The Evil Dead (1981)
Directed by Sam Raimi
Sometimes doing this blog and the podcast (Rock Video Rental) I get to revisit movies I have seen before, and in doing that I sometimes find more appreciation for movies I once disliked. The Evil Dead was definitely one of those. The first time I saw this, I did not care for it, but this time around, how did it go?
The Evil Dead is about a group of friends that go and stay in a remote cabin together on a vacation. Once there, each of the friends starts becoming undead and possessed. Soon only one is left and he has to fend for himself. I’m assuming if you’re reading this blog, you’ve seen this movie before. It is considered an all time classic, kick started the Evil Dead franchise, and made Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi well loved stars.
The first time I saw this movie, I was really annoyed with it. When Linda becomes possessed she constantly cackles and his pretty damn annoying. For whatever reason, I dwelled on that and that was mostly what I remembered from this movie. I tried watching it a second time, and again the cackling annoyed me and I actually turned it off lol. Well the third time around, I watched it for the podcast and man there wasn’t even that much annoying cackling in this, so what was my issue? Maybe it was just the wrong movie on the wrong day. It happens. I appreciated this movie a lot more the third time around. The camera angles are awesome, the gore is pretty good for how low budget this is. Then you got all the stuff behind the scenes that had to perfectly align for the Raimi brothers to get this made, its quite admirable. Bruce Campbell is great as Ash, while he really hits his stride in The Evil Dead 2, he is still quite likable in this movie.
I think where this movie truly shines is the love that was put into it. It was obvious Sam Raimi was bound and determined to make this movie a success, and it was. Bruce Campbell put his parent’s vacation property up to get a loan to help bump this to 32mm in order to get a theatrical release even! The cinematography, which I mentioned before is amazing. The shots make the most mundane of scenes, intriguing. The revolutionary camera work on the demon moving through the woods was done with the camera mounted on a 2×4 and moved along by Campbell and Raimi, which is resourceful and genius.
While my first two watches were hindered by whatever mood I was in, the third one proved to be great. I really enjoyed watching this and while I still think the sequel is the best, I appreciate what this movie is. If you haven’t seen it, you should. I give this a solid A-.
