The Evil Dead

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss
Written by: Sam Raimi
Director: Sam Raimi
Year: 1981

Rating: * * *   Stars       +       (Fan Bonus *  )  Total: * * * *

College friends decide to spend a weekend in an isolated cabin, only to unwittingly awaken an ancient evil of Lovecraftian proportions.

Five friends arrive at a cabin. As they explore their new surroundings, they come across a reel to reel audio recorder. The voice belonged to a professor, who used it as a personal journal, to record his translations of the Necronomicon, an ancient book of the dead. When he begins reciting incantations from the book, an evil is summoned in the surrounding woods, and their night of terror and torment has just begun.

Evil Dead is a film that needs to be studied in film schools across America. Young directors with limited budgets telling incredibly scary films having to rely on their own innovations in filmmaking is a lost art these days. Sam Raimi writes and directs this film which is an almost non-stop assault on the senses. Demons possess the victims, plenty of bloodshed, and unique camera techniques make for a white knuckled experience unlike anything previously seen. The visual effects are brilliant in their simplicity. Most of the fluid emanating from wounds inflicted on the demonically possessed was milk. This not only made it visually distinctive between humans and demons, but also kept the MPAA from giving it an X rating. Creamed corn dyed green is used as zombie guts. Cheap, practical, and far more visceral than CGI. 

Film buffs need to keep an eye out for a poster of The Hills Have Eyes in the cabin's basement. This is an inside joke between director Sam Raimi, and fellow director and film student pal Wes Craven. Wes stated that his Hills Have Eyes was the scariest film ever. Here, Sam is declaring his film as the new fright king. This rivalry is carried on in Hills Have Eyes 2, where an Evil Dead poster is seen. Finally, in Evil Dead 2, there is a Hills Have Eyes 2 poster.

This film spawned two sequels, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, both escalating the comedic elements of the story, but Evil Dead is certainly grounded in horror.

SEE THE TRAILER: The Evil Dead