A groovy cult classic!

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2006)

Before anyone even attempts to watch any of the Evil Dead films, they need to understand that there is zero continuity in the series. Absolutely none. What happens in one film is totally different in the other. Apparently this was done in Evil Dead II because the filmmakers could not obtain footage from the original film to put into the sequel, so they decided to redo it altogether – completely different from the first film (I assume they just did this for kicks in the third, even with the big footage excised from this film).
After a brief interlude about the Book of the Dead (or Necronomicon Ex-Mortis as it's called in the film), the film opens with Ash (Bruce Campbell) taking his girlfriend Linda up to an isolated cabin in the woods for a little R & R. He finds a tape recorder and the Book of the Dead on a desk in the cabin; he plays the tape. Turns out, it's a recording from the previous owner of the cabin, and by subsequently playing the tape, Ash wakes up the evil spirits within the forest – the Evil Dead.
This is a bad thing, as it literally takes Linda, leaving Ash frightened and saddened at the same time. He goes into the woods to look for her, but eventually only finds a possessed being in her body coming to attack him. He decapitates her, buries her in the ground, and goes back to weep within the cabin. Some how, all of this takes place within the first ten minutes of the film.
What follows is probably one of the single most bizarre films anyone will ever see: fog runs rampant; blood of every color flies everywhere; a man loses his hand to demonic possession and then further attaches a chainsaw to replace the stump; tree branches attack and further abduct a woman and that's just the start. To explain anymore of the film would completely take away and ruin the remaining 74 minutes of the film.
This is the movie that made Bruce Campbell a cult B-movie God. His acting is off the wall, never the least bit serious. This is the cult actor in his prime, before he became known for bit parts in cheesy movies and a successful novel writer. He gets beaten up throughout the film as well, leaving a lot to say about how far actors have to go for their directors.
Speaking of directors, can anybody believe the man who went on to create the hugely profitable Spider-Man series started off with movies like this? Sam Raimi created his entire legacy with this film, and the rest of the series; one can easily see how much it has influenced his later work. Remember that scene in Spider-Man 2 where Doctor Octopus attacks all of the surgeons and doctors operating on him after his accident? With the crazy camera angles and totally random chainsaw? The scene is straight out of Evil Dead II. And the influence extends to all other horror films as well. Peter Jackson, Oscar winning director of The Lord of the Rings series, credits Evil Dead II as one of his early influences, as do many other directors.
The influence and the legacy of this totally silly, but undeniably, cult film can be felt all over the film industry – and it continues to influence to this very day. A definite film to see.
8/10.
(Portions of this review originally appeared on http://www.dvdfanatic.com).