September 2007 - Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - September 2007

The Evil Dead

September 27th 2007 03:07

It’s about time I got back to some of the seminal modern horror movies that provided me such inspiration and satisfaction. Hell, this month’s quote is writer/director Sam Raimi talking about why he made this movie: The Evil Dead, “The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror”.

Raimi originally filmed it as a 20-minute Super-8 flick titled Within The Woods. Then with the help of his long-time producer pal and business buddy Robert Tapert they re-made it as a feature length 16mm production filming over the end of 1979 and into 1980. It premiered in Detroit in October 1981, in the home state of Raimi and lead actor Bruce Campbell. It didn’t reach Australasian shores until a few years later (I saw the NZ premiere at the Wellington Film Festival in 1984 – boy, that was a special night!)

Here there be eeeeevaaaal

Originally Raimi wanted to call the movie Book of the Dead, but one of the executive money men thought many joe average Americans wouldn’t trot off to see a movie with “literary” connotations (rightly so), and thus insisted it be called The Evil Dead (a far more effective title).

Five friends go to a cabin in the Tennessee woods for a weekend. In the cellar they discover the mythological Necromonicon; the Book of the Dead, along with a tape recorder belonging to a professor, who apparently owns the cabin. It seems he was dabbling in the occult by aiming to translate the arcane passages held with the book’s leathery-flesh covers.

Bruce Campbell as Ash

One of the friends plays back what is recorded on the tape – oops! - which unleashes an almighty evil force deep within the woods. The menacing force immediately infiltrates the cabin and pretty soon the friends start turning into possessed deadites. The others soon learn from the tape that the only way to kill an evil deadite is by total body dismemberment.

Betsy Baker as Linda ... possessed

The Evil Dead is a tour-de-force of DIY filmmaking; a truly brilliant exercise in low-budget ingenuity. Few films have achieved so much with such basic fare, a bonefide cult classic in every sense of the word.

When in doubt, girlfriend must be dismembered by chainsaw

There are many fascinating and amusing anecdotes about the making of the movie. Most of the actors left the production after a couple of months filming (no doubt to return to their real jobs), leaving Bruce Campbell and a skeleton crew to complete filming using stand-ins (which Raimi curiously named “fake shemps”). Apparently much of the second half of the film, which has Campbell’s character Ash as the centerpiece, sports the “shemp” stand-ins.

Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) possessed

Two stand-out elements of the movie are the inventive camerawork from Raimi and cinematographer Tim Philo, and the over-the-top special effects work from Tom Sullivan. The low-to-the ground tracking shots showing the evil force’s POV was achieved by strapping the camera to a 4x2 with Raimi and Cambell on either side holding the piece of wood and running. When it shoots out across the water it was Campbell pushing Raimi holding the camera in a dinghy.

Ash feels the warm embrace of a deadite

Most of the gore effects were created from materials found around the house (porridge, Karo syrup, non-diary creamer, red food colouring), including milk mixed with the fake blood. The diluting of the blood was a useless attempt to prevent the MPAA slapping the movie with an X, which they did anyway. It was also one of the first movies in the UK to be labeled a “video nasty” and was subsequently banned (and in other countries as well). Much of the movie’s controversy, apart from its graphic bloodletting (the pencil in the ankle is still one of horrors’ all time gruesome moments!), stemmed from the character of Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) being “raped” by the wood’s possessed trees and vines (!)

Okay, so the acting is uniformly atrocious, and the shoe-string budget reveals itself as pretty hokey at times, but that’s part of the movie’s charm; and it’s so much better than dozens and dozens of other equally low budget movies that are shunted onto the video store shelves. There is a je ne sais quoi about the film that transcends it above so many other indie horror movies.

Hands from Hell

Part of this comes from its genuinely frightening atmosphere (especially early on when the hapless friends are exploring the darkened cellar), although the film has such a mantle of hype surrounding it, anyone viewing it for the first time these days will probably find it much tamer than expected, and probably unintentionally funny. When I saw the movie with a horror freak mate of mine (we were 15), the movie had the warning “contains graphic violence”. We’d never heard of a movie with that kind of censor’s tag, and were suitably excited. During the course of the movie many people walked out, which raised our respect for the movie even higher.

Stephen King was quoted describing the movie as “A dark rainbow of horror … The most ferociously original horror film of the year.” Yeeeeeah! It’s one of those almost perfect Saturday late night beer, hooter, and popcorn flicks with a few aficionado mates. When I say “almost”, it’s only because time has softened its impact a tad, but it’s still a riotous and relentlessly entertaining horror flick for the horror fans, and a crash course in Horror 101 for any newbies.

Long may The Evil Dead reign!