Having not written a review in a while I decided to jot down my thoughts on the original 1981 horror fest, The Evil Dead. A gloriously colourful horror flick from Spider-man director Sam Raimi. I know that regular reviewer Rich Long has this as his favourite film so i'm hoping my words do this film justice. Check out my review after the jump...
In
preparation for the upcoming remake of the Evil Dead, I decided to
revisit Sam Raimi's original 1981 horror flick for the first time in
ages. I'd just picked up the U.K blu-ray and was kinda stoked to put
it on so without waiting I ripped off the cellophane and put the disc
in. At first I was only going to check out the new transfer from
Sony, and as soon an I knew, I was 20 minutes into the film. Unlike
some who hold this original film so close to their heart, one such
person being regular reviewer here at Cine-apocalypse towers, Richard
Long, I never really understood why people loved this one so much.
Now I can pinpoint why, you see my first intro into the world of Ash
and the Deadites was Evil Dead 2, the 1987 sequel come remake of the
first, so for me, not being there at the beginning, well I wasn't
even born when the original came out, I had the pleasure of seeing a
more polished and higher budgeted film with the second one, so
watching the first one at the age I was, the disappointment was huge,
but, and there is always a but, as I grew older and matured as a film
fan I came to realise that the original Evil Dead is a phenomenal
piece of film-making to think that a group of essentially teens, got
together, scraped a bunch of cash together, grabbed a camera and shot
this film over the course of 3 years. These days, anyone with a
digital camera and a credit card can make a film, but back in '79
when they started shooting, this kind of student/guerilla film making
hadn't really been seen since Romero shot Night of The Living Dead in
'68. Just from the sheer effort put into Evil Dead, you can see that
Sam Raimi would go onto make his mark in Hollywood and he did,
racking up three huge Spider-man film, Oz The Great and Powerful and
flicks like The Gift and For The Love Of The Game but he never forgot
his horror roots and gave us the pretty awesome Drag Me To Hell in
2005, he never forgot his friends either and has features his best
friend Bruce Campbell in almost every single film he's made, even if
it's just a cameo or his scene has been cut. Campbell was there at
the start, he was the main lead in the original Evil Dead, playing
the character of Ash, a character who would become a cult horror icon
alongside Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees even though Ash only
appeared in 3 Evil Dead films, the last one being the incredibly
silly Army Of Darkness.
If
you don't know the story of The Evil Dead, it's a pretty straight
forward plot. A group of young adults venture out to a cabin in the
woods for some fun times and come across a book and a tape recording
left by the previous residents. For fun they play the tape and on the
recoding, a man recites a series of words which unleashes and evil
that torments the youngsters and possess them, causing the remaining
kids to fight for their life against a force so powerful.
This
plot has been duplicated so many times since the Evil Dead, most
recently in the film Cabin In The Woods which while playing homage to
the film, flips the whole horror genre on its head. What Raimi and co
did though, was make the whole 'killer in the woods' scenario fresh
and original by making the 'killer' and unseen force and using the
idea of demonic possession to move the film along. But not only
humans are possessed by the evil force, it can manipulate the
surroundings like the infamous tree rape scene and this lends a whole
other realm of horror to the film, a horror that is almost impossible
to escape and once the carnage starts it never lets up for a second.
There
is a definite rawness to the Evil Dead, it's unrelenting way of
putting the scares on screen works so well that the film does indeed
succeed in being a truly frightening film, well maybe not these days
compared to some of the films that have come out since, but for 1981
it was a truly horrific movie which horror author Stephen King
described as “One of the most ferocious horror films I have ever
seen”, a masterful quote if ever there was one and a fantastic
piece of marketing.
Some
of the more gruesome scenes are what still causes a problem with the
censors, although freely available uncut in the U.K, the film still
commands an 18 certificate, where as Evil Dead 2 has been downgraded
to a 15, presumably due to the levels of gore are more comical than
horrific and more slapstick than sick, but The Evil Dead still rocks
an 18 due to certain scenes like the tree rape and the pen in the
ankle scene which to this day still makes me gasp, but while the Evil
Dead does have moments of comedy in it, it's played out in such a
darkly twisted manner that the comic scenes are still quite horrific,
this is something we rarely see in horror these days.
When
you look at the special FX that the film makers achieved on the
meagre budget of $375,000, it's phenomenal to see what they came up
with, the tree rape scene is incredibly well done, the ankle stab
still looks realistic today and the stop motion used for the melting
possessed adds to the rawness of the film and the fact that the
entire movie was shot on 16mm film stock and blown up to 35mm really
makes you scratch your head and wonder how they pulled it off. Credit
to Raimi for envisioning this film in the way he did, i've never seen
anything like it since, Evil Dead 2 had a higher budget so they could
use better materials for the FX and had people like Greg Nicotero cut
his teeth on. Raimi's crazy camera tricks and his floating camera
through the forest is pure horror cinematography and I can now see
why people hold this film so dear to their hearts, it's a genuine
piece of cinema history and a testament to the heights you can reach
with a good script, willing actors and a bit of an imagination, so
yeah, I guess I finally understand the love for this film. Now I want
to watch it again....
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