I good example of a horror movie done right

Rating: 8/10 (17 October 2015)

The Evil Dead by Sam Rami was a film that was called by Stephen King himself "The most ferociously original horror film of year " and I would think he knows a thing or two about horror.
The film starts with 5 college age friends go off to a cabin in the woods. In this group of friends there is our hero Ash Williams ( Bruce Campbell ) with his girlfriend Linda( Betsey Baker ),as well as his joker friend Scotty( Richard DeManincor )and his girlfriend Shelly ( Theresa Tilly ). Also Ash's younger sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss ) goes with them.... for some reason. Seriously, this one thing never made sense, since it seems that the two couples are going for a romantic retreat in the woods and she comes without a partner? Then again Cheryl is the only one to get lucky is this movie....
When these friends go to this cabin things seem off. At first it is just little stuff like Cheryl being forced to draw creepy books or trapdoors randomly slamming open. When they explore the basement of the cabin they find The Book of the Dead and a skull bone dagger thing that according to Scotty looks like something Ash might have got it on with. They listen to a tape recording where the previous owner of the cabin reads some text from The Book of the Dead. One of these incantations releases the demons and they possesses Cheryl in one of the most awkward way possible. From then on the story is about the group surviving the onslaught of demons that are called Deadites.
So the story is simple but the Deadites have this cool mythology setup and once these things are established, the second half of the story is non-stop horror. If you can really bring the scares in a horror film, you can get away with a slim story. The story just does its job at getting Ash to the point where his friends and family torturing him.
The main character Ash is usually known as a bad ass one-liners Deadite killing machine. That is not the case in the original movie as he is kind of a goof ball. Ash is still a great protagonist and is the most likable in the movie; just don't get disappointed if you want to see Ash crudely attach a chainsaw to his hand. The real attraction in the first movie is not Ash, it is the Deadites.
The Deadite makeup looks amazing and is better the most zombie affects nowadays. The thing that really makes the Deadites is the actors that play them. The one Deadite that really stands out is Cheryl just for her Deadite voice. Ellen Sandweise seems to be having the time of her life just being as evil and creepy as possible. All the Deadites have their own bits of personality to them. Deadite Linda also has this really creepy song in the movie while she is lurking outside the window that is just plain disturbing.
Another area that this movie really excels in is the blood and the gore. The Deadites are not afraid to get their hands dirty, like in a part of the movie when a Deadite gets its hand cut and the Deadite just bites it clean off. To kill a Deadite is upsetting for the characters because you have to kill a friend and because there deaths are really gruesome. Deadites really know how to milk a death because they won't just die; they will spurt out blood or leak out some really nasty yellow stuff. This film may not have the same kind of blood and violence modern horror film has, but it knows how to use it all creatively.
The music score in the film is kind of a disappointment as it really just sounds like standard horror movie music. The sound that the evil force makes is the only really interesting sound in the movie. The force sound is one of the more iconic things in the movie.
At the end of the movie, while under attack from Deadite Cheryl and Scotty, Ash manages to throw The Book of the Dead into the fireplace and then out of the blue they like explode. With some of the best stop-motion I have seen, satanic hands burst out of the Deadites and they like dissolve into plies of bugs and pus and it is truly memorable.
Sometimes the Deadite makeup effects look a little silly and there are some inconsistencies with the way things look, but who cares! This film is a great bit of cinema and Sam Rami shows that you don't have to get everything right to make a great horror film.
A must see for horror fans
8.5/10