THE EVIL DEAD (1981) - ***1/2 out of 5
(NOTE: Hey CHUD folks, prepare to bitch!)
I think the very first time I had heard about this insanity was from the great Joe Bob Briggs, when he said on his old The Movie Channel hosting gig that DAWN OF THE DEAD was FLASHDANCE compared to THE EVIL DEAD. Now that's a hell of an endorsement.
Then at middle school at age 12, guys tell me how Bruce Campbell was the coolest badass of all-time...and considering how I grew up with the likes of Eastwood, Marvin, and Bruce Lee....I took that as a challenge.
So I check out THE EVIL DEAD at the video store, and I still vividly remember that particular VHS box. It gave off a sinister aura because the original HBO Video edition simply was a wicked drawing of a skimpy woman trying to escape a grave, and a skeleton demon hand taking her back down.
With ZERO photographs, a gory-sounding plot description, and Stephen King's handy endorsement...picking it up was like being in the prescence of that killer videotape from THE RING. You didn't know what the hell you were grasping in your hands.
DEAD, like the 2007 musical sensation ONCE, was one of those small little movies that accidently became much greater than its original modest goals. Writer/director Sam Raimi, producer Robert Tapert, and lead Campbell were college kids who weren't exactly thrilling fans of horror, but figured that much like today that if budgeted safely, a genre production was a guaranteed profit.
Certainly THE EVIL DEAD is shot like a gore-oriented slasher fest with stupid people stalked and blood spilling everywhere, yet its Raimi's touches that makes this light-years better than it should have been. Much like that VHS box, the first look the audience has of the cabin is with a sense of eerie uneasyness. There is something wrong about a house built in sheer isolation from both civilization and the forest, but we can't put our finger on it.
Then take the opening with an invisible evil spirit racing through a swamp towards its next victim. We revisit this POV shot time to time, how its so powerful it can knock down goddamn trees and doors! Take that thrilling bold shot when Raimi smashes the camera right through a window.
This menace makes the brilliant finale no-cut tracking sequence a rare time when a jump-scare ending actually works. Raimi's inventive indie-approach races up our pulse, and wear down our nerves, much like what happens to the poor hero.
Then there is just the damn wickedness and crazyness of Raimi that's......well, the only word I can use is sick. I mean, you have that infamous scene of a woman getting held down and raped by a tree! I mean, molestation in slasher fare is already beyond most boundaries, but with that final plunge by that big branch.....what the goddamn hell?!?!?! No wonder this movie was huge in Japan.
And yet, Raimi's SPIDER-MAN 3 actually horrified me much more than that trig-penetration, but thats beyond the point.
I think what keeps holds DEAD back is what hurts alot of horror movies, which is that for its story to work, the characters must be really moronic. Take that woman who hears a sound outside, and walks outside the cabin to which the woods pull a train on her. Then when Campbell tries to take her away in the car, and he disapears momentarily, what does she do?
She walks into the darkness alone again!
Though what nearly makes up for that sillyness is Campbell. Not as cool as my pals believe, but he is a one of a kind national treasure.
Part groovy, part DICK TRACY-esque square jaw, and part schmuck, he can simultaneously be both hero and loser without cutting it short on either take. Yet people forget that in THE EVIL DEAD, this aint the shotgun-wielding, chainsaw-armed, one-liner machine Ash that geeks celebrate in the later sequels.
No, Ashley J. Williams in the picture that started it all.......is a friggin wuss.
People have said before that he's practically the lone surviving, bloodied-up female seen in most slasher pictures, and he is. He certainly screams like one. Then again with his name, I'm sure his parents didn't have much confidence with his manhood in the first place.
Yet there is an organic charm to this Ash. If people ancient death demons want to suck your soul, trees came alive to kill you, and your beloved roommates/girlfriends eat their own arms off, wouldn't you lose your cool too? I mean Jesus Christ, I can only take so much bodies dropping and guts splattering on my face myself.
In fact, one can even argue that when Campbell becomes the lone hold-out, that he has a massive nervous breakdown after he enters the basement. As loopy as the plot was before, at least there was a linear sense of logic to it.
But with water pipes, light bulbs, and movie projectors exploding blood everywhere, I'm certain Campbell goes bonkers. With the conclusion, there is supposed triumph when the sun comes up, yet Campbell is catatonic, numb beyond comprehension of pure survival.
As if he knows that this isn't over yet.
