Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead: Review

The Legendary Bruce Campbell Stars in the Horror Classic

Sep 17, 2008

Labeled as 'The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror', The Evil Dead enjoys a cult status as one of film history's stand-out blood and gore B-movies.

The premise of the Evil Dead sees five vacationing college students arriving at an isolated cabin in the middle of the Tennessee woods. There, they uncover research carried out by the cabin’s former occupants into the ‘Book of the Dead’, which has the power to raise evil spirits that then possess the living.

Unwittingly, the students unleash this ancient evil and struggle to survive as one by one they are turned into demonic creatures hell-bent on violent and gruesome destruction.

The Evil Dead Cast

The film’s limited cast consists of these five actors, two of which didn’t even want their real names in the credits as they were unsure of what exactly was being made.

Richard DeManincor (a.k.a. Hal Delrich) plays Scott, the assertive ‘leader’ of the group, accompanied by girlfriend Shelly (Theresa Tilly a.k.a Sarah York). Joining them is Ashley (Bruce Campbell – otherwise called Ash), his girlfriend “we’re gonna get you” Linda (Betsy Baker) and Ellen Sandweiss as Cheryl.

To say the cast is basically awful would be harsh, but they are basically awful (though it would not be fair to say the same of Ellen Sandweiss, who shows potential as a legitimate actress). They are not helped, of course, by a decidedly unimaginative screenplay.

As the film moves on, however, young Bruce Campbell starts coming into his own, as does Sam Raimi, and with little or no dialogue toward the end of the film, the deficiencies of having a script are side-stepped.

Director Sam Raimi and Actor Bruce Campbell

Despite all the famous gore and maniacal monsters, Raimi clearly believed he was being subtle and mature with the film’s slow start (although clattering cellar doors and minor episodes of possession are hardly subtle, except when compared to the rest of the film).

It’s fully 35 minutes before the first possession takes place and, mere moments later, the first shelf falls on top of our hero, Ash (Bruce Campbell is a master of throwing himself into, and making himself appear trapped under, flimsy shelves.)

The nature of Raimi’s relationship with Campbell is well known amongst Evil Dead fans, with the former delighting in torturing the latter with constant falls and bangs and gallons of unpleasantly sticky substances. And it’s only seven minutes before Campbell goes crashing into another shelf, impressively managing to trap himself under what appears to be a single broken board. If there was an Oscar for ‘Best Actor with Shelves’…

It’s very near the hour mark when Bruce then gets the first of his renowned blood-drenchings. It’s less than three minutes later when he gets a second dose. And for the finale, he gets splashed not once, but twice more (his accompanying, “Oh God!” is probably the most genuinely spoken line in the film.)

Through all this, Sam Raimi begins to show his eagerness for the medium, inventing apparently painstaking techniques to shoot scenes at tilted angles as well as panning over the actor’s head. Anyone who has seen this film always remembers ‘the demon in the cellar’, which has a particularly clever and effective scene shot from the POV of the monster.

By the end of the film, there is enough to suggest that Sam really does have something new and unique to bring to films and that Bruce - whose character is basically a coward who only turns hero once everyone else is dead - also has qualities that might be nurtured into something greater.

The Evil Dead DVD Commentary

The DVD release contains priceless material for the fans, particularly in it's two commentary tracks.

One has the voices of Sam Raimi and Producer Rob Tapert, the other a lone Bruce Campbell (and he is as entertaining as the film). There’s a wealth of information here into aspects of it’s grueling and unprofessional filming and a lot of laughs.

The Evil Dead Summary

If you saw this film as a youngster in the early and mid-eighties, accompanied by the hype that it – like the Exorcist – had been banned by certain authorities, then it probably scared the hell out of you.

Unquestionably, it has several moments that will make even an adult audience either squirm in sympathetic agony (specifically involving a pencil and an achilles tendon) or just outright stop watching, as evidenced by Bruce Campbell’s commentary track, in which he notes, “…at this point in the movie, we lose about thirty percent of the women in the audience. And I have no idea why. Oh yeah, that’s why.” You all know the scene.

Both moments are historically cited as reasons why the censors had trouble with the film and why Raimi decided to release the Evil Dead ‘Unrated’ in the US.

From a broader perspective it could be said that The Evil Dead doesn't compare to William Friedkin’s Exorcist or Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It should be remembered, however, that this was Sam Raimi’s first outing as a fully fledged director; that he was working with a largely unprofessional cast and rag-tag crew on a shoe-string budget (an est. $375,000) and that they were driven by youthful (re: not very bright) exuberance.

The result is not so much a horror film as a celebration of horror – a cry of ‘Hey, you want to see lots of blood? Well we’ve literally got the screen covered in the stuff!’.

It is highly juvenile; perpetuates all that is cringeworthy in human reaction to imminent threat; is incredibly crude, hokey and in-your-face. It’s also utterly brilliant. So, in summary:

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