"We can't bury Shelly, she's a friend of ours!"

Rating: 10/10 (31 October 2017)

When I first ever watched this, I was just left kind of bewildered and queasy-headed because the endless barrage of over the top screaming and chaotic action was a bit overwhelming, it was quite the "gruelling" experience indeed.. But on subsequent viewings years later I really grew to love this movie and appreciate its place in cinematic horror history as an important landmark of which the influence has been quite profound and it's among my favourites now. It just has a lot of what I personally tend to go for in a good fun horror movie; it's fast and doesn't stop once it really gets going, it's has loads or rich eerie little touches and is brimming with the most fantastic classically scary atmosphere, I mean being set in a secluded cabin in the desolate woods in the middle of nowhere on a dark and stormy night, it's got one of the best kinds of atmospheres that a horror fan could wish for, and that cabin and those woods were a perfect setting as well as a pitch-perfect setup for when the really crazy demonic s**t starts to go down. All of that stuff is incredibly well established and built up before it actually starts to happen. It has characters that you actually feel for a little, Eileen Sandweiss' rising hysterics as Shelly who somehow can sense that they've unleashed something terrible upon themselves by hearing the incantation is very effective until she's the first to get possessed, and Bruce Campbell was so young and wet around the ears, the Ash in this is a bit of a wimp until he starts trying to fight back after he gets put through he wringer, and boy does he ever! It also has a lot of over the top splatter gore especially at the end when everything's all crooked and he gets hosed down by the blood pipe and the projector turns red and explodes, all the gore is used really well. You can tell it's a low budget picture but it just works such wonders with the mood and camera-work that the grunginess and bare-bones aspect of it just adds to the overall feel, and like with a lot of the cult horror classics from back in the day, the quality and charm shines through the dingy cracks and it all works out so amazingly well despite itself. Again once it starts rolling and they're all completely f****d after hearing the tape recorder's forbidden words of certain doom, it becomes a real ride into madness and terror, but it also always has a good sense of fun about it too somehow, people die and get dismembered but it never comes off as too much of a sickening horror movie, with the possible exception of THAT scene! In the exuberance of its more lively moments there's a certain subtle knowing goofiness there. But it's still way more of a serious horror movie than the second and third movies, and I personally think it's better than them for that. The possessed are so cool, I love how automatically demented and vicious they are, far from being mere angry unquiet spirits, these vile entities really do seem like utterly insane toxic dead souls from some unimaginable nether-hell who's only care is spreading death and destruction! My favourite malicious corpse is Linda, her giggling and clown-like facial distortions are so creepy and in comparison to the other demon zombies which are mostly mindlessly violent she/it is more a jovial sort who is so happy to be among the corporeal once again after an eternity of ancient slumber, although when push comes to shove she's just as bloodthirsty! I love the explosive use of stop motion effects work used in the climax as the demons dissolve into green putrescence as the dreaded book burns. It does look crude and even kind of s**tty, but is still more importantly an awesome blast at the same time, not unlike the movie as a whole really! This movie is to this day such a glorious horror romp and it still has the same raw visceral and spooky macabre magic that deservedly made it into a beloved classic, one that is positively to die for! X