The Evil Dead (1981) Review
The Evil Dead (1981)
At school Mad Steve was a bright lad that did not want to conform to the rigidity he felt the educational system endorsed. He would deliberately set out to rock the boat by swearing in class, wearing white socks when he knew they were banned and if all else failed to gain him the attention he so desperately craved he would make something up.
One day in class, Mad Steve told me about a horror movie he had recently seen, a horror movie he claimed was THE scariest ever! He told me that the movie was scarier than The Exorcist (1973), which amongst my peer group had quite a formidable reputation for filling many a young lad’s pants in fear.
I had seen a couple of stills from the movie, one of which showed a girl with her hand reaching upwards as an arm pulls her further into the ground. I asked Steve what that still was all about. He went on at great length about what was happening in that scene and the horrific end the girl met. I knew he was lying at the time but never said. The picture I saw was just a still – it was a publicity pose and not an actual still from the movie.
Still Mad Steve got one thing right. It was definitely a movie to see. At the time the local video shops, which before had turned a blind eye to teenagers such as myself walking out with a triple X rated title under their arms, now turned the screws on. On attempting to rent out The Evil Dead, I stood and argued that I was 18 with the shop owners for a good five minutes. In the end they turned their backs to me and said, ‘Go on then.’
I took the movie home with glee and inflicted it upon everyone I came across that weekend. My mate Mark Smith, who dressed like a Thompson Twin, as in the pop group and not the cartoon characters from Tin Tin, was the first. However he asked that I pop round with it during the afternoon, much less scary when the sun is shining through the curtains! And then of course there was my Nan. My Nan got to watch all sorts. Each weekend I would take a movie round for her to watch and every week she would ask, ‘Could I take a nice one round this weekend?’ I would turn up claiming that I was unable to find a nice one and that all I could see was this horror film. My Nan had her sister Ethel with her this particular day, and between them they winced and grabbed each other throughout never once managing to see the funny side of things.
After the weekend I was walking my usual route into school, when I hear someone shout out to me, ‘Good morning!’ I looked up, recognised the face, replied in kind and walked on my way. It was only later that I realised why, despite bus drivers charging me full fare when I was still a half, and box office attendants never questioning me when I asked for a ticket for Scarface (1983), that the video library guy knew to question my age. He saw me walk to school each day and I never realised until he said hello that morning.
Back at the start of the Eighties, business partners Nik Powell and Stephen Woolley ran the Scala cinema in London, a venue that showed a more select and eclectic choice of movies than the mainstream theatres and most art houses would show. With the advent of video, Powell suggested that they start a video label that put out the same titles that their venue showed.
Woolley put out the likes of John Water’s Female Trouble (theatrically released in 1974), the acclaimed Mephisto (1981) and the troubled Fitzcarraldo (1982) to start the video side of their enterprise, known as Palace Video. He quickly realised though that at the time the market was more geared towards what were deemed as ‘Video Nasties’.
Stephen Woolley went to America to see what titles he could lay his hands on. This led him to his discovery of ‘The Evil Dead, which had recently received its first screening as Book of the Dead. The makers, Sam Raimi and Robert G Tapert, couldn’t get anyone to look at their movie. New Line had made the boys an offer, but the offer wasn’t very good. There was no money upfront. The Palace Boys first saw the movie at the American Film Market, where independent makers tried to find distributors for their movies.
Stephen Woolley was very impressed by the movie and urged his partner to see it. Woolley was at first startled by the graphic nature of the violence, but then picked up on the humour in the almost cartoon like violence and how well put together the movie actually was. He considered the movie far better than most of the dross doing the film markets at that time, which he considered to be horror that looked like it had been put together in someone’s garage. Woolley was especially impressed with the sound effects, camera-work and the editing.
When it came to buying the movie, Woolley came across Irvin Shapiro, another distributor, the same guy who sold Battleship Potemkin (1925) in the Thirties. Shapiro suggested that the movie’s title be changed from Book of the Dead to The Evil Dead. Shapiro was quite taken by Woolley’s knowledge of cinema and films, and that he respected the movie as a movie and not some piece of schlock.
Shapiro named a price and keen to convince Powell, Woolley took him to see it. Powell was horrified but like his partner he found the film funny and scary. They met the director Sam Raimi, who, given that Woolley was in his mid-Twenties when he started Palace, couldn’t get over the fact that the Evil Dead helmer was younger than him. They liked Raimi enormously.
Stephen King was also instrumental in getting the film promoted, King had met Raimi and had seen the film and had liked it a lot – hence his poster quote ‘the most ferociously original horror movie of the year’. Woolley says that along with the unique poster for the movie, The Evil Dead helped create what Palace Pictures became.
They released the movie theatrically and on video at the same time – this was unheard of, and to date also appears to be the last time it was done. They hadn’t actually told or agreed this decision with anyone else involved. Palace’s rationale was that at the time the people that were going to the cinema to see it and those going to rent it on video were two different sorts of audience and that no harm was actually being done.
The movie went on to become the most rented title that year in the UK. It sold 50,000 copies on sell-through, which at the time meant someone spending between £40/£50 for a copy. It did well at the cinemas given that it was a horror film and its budget was meagre, but still not to the extent that it did on home video.
Woolley considers that The Evil Dead was a landmark movie in that it proved that video was here to stay and was not a fad. The movie also became a very controversial film during the video nasty scare, a reaction to the taking-off video market. It got caught up in the hysteria and was probably seized upon given its top rental status and to make a point possibly.
Raimi came over to testify at the case, but the judge said that they didn’t need to hear from him, so he got back on the train home. Powell was there and did stay and on seeing the jury knew that they could win their case. The jury consisted of working class people that would probably not want to be dictated to about what they could and couldn’t watch. The movie was shown to the jury.
The movie was released on video again around 1990 with cuts, although with time it was put back to its original form and no one could see what the fuss was about. The judge said that he had watched the film and didn’t think that there was a case for the makers to answer. Maybe the case was cinema’s reaction against this new upstart that could threaten to take their business – Rank were particularly upset that Palace decided to put the film out in cinemas and video at the same time.
The Video Nasties led to the Video Recordings Act, which meant that although the case against the film was thrown out by the judge, it still took time for the movie to be reclassified. The Evil Dead was one of the first films to be labelled as a ‘Video Nasty’ in the UK.
The movie opens with a camera swooping across a steaming lake imitating the eye of the oncoming evil. This motion implies that the evil is already present in the surrounding woodland, as does a near fatal miss for our five characters, as their car nearly meets a sticky end with a lorry. (However, both events contradict the fact that the tape recording being played later at the cabin unleashes the evil).
Inside the car are two couples and one of their sisters – Ashley and Linda, Scotty and Shelly, and Ashley’s sister Cheryl. Raimi tried four or five different openings for The Evil Dead with the one we see being one of the last scenes shot. Not long after their near collision, we see two people waving at the car as it goes by. They are the film’s producer and director.
Following on from their near death experience on the road, the youngsters are again presented by another sign of doom – a bridge sign that advises them that by travelling over they do so at their own risk. Undeterred by part of the bridge falling away, they arrive at their destination, a cabin in the middle of nowhere chosen for its cheapness – a place not one of them has yet seen.
On the slow drive from the bridge to the cabin the soundtrack pumps with a thudding sound, which is soon shown to be a swing chair moving of its own accord outside. Not only do they not think to comment on the swing chair swaying without provocation or even run the other way, no one later seems to notice when the chair disappears after its big scene.
However Raimi’s film isn’t about logic. His Evil Dead is about suspending belief completely, just rolling with his low budget thrills that thrive on a comedic violence and camera-work that go way beyond his lack of experience at such a young age. It shows a film-maker who, if nothing else, can deliver a visual treat, even if we are not always in on the joke.
Inside the cabin are bones and the suchlike hanging from the ceiling, a nod to Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) (Raimi admits that there is no other reason for the bones to be there) – again, the youngsters fail to find this a problem, nor indeed the fact that like Doctor Who’s TARDIS the cabin actually seems to be much larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Soon night draws in and for many in the cabin it will be their last. As Cheryl sketches, the clock stops and her hand is forced to draw what we soon find out to be the Book of the Dead, which lurks in the cellar with a tape recorder, both ideal for releasing the evil spirits that lurk in the woods. Despite this rather freakish incident and the fact that the hatch to the basement starts to rise Cheryl seems unaffected and also doesn’t consider sharing her incident with the others.
As Ashley makes one of the worst toasts ever mumbled, the hatch we saw earlier blows open and still Cheryl remains quiet. You may be interested to know that there was actually no cellar in the cabin, so they had to cut a hole in the floor and that the actual inside of the cellar was filmed at the producer’s parent’s house.
Scotty goes down into the cellar to have a look; Ashley reluctantly follows when they get no response from their friend moments later. It appears that Scotty is OK, he just wanted to scare Ashley and probably everyone else for that matter – he really is quite annoying! They find the Book of the Dead, whilst on the wall there is a poster of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) a nod that Craven later returned with his A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), when the heroine tries to stay awake by watching The Evil Dead on TV. They took the book along with a tape recording and an odd dagger which happens to have a carving of a skull on its top.
As a storm rages outside – just for effect of course – the found tape is played, a recital believed to awaken the dead and allow demons to possess the living, announcing that the book they have found is bound in human flesh and inked in human blood. Before you can say ‘BOO’ Cheryl is attacked and, in one of the movie’s more controversial scenes, raped by a tree. One by one the youngsters fall prey to the spirits of the dead, until just one leaves the cabin gored and bloodied the next morning.
When the ‘Video Nasty’ debate raged in the U.K., it was the tree rape scene that got the most attention for Raimi’s picture and consequently got cut the most. As Cheryl ventures alone into the woods to investigate a strange noise, the trees come alive and attack her. As the branches wrap around her, Cheryl is dragged to the ground, her clothes torn and her legs pulled apart as she is raped by a tree. As the scene had been shot over a number of months the film-makers didn’t realise quite how horrific the finished scene would appear with a large number of the shots for the sequence shot in reverse. The idea for the act of penetration came from the producer, who felt that the scene required that little extra oomph! For me the scene that gets the biggest eek is when Cheryl sticks a pencil in Linda’s ankle and twists it in – nasty!
The censors also had a problem with a branch sticking out of Scotty after the woods attack him. When Ashley is later seen pulling the branch out of Scotty, apparently some viewers considered that another part of Scotty’s body had been ripped off, yes THAT part of the body! And it would appear that the censors also thought the same at the time.
In terms of the performances, Ellen Sandweiss as Cheryl comes across as someone who can actually act – which is a talent none of the others appear to have the slightest grasp on. Having worked with Raimi before on his 1978 short Within the Woods, also with Campbell, Sandweiss appears to have an idea of how to emote convincingly. When she becomes possessed and ends up in the cellar it makes a noticeable impact on the rest of the movie.
Raimi is great at creating mood, with almost David Lynch-like noises on the soundtrack to unnerve the viewer. Due to budget constraints, certain scenes were completed six months later. It doesn’t take an expert to guess which, just look at the changes in hair style for example. Apparently the makers took great care to choose clothing that wouldn’t date the picture, shame the same care couldn’t be taken with the haircuts. Raimi is most effective when staging events that require little dialogue such as the previously mentioned tree rape and a subsequent pursuit that plays like a scene from Halloween as she grapples for the keys to get back into the cabin. This was similar to a sequence in Within the Woods which Raimi actually felt played better.
Some of the effects work looked shoddy at the time and has a quaint nostalgic quality to them now – consider the stop motion disintegration of the possessed at the climax which took them three months to complete. The movie went on to gross $2.4million in the US and £100k in the UK, nowhere near as much as it probably took on video, and $10.7million around the world.
The movie, along with its two sequels Evil Dead II – Dead by Dawn (1987) and Army of Darkness (1993), helped establish its star Bruce Campbell as the ultimate cult actor. Campbell went on to cameo in other Sam Raimi projects including all three of the big-screen Spider-man movies. As for The Evil Dead itself, the fuss about its comic book violence, inspired by Raimi’s heroes The Three Stooges, is now a very tame affair and dated in parts. It still entertains enormously and has a deserved cult following and more recently featured in the movie Donnie Darko (2001).
And prior to the recent remake/sequel there was fun to be had with the Evil Dead musical that did the rounds (unfortunately not local to me), imaginatively called Evil Dead: The Musical. The theatrical experience borrows from all three original Evil Dead movies; the plot sees five college students unleashing the evil in a cabin in the back end of nowhere and chucks in a few musical numbers as they one by one become possessed by demons. With songs like All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons, Hail to the King, What the Fuck was That? and its own Time Warp in the form of Do the Necronomicon and the front few rows labelled The Splatter Zone it was being optioned as a possible big screen venture in 3D but alas, as at the time of writing, this has yet to be.
