Where this movie succeeds is in its ability not to take itself so seriously. Some of my favorite scenes in this film were the reactions of the characters to the demons in the cabin. Seemingly dreadful and gruesome scenes were for some reason unknown to me hilarious at times.

Computer generated graphics only played a minor part in this film and it made for a much more authentic experience. One of the best aspects of this film comes from practical effects. Sure they might have been crude and low budget but Sam Raimi and the staff did a wonderful job. Every impaled and dismembered body part was done masterfully. The make up for the demons in the cabin was also some of the best I’ve ever seen.

Evil Dead was originally titled: “Into the Woods” – the title of the pitch film used to acquire potential investors. It told about five college students who drove to a remote shack, played a reel-to-reel tape recorder with incantations, looked into a old book with demonic drawings and incantations, and summoned up bloody hell. 22 year-old writer/director Sam Raimi created some of the most exuberant, inventive, comic-book, tongue-in-cheek parodies with horror themes ever produced – starring Bruce Campbell as the one-armed protagonist with a chain saw. Famed future director Joel Cohen co-edited the film with Raimi.

Due to this film’s graphic violence in a few of its scenes, it was banned in several European countries. In the UK, the film was subject to obscenity trials and various censorship cuts – particularly the misogynistic tree-rape scene. On-screen blood and gore would have given the film an NC-17 rating if Raimi had presented the film to the ratings board when it was first released. With an initial production budget of only $375,000, the film grossed almost $11 million (upon re-release). The Evil Dead was remade as Evil Dead (2013), the debut feature film of director Fede Alvarez (and produced by both Raimi and Bruce Campbell). The remake affectionately retained all of the blood, gore, and slapstick horror of the original film.

PROS:

•  Main cast performances.
• Casting.
• Gore.
• Doesn’t take itself too seriously.
• Limited CGI

CONS:

•  Just a little too much slapstick comedy.

SCORE: 9.0 / 10

If you have any suggestions for films/TV/Games/Music/Anime for me to review, drop me a comment! Remember: Like Media In Review @ https://www.facebook.com/MediaInReview?ref=hl Follow Media in Review @ https://twitter.com/Media_In_Review.