Yes, It Really Is That Good, Get A FULL FRAME Version!

Rating: 10/10 (27 May 2006)

I had the good fortune to see an uncensored 35mm print of this in art school in a Media Studies 200 level course called -- amazingly -- History of the Horror Film. The guy who taught the class was a genius, and THE EVIL DEAD was the climax of the semester (this would have been spring 1990). At the time the film was still notorious thanks to home video as "The Most Horrifying Movie Ever Made" (nah: CONQUEROR WORM) or "The Most Gruesome Movie Ever Made" (nah: Carpenter's THE THING), but the role that the film served within the framework of that class was as an all-out assault of *EVERYTHING* that came before it in one unstoppable, hypnotic barrage.
We saw this film at like 7pm and people were FREAKING OUT, literally, in a college auditorium. Twenty-year old adults were reacting hysterically, both with enthusiasm (such as myself) for finally finding a horror film that got everything more or less right, or with hypnotic revulsion (probably 40% of the class, and not all female either) by people who were finally being confronted with a horror film that had the power to frighten them, and was unapologetic about doing so. People make a fuss about the foliage rape scene: fehh! The one that got us so frightened that some people actually got up & left was when the first girl starts naming cards, becomes possessed and starts talking like that garbled voice at the end of "I Am The Walrus" that says it buried Paul backwards or whatever. We were all screaming, and we were screaming together -- the film became a shared experience, and former classmates discussed it clear through graduation three semesters later. Being there for the screening had been a rite of passage & we wore the badge with honor. Watching it at home on a DVD is nice, but the way to experience this film is in a theater with a live audience. You'll scream too.
I will let others sum up the plot. The film literally is a collective assault on the nerves using material culled from the entire history of horror before it: All the conventions are touched on, no T is left dotted and no eye uncrossed. We went out and rented EVIL DEAD 2 the next day and to me it was a let-down: I prefer the claustrophobic, cold, distant hopelessness of this film, the hands-on, rough hewn look of the special effects and the gambles that Sam Raimi took. I like how the film sets itself up, explains itself, removes any doubt from the mind of the viewer that the kids are doomed, and then unleashes a fury of Hell who's shock value has yet to really be equaled. Sam Raimi may be making Superboy cartoons now, but he will always be remembered for THE EVIL DEAD. This is one film where every good and bad thing you may have heard about it is probably accurate. The gore, the awful acting (my favorite is the jerk boyfriend who is easily the jerk boyfriend to end all jerk boyfriends), the overactive cinematography, the prevasive violence against (zombie) women, the gripping artiness, the complete trashing of everything that is sacred, how lurid and obliquely sleazy the film is, and yet how compulsively watchable. Like a train wreck.
10/10; By the way, the *CORRECT* way to see this film is the way we did, in the 1:33 (or 4:3) open matte full frame ratio -- Anchor Bay's masked 1:85 LBX transfer is for newbies. Find an old home video print or better yet the Elite Entertainment DVD from 1999, now discontinued. And guys, get over the foliage rape scene. Life is very short ...