The Evil Dead
The Evil Dead is a graphic horror directed by Sam Raimi (who went on to direct the GOOD spider man films) and stars Bruce Campbell and a host of unknowns who either became stay at home parents or into the porn industry. What sets Evil Dead apart from other films is it was one of the first to show absolutely over the top gore and at the same time be quite scary. Released in 1981 but filmed in 1979 with a lot of post production problems such as actually paying for the thing, it caused quite a stir and was banned in a lot of countries most famously being on the BBC's video nasty list along with the also excellent cannibal holocaust.
Best bit
The best bits are a toss up between the absolute gore fest that is this film and the actual scary parts, the special effects are fantastic with pencils being gouged into ankles and blood shooting out to recently hacked body parts quivering on the floorboards and the best (and probably only) tree rape scene committed to film.
The scary parts are truly unnerving with the floating camera acting as the disembodied presence of the evil within the forest floating around ready to possess the next person it finds. the most powerful thing about the film though is a real sense of claustrophobia, these guys are stuck in this fucking cabin and are not going anywhere any time soon. When people run around the forest and it all starts to look the same you know its game over man, game over.
Worst Bit
Its hard to talk about a worst bit with evil dead because its such a fucking classic, but if i had to say it would probably be the acting. Some very cheesy dialogue here folks but hey it was the late 70's whaddya expect?
Also i may be proved completely wrong next year when the fucking REMAKE comes out but if it is crap (and hollywoods track record of remakes will probably make this so) people may be turned off watching the original if they have not seen it and do not like the remake which is a crime! hopefully it will be among the few ones that do it right like Texas chainsaw massacre the fly and night of the living dead. So yeah very hard to fault this film!
What it means to me
When i first saw this I was really fucking young, My auntie would give me copies of my cousins old playstation magazine she was going to throw out and there was a big section on ratings in video games, this was caused by a lot of controversy over the level of violence in resident evil 2 released in 1998. There were a list of iconic horror films and pictures beside them, I remember seeing a picture of Ash with his face covered in blood thinking that looks really cool. Some time later I was in the square with a friend I had met in hospital and their older siblings, I convinced them to buy me Evil dead on video which was difficult as i was about 10 or 11 at the time. brought it home and sickened my friends. I distinctly remember one of my friends (who lived beside a forest) being absolutely traumatized by it and cursing me for showing it to him.
Summing up
I would highly recommend The Evil Dead to fans of scare and gore, it balances the both pretty well and should be an inspiration for aspiring directors wanting to shoot a film with VERY little money. check it out.
