Bob's Full Review: The Evil Dead (1981)

Principal Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor (as Hal Delrich), Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly (as Sarah York)
Director: Sam Raimi
Genre: Horror

The Basics:  Five friends rent a cabin in the woods for a weekend of partying.  While exploring the house they find an old tape recorder and an array of ancient artifacts, including a book bound in human skin.  Listening to the tape made by the cabins previous owner, they learn that the items came from an excavation site of the ruins of an ancient city, and the book, titled “Book of the Dead,” was a record of the forest demons, the people of the city.  The recording of the cabin’s owner includes him reading a passage of the book, which turns out to be the resurrection spell that wakes the sleeping demons.  
Ash’s (Campbell) four friends are attacked by the evil spirits who use the forest to beat/rape them and posses their flesh, turning them into demonic zombie-like creatures.  
Can Ashe survive til morning?

Recommendation: Fans of indie horror and cult cinema will get into this one.  This film was not rated by the MPAA until 1994 where it got an NC17 for intense violence, blood, and gore (the DVD box lists the film as unrated.)

My Take:  This film is another good example of what can be done with a small budget and some imagination.  The estimated cost was $350,000 and what was produced was one of the true classics of horror cinema. 
This is also a good example of “claustrophobic” horror in which the people being hunted are confined to a small space and cannot escape (see James’ review of Alien.)  The cabin in the woods setting has been a staple of horror films since “Night of the Living Dead,” where they couldn’t leave because the cabin was surrounded by zombies.  The claustrophobia in this film comes from the fact that when characters try to leave the woods, they are attacked by the trees which forces them to stay in the cabin, which I found to be an effective plot device as well as a good scare factor.  
This film also shows that Raimi is not afraid to be brutal to his characters.  One girl is literally raped by the demon possessed forest and another’s face is set on fire while she is inhabited by evil spirits.  While gruesome, scenes such as these show a creative mind at work.  There are plenty of haunted cabin movies out there where the victims are merely stabbed to death and/or chopped apart by some idiotic “manic.” 
I also like the demonic take on what is essentially a zombie movie.  Even though the “Book of the Dead” goes by a different name in this film, it is based on “The Necronomicon,” which is a fictitious book invented by H.P. Lovecraft and mentioned in a number of his works published in the 1920s.  And as a matter of fact, the book was renamed Necronomicon for Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.   Raimi does a good job weaving the elements of the occult, demonic possession and zombie horror to create a terrifying movie experience.  
Very little is actually known about the five characters.  The group is two guys, their girlfriends, and Ash’s sister.  But other than that, nothing is known about them or their lives before they go to the cabin.  In one sense, I might have wanted know a little about who I am watching die, and creating back story for a character could have led to some more horrifying means by which the demons could attack them.  On the other hand, leaving out back story helped Raimi “get on with the terror” without having to slow down the movie with what might feel like superfluous conversation.  So I’ll bow to the professional on this one.  
The make up effects in this movie were amazing given the tight budget.  Even in 1978, when the film was shot, $375,000 was not a lot to work with.  In later interviews, the actors would say that Evil Dead was a very hard movie to shoot partially because of their creature makeup, particularly the solid white contact lenses that made them blind and had to be removed after 15 minutes due to the severe discomfort.  It was also bitterly cold during principal photography and the ladies shot several outside scene in thin fabric night clothes.  
Even though Ash is the lone survivor of this movie, I would hesitate to call him the main character of the film.  Again, without back story, it is hard to establish any character as central.  I say Ash survives despite being nailed by the demon wind at the very end because of Evil Dead 2, where Ash is very clearly the hero of the picture, but I’ll save that for later.
All in all, this is a very good horror film.  Even if one does not like horror films, one must acknowledge this movie as an American classic that should be studied.

Statistics:

Cast Performance:  Good.  All five actors do a great job performing their roles without hamming it up, which occasionally happens with horror films. 

Violence/Gore: Intense.  Lots of blood and bodily harm.  Definitely not for the squeamish.

Nudity: A little.  One scene where the demon wind is peeping a girl getting undressed, and the forest rape scene are the two instances.  These add up to about 4 seconds of breast shot.  The story did not call for anything more than that.

Ambiance/Music: Effective.  We get the typical horror film score, but pair that with the creepy atmosphere, the end result racks the nerves.  The film was shot in an actual abandoned cabin in the woods, which made the atmosphere all the more chilling.  

Overall Rating: 4.5/5 on the Bob Kline Scale. 

Interesting notes: Richard DeManincor and Theresa Tilly went by different stage names for this film because they were members of the screen actors guild and would have been penalized for working on a non-union production. 
Also, the cabin where the film was shot has since burned down and the only remaining structure is the fireplace.  No one will give complete directions to its location due to the fact that fans of the film kept stealing its bricks.