The Evil Dead Review (1981)

The first film in Sam Raimi's classic evil dead series, the appropriatly titled The Evil Dead, it set out to be the ultimate experience in grueling horror. The film was made for only $375,000, and that meager budget almost went to waste, as the film was denied by nearly ever American and European distributor, for fear that it would be to controverisal. The film was only moderatly successful at the box-office, making about 2,500,000, now years later, the film has become one of the most refrenced, and cult followed film of all time.

Upon its inital realese, The Evil Dead was a very controverisal film. Not because of theme, or content, not for animal cruelty (Cannibal Holocaust*cough cough*) but for its excessive use of violence and gore. Before the rating was exhumed, The Evil Dead was given the coveted X rating. When it was re-submitted in 1994, it was rated NC-17.

When a group of five friends go out on a camping trip, lead friend Ash (played by the legendary Bruce Campbell) rents a cabin in the woods. Upon arriving, they find some very strange things, a log is oddly tied up and is being swung at the wall. Later, while sitting by the fire, another one of the friends find that the grandfather clock has mysteriously stopped, defying all possible acts of gravity. Looking around the cabin, Ash and Scott find a strange recording, and bring it upstairs, and decide to give it a play. Little do the unsuspecting teens know that they have just read a passage from the Necronomicon, or the Book of the Dead, and realese and unrelenting horde of EVILL!!

Firstly, lets talk about the actors and charecters in this movie. Every single charecter seems to be based on an actual archatype of some sort, and all of the actors pull it off very well. That being said, while the actors were there for principal photography, they all left (with the exception of Bruce Campbell) and they had to use bunches of fake actors as replacments. I'll just throw this in as part of this paragraph, that most of the sets, and the cabin, were excellently pulled off. Even though they looked good for a cheap budget, if it was a bigger budget, it wouldn't be as much as a surprise.

The story while simple, is still very fun to watch and intruging. However, I still think that the pacing was incredibly strange. The beggining is slow and somewhat boring, and it left way to much to be desired. At first it was like some sort of paranormal thriller, ghost story thing, which would have been kind of cool, and right with the pacing, but eventually when it cranks up the speed, it works as a zombie film, I just thought that it was weird.

The blood and gore in this film is AMAZING! Its a classic film for that reason, and it certainly deserves it. There is literal moments where blood is just pouring out of pipes, and running down projectors. Its the simple recipe that you can make at home, Karo Corn Syrup, and Red Food Coloring. Now this may seem like nothing, but when you see it all come together at the end, with the classic uses and techniques. And again with the budget, but for a miniscule budget it still makes things even better. Also, it has some natural scares that were really fun. The laughing baby doll zombie that sits in the doorway was just creepy!

Overall The Evil Dead is an amazing film that holds up incredibly well. It is better than most stuff that comes out nowadays, and was probobaly better than most things that had come out during that time. The gore, acting, and story was amazing. But for some reason the pacing just really annoyed me, I don't know if it was because I just wasn't in the mood or what. The ending was also cool. So The Evil Dead was pretty awesome and gets:

4/5