The Evil Dead Series:Part 1.

Rating: 9/10 (10 January 2017)

Although I've read for years about the issues the film faced coming out uncut in the UK, (with the tasteful "tree scene" being a bit of an attention grabber) I for some reason have never got round to seeing any of the Evil Dead movies. After leaving some people pretty surprised over what I've missed for the last few years,a very kind fellow IMDber caught me by surprise,by sending a complete box set of the franchise! Which led to me finally opening the book of the dead.
The plot:
For Spring Break,friends Ash,Linda,Scotty and Cheryl and Shelly decide to spend the holiday in a remote cabin. Looking round the cabin,the gang find a tape-to-tape recorder and a weird looking book. Playing the tape,the voice recites a series of odd incantations.Quickly pressing stop,the gang soon discover that they can't silence the evil dead.
View on the film:
Running out of the woods and into the cabin, writer/director Sam Rami & cinematographer Tim Philo make every penny of their low budget spring the dead into life. Circling round the cabin,Rami and Philo unleash an ultra-stylized chill,where extreme close-ups of eyes are stabbed with razor sharp edits (assisted by the Coen brothers) of lightning-fast first person tracking shots picking up the pace of the spirits. Drenching the screen in lashings of gore,Rami stubs the grisly splatter Horror with wickedly dark slap- stick Comedy chops,that gives the film a wonderfully peculiar comedic atmosphere.
Locking on the soon to be unlucky campers with devils eyes,the screenplay by Rami skilfully trims needless exposition to cut into the heart of "the cabin in the woods" campfire tale,via drawing a thumbnail impression of the five,which gives just enough details to their relationships. Holding back on Ash's iconic chainsaw action for later films in the series,Rami leaps round the setting with an infectious merry go round atmosphere,hitting the gang with Gothic chills that explode into grand guignol extravagance twisting the relationships of the gang. Joined by a cute Ellen Sandweiss delivering screams and cackling glee as Cheryl, Bruce Campbell gives his first chop at Ash a charming boys own adventure edges,as Campbell expresses Ash's desperation to find a practical solution to facing the evil dead.