[usr 5]
Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.
“The Evil Dead” caused a controversy upon its original theatrical release in the United Kingdom in the early ’80s because of its violence. It was labeled a “video nasty,” a term that was coined by the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (NVALA) and as a result, it was banned in the U.K. for a number of years, as well as other notable horror films such as “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” “The Burning,” “Cannibal Holocaust,” and “The Driller Killer.” This also extended into Ireland, where I was born and raised, and while these titles, as well as many others, raised eyebrows, for the most part, they were easily accessible. And that’s a good thing, for me anyway, because I started watching horror movies when I was about 10-years-old when my mother was in work and I was home early from school. In the beginning, watching some of these titles was difficult, especially at my age but when a friend of mine showed a scene to me from “Poltergeist,” when a character pulls his face apart until only his skull is visible, he moved through the scene, one frame at a time, and I was actually able to see how fake it looked, and that is when I was able to stomach many a horror title, and if a scene got too traumatic, I would slow it down, a frame at a time, and it made the whole thing look silly.
Sam Raimi, the director known for the “Spider-Man” trilogy starring Tobey Maguire, as well as “A Simple Plan,” “Drag Me to Hell,” “Darkman,” and the “Evil Dead” trilogy, started out as a filmmaker in the early-to-mid ’70s, making short films with a group of friends, including Bruce Campbell. In 1981, he released his first feature, “The Evil Dead,” originally titled “Book of the Dead.” At a time when the market was being saturated with low-budget horror films, this one stood out, thanks in part to well-known horror author, Stephen King, who after attending a screening of it at Cannes, exclaimed it was the “most ferociously original horror film of the year.” This helped bring the movie to bigger markets and while it made $2.4 million in the US alone, it achieved bigger success overseas where it brought in more than $27 million worldwide. Impressive, considering its total budget was only about $350,000. While the film would go on to achieve cult status and spawn two sequels (“Evil Dead II” & “Army of Darkness”), as well as a TV show (“Ash vs Evil Dead”), the original low-budget feature, even by today’s standards, holds up extremely well, and has generated countless knockoffs over the years. When word came that Lionsgate was going to release it on 4K Ultra HD, I was skeptical as “The Evil Dead” works because of its low-budget look and feel, blowing it up to 4K could have easily taken all of that away by giving it a pristine, shiny gloss, but thankfully, it remains preserved.
Five friends, Ash (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), Scott (Richard DeManincor) and his girlfriend Shelly (Theresa Tilly), decide to go away for the weekend to a remote cabin in the Tennessee woods. Once there, they unearth an old tape recorder in the basement and upon playing it, the voice on the tape recites an ancient incantation that resurrects an evil presence from deep within the woods. As the night progresses, one by one, each of the friends become possessed by evil spirits, until only Ash is left to fight them off, and prevent the evil from spreading to the rest of the world.
The plot, at least by today’s standards, is as old as the dawn of time. Since the film’s inception, there have been countless iterations of the same story, a group of friends go into the woods and never come back. Everything from “Friday the 13th” (which technically came out a year before “The Evil Dead” but just goes to show how really unoriginal the concept is), to “The Blair Witch Project,” “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil,” and last year’s “The Ritual,” all possess (pun intended) the same basic premise: teenagers making their way into the dark, scary woods. Whether they encounter chainsaw-wielding maniacs, zombies, or deadites (the name given to the demonic creatures in the “Evil Dead” series), one thing remains the same, horror fans can’t get enough of it. When you think about it, it’s actually quite alluring, for a horror story, that is. During the day, you can take a stroll through the woods with your family or friends, have a picnic, take an inordinate amount of selfies, but when night falls, that same forest becomes the thing of nightmares. When you can’t see what’s out there, your mind takes over and imagines fearsome and ghoulish creatures, wandering the wilderness for their next unsuspecting victim, although why someone would be strolling through the woods in the dead of night, is beyond me but in horror movies, we never question this element, we just go along with it.
The reason “The Evil Dead” stood out from its counterparts, at least back in 1981, was, primarily, because of its director, Sam Raimi. He took a clichéd narrative about a group of friends who go into the woods for a weekend getaway in an old, abandoned cabin, and visually, turned everything on its head. It starts off like most other horror films but in the very opening shot, we take on the perspective of someone, or some thing, as it races through the woods to an unknown destination. This is foreshadowing, letting us know what’s to come later on. Naturally, because this scene is shot during the day, the scare factor is practically zero but its movements, unlike that of a human, are very fluidlike, allowing it to approach items in its track and simply elevate itself above them or, in some instances, through them. When the teens reach the cabin and get settled in, we get the quintessential character exposition, two couples and one loner, and it’s the loner, Cheryl, who first encounters the creatures in the forest. Initially, she is raped by the trees (a scene Sam Raimi later expressed guilt and regret over adding to the movie as it was completely unnecessary) and then she is chased back to the cabin by an unseen foe. This perspective is what set “The Evil Dead” apart from its contemporaries, it was not just the camera person running through the trees holding the camera, director Raimi got creative and instead of just holding the camera while running, devised an effect called the “shaky cam,” which involved mounting the camera to a piece of wood and having two camera operators sprint around the forest at various speeds. This gave the effect that whatever was chasing our human counterparts, was not of this earth, and it worked.
The movie had a budget of about $350,000 and was shot over a period of three years, with cast and crew securing funds, shooting part of the film, and when the money ran out, returning home until they could raise more money. It is considered by many horror enthusiasts, to be one of the very best low-budget horror films ever made and I have to agree with them. Everything about “The Evil Dead” screams originality, except, of course, for its conventional storyline but once you get past that, you’ll discover, like those of us who grew up with it, that it is pure, unadulterated fun. Naturally, being a horror movie, there is gore, but by today’s standards, it is tame, at least compared to something like “Hostel,” “The Human Centipede,” or “A Serbian Film.” The violence depicted in these pictures was gratuitously realistic, so much so that people stopped watching them. That is not the desired effect a filmmaker sets out to achieve when making a horror movie, on the contrary, having your audience turn away momentarily because of an unexpected fright or scare, is totally acceptable, then they return to watching the film, that is what you want, not turning them off altogether. “The Evil Dead” is inventive, unconventional, and great fun, and the most effective aspect of the movie, is seeing everything from the perspective of the creature that moves through the woods and chases our protagonists, you never actually see what it looks like, and the film is better because of this. Granted, with “Evil Dead II,” you do finally get to see what it looks like but I think it was a mistake to show its embodiment as leaving it to the viewer’s imagination, makes it scarier than any onscreen personification could ever achieve.
Available on 4K Ultra HD™ Combo Pack (plus Blu-ray™ and Digital) October 9th
