All Hail King Sam

Rating: 10/10 (8 June 2009)

In 1981 I was fortunate enough to take a chance on a first time director's movie at The Edinburgh Film Festival. The subtlety of the movie's title - The Evil Dead - caught my eye and I was transfixed with terror as Sam Raimi treated us to a low budget classic. Of course time has passed and Raimi has climbed the Hollywood ladder and now directs Spiderman. So I was delighted to find that he was back in the horror genre, this time with a big budget, but an unknown cast. and a great title...Drag me to Hell.
I took my 14 year old daughter Ria along to see it, on her request, having warned her that it was no ordinary scary movie. That it was the real deal.
"Jesus Christ." she shrieked about 15 times as jump after jump assailed us.
The publicity says this; "Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend, and a bright future. But in three days, she's going to hell." It's a comment on our times. The first Credit Crunch horror movie and a lesson that if you mess with gypsy women over their mortgages you'll get what you deserve in return.
Sam Raimi makes sublime horror movies. He's taken on board Hitchcock's theory that 20 minutes of suspense are worth 20 seconds of horror but he condenses this. You get many, many more shocks per square yard with Raimi than you ever did with Hitchcock and yet he never overdoes them. But they come at you in wave after wave. And the humour is brilliant. He really likes a bit of sicko stuff along the way and makes the most of this.
Blood, snot, vomit, embalming fluid, they all get a run for their money. We see popped eyeballs, stapled eyeballs, flies entering orifices you wouldn't want flies in if it was you, limbs eaten whole, animals killed and mutilated. We get fleeting shadows, whispers, banging doors, flashbacks, mysterious winds and subliminal framing.
We get NOISE. This film is so loud that even my mother could hear it.
Every single trick in the horror (and comedy horror) book is used. Is it clichéd? Not a bit of it.
An instant classic that climaxes perfectly. (Maybe it could even win Oscars?) 10 out of 10. Perfection.