Overrated, but not bad

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2003)

I know a lot of people are gonna disagree with me on this, but I think this one beats THE EVIL DEAD II and ARMY OF DARKNESS by far, in my opinion. It's far simpler and less elaborate, not resorting to as many campy cheap thrills that those latter films resorted to. Sorry, but I'm not into black humor, especially when it appears forced and contrived and silly. If I want silly, I'll watch BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY. This film has some of that, put it's played down and kept to a minimum.
I'm sure everyone knows what this one's about by now. Two dudes and three chicks go up to a cabin in Tennessee and find a book made out of human skin left behind by an anthropology professor, along with a tape recording of his last and final words. The evil spirits then take over these guys and they start to kill each other off. All except Bruce Campbell, that is...
It all is pretty standard stuff until the last scene where Campbell throws the book into the fire and the corpses of his dead friends start to melt and decompose. It reminds me a lot of the claymation Ray Harryhausen used to do with stop motion photography. Looks like they spend a lot of time setting that one up.
That scene looks pretty cool and imaginative, however I think there were far scarier 80s horror films out there, done by the likes of David Croneneberg, John Carpenter and Wes Craven, so I think this one's a bit overrated. And nothing was more scarier at the time than the first TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. That one scared the living fu#k outta me.
The Anchor Bay DVD uses a pristine print and has all kinds of extra goodies on it, including unused footage, stills and posters, pictures of theater marquees at some various premieres around the country, Raimi and crew on location, etc.
Even though I think there are greater shockers out there, this one is still entertaining as hell. 7 out of 10.