Review: The Evil Dead (1982)

Even after having seen Sam Raimi's directorial debut, The Evil Dead, a few times, I still have to wonder where it got its reputation as being "the ultimate experience in grueling horror."

Oh yeah. Now I remember. It actually says that in the closing credits. (It's a quote from Stephen King, who really should have known better.) Too bad there's not much evidence to support that statement to be found in the movie that precedes it.

Granted, that's a pretty harsh statement. After all, it was a zero-budget effort slapped together over the course of years by a ragtag group of childhood buddies, including Raimi and Bruce Campbell, and they try to compensate for their lack of cash and experience with much energy and ingenuity. But energy and ingenuity can only cover up so many seams, and The Evil Dead shows more seams than a baseball tossed underhand by a Little Leaguer.

Campbell stars in the first of three frantic turns as Ashley--"Ash" to his friends--in this little story of several friends who go to a remote cabin for the weekend, only to find that the previous guests at the cabin, an archeologist and his wife, have accidentally turned demonic forces loose in the woods by reading pages from the Necronomicon, the legendary "Book of the Dead." Of course, the demons are still loose in the woods, and they start trying to pick off the friends one by one--via possession, attacking trees and good old-fashioned violence. Who will die? Who will survive?

The acting is mostly weak--to be expected, given the mostly amatuer cast--with the notable exception of Campbell, who flings himself about with abandon (I think he flies through the same shelving unit at least twice) and shows hints of the charisma that would lead him through a lengthy as a B-movie actor in genre fun like Bubba Ho-Tep and at least three TV series. The story is okay, but it's let down by the homemade special effects, which veer from the nasty (blood spurting in all directions) to the downright stupid (milk and oatmeal oozing from the sleeve of one of the possessed weekenders--was that what Sam was having for breakfast that morning?). There are also some really weird scenes, too, like the one where one of the women in the group is raped not IN the forest, but BY the forest. (Can't say I'd ever seen that one before...)

None of this is helped by the fact that it's all played deadly serious. If it had been done tongue-in-cheek, the cheapness of the production not only could have been forgiven, but embraced as part of the fun. While other low-budget horror films have played it straight and succeeded--Night of the Living Dead comes immediately to mind, as does Halloween--they played off their budgetary restrictions with more style.

I feel bad being so mean to The Evil Dead--like I'm kicking a asthmatic puppy or something. It was a nice try by some game by some amateurs who would go on to do much better work, but it's only interesting in that particular context. Take by itself as a horror film, it just doesn't stand the tests of time, talent and sloppy gore. It may have impressed Stephen King, or maybe he was just giving a hand to some crazy kids who made a movie out of virtually nothing and deserved a break. Either way, The Evil Dead doesn't live up to its reputation.

The next movie in the series, though, more than makes up for its lackluster predecessor: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is essentially a remake of this movie, but with a better budget, even more energy and lots of laughs--intentional ones, for that matter.