“We’re going to get you. We’re going to get you. Not another peep. Time to go to sleep.”
Ahhh, The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell’s first film. Shot on a small budget of just $350,000, the film became a huge success and spawned two sequels and a recently ended TV series.
Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend, Linda (Betsy Baker), Ash’s sister, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), their friend Scott (Hal Delrich), and his girlfriend Shelly (Sarah York) are heading out to a cabin in the woods for the weekend. It’s a creepy looking cabin way out in the wilderness with only a rickety bridge as the way to it from the main road. A couple of strange things occur but nobody really takes notice.
They find a book and a tape recorder along with a creepy looking dagger. Playing the tape reveals that an archaeologist uncovered the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis – the Book of the Dead. Bound in human flesh and written blood the book contains passages that resurrect demons. The tape reads one of the passages and the evil is unleashed in the woods again. Cheryl freaks out and ends up in the woods where the trees come alive and rape her. Cheryl returns to the cabin but quickly becomes possessed by a demon. They lock her in the cellar when Shelly becomes possessed too. Soon Ash is the last person standing.
I love The Evil Dead. The movie has amazing camera working, editing and is creepy, horrifying and scary as hell. Sam Raimi would go on to direct Evil Dead 2 and the third film Army of Darkness before finding success in Hollywood making Spider-Man movies.
The second film is probably the better movie – kind of a remake of the first but with more humour, a bigger budget and just as innovative with the horror as the first film – but there something super unsettling about the first movie. The third film turned the series into more of an action horror comedy, it’s fun but it doesn’t compare to the first two. In 2015 Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell returned to the franchise to make Ash Vs Evil Dead – a TV series on Starz. It sadly only lasted three seasons but it was a pretty good show overall. Still none of it would have happened without the first movie.
Here’s my original post.
