The House Is The Star

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2014)

While it's not the first film in the "Evil Dead" franchise to recommend to a non-seasoned viewer, "The Evil Dead" has pride of place for being the first of the films, as well as for being so visceral and intense.
Five young people journey to a mountain cabin near the Tennessee border for a weekend getaway, only to accidentally awaken malevolent spirits of the dead by flicking the "play" switch on a recorded recitation of "ancient Sumerian burial rituals and funerary incantations." One by one, they are done in by the grisly ghouls, until only Ash (Bruce Campbell) is left to deal with the supernatural menace – or die trying.
Billed as "The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror," "Evil Dead" is markedly different from what you expect having seen the first two sequels. There's no "groovy" catch-phrase in this one, and the terms "deadites" or "Necronomicon" aren't mentioned. (The "Book of the Dead" here is called "Naturon Demonto.") Humor is mostly in the eye of the beholder; on the surface this is a "video nasty" that lives up to its name with exploding heads and a straight-faced, unforgettable depiction of tree-rape.
I'm not on board with the idea of this being a classic. But it is a good horror film, directed by Sam Raimi with real flair and engaging depth-of-field camera-work. After a slow opening 22 minutes, the film kicks into high gear and never lets up all the way to the end.
The film proved a bit of a slow-grower. A sluggish box-office performer when released in 1981, it has since become a bigger deal culturally than "Chariots Of Fire," the year's Oscar-winner for best film, as well as other big 1981 hits. Great, no, but it has a kind of greatness about it.
"Why are you torturing me like this?" Ash cries out at one point.
"We're going to get you..." the spirits answer, singing tauntingly.
What makes the film work so well as I see it is not the acting, which is frill-free minimalist work to put it kindly, but rather the sense of location. The strange house, more a shack really, is a thing of wonder, with various rooms tricked out with odds and ends that suggest more than we see. There's a bit of a "Snoopy's doghouse" effect going on here, as the house interior seems way too spacious and crammed with accouterments to match the exterior we see. There's even an attic visible in some exterior shots which never comes into play in this movie.
Why are the kids so insanely willing to stay in the house when things start to go so wrong? The car steering wheel suddenly acts on its own, the bridge they drive on to the house gives way as they pass over it, a pendulum clock stops in mid-swing, a woman's hand becomes possessed as she sketches, and a trap door bangs and flies open by itself. Perhaps it's some moonshine they drank that was lost in the editing, or some pot-smoking which was scripted but never filmed. The end result is you never really care about these dumb characters, who seem more like lab rats than people. Without the same level of humor that buoys "Evil Dead 2" so brilliantly, you don't care as much as you should.
But that's more a quibble than a fault. The positives outweigh the negatives, especially in terms of the brilliant sound design by Joe Masefield (which adds immeasurably to the spooky mood throughout). They are further enhanced on the DVD thanks to dueling commentaries by Campbell and by Raimi and producer Robert Tapert, who play up their different views of what went wrong and right with what apparently was a grueling production.
The end result was worth the struggle. "Ultimate Experience," maybe not, but "Evil Dead" is a solid stab at shock horror that will leave you breathless, and quite possibly wanting more.