Evil Dead (30 Years on...) - A Cult Classic!!

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2011)

Evil Dead (aka The Evil Dead) is now 30 years old this year (2011) and has been one of the most influential splatter-horror comedy of the 80s and is considered one of the best zombie films ever produced on a shoe-string budget for Indy cinema. The film was made for $375,000 and stars Cult-actor Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Hal Delrich and Sarah York. It is set in a vacation cabin in the Tennessee woods where a mysterious, ancient book is found which resurrects the dead, turning our heroes into blood-thirsty demons in which each of the souls are taken and turned on the living until one survivor is left to deal with the unstoppable force of the film titular title.
Directed by then-student, Sam Raimi and produced by himself, Campbell (Actor) and Robert Tapert, The Evil Dead is a non-stop splatter fest which will please gore hounds and comic-book lovers of over-the-top horror fans. I watched this as a an early teen and repeatedly viewed the video in my aunties video cupboard in summers and had known the infamy attached to this cult classic. Admitidly, I had to fast-forward through the first half hour through wanting to see the gore and even the, had to fast-forward through the horror I was subjecting to my 11/12 year old mind! However, it was the later years I picked this film up from the original days of the films release on video where I watched it in full and witness a less cut-up print (BBFC has had a field day with this title for 20 years until being uncut on DVD in 2001) and appreciate why film makers and Indy horror fans hold this film so close after all this time.
The film is made so tight on a budget that was small. Joseph LoDuca's music score was one thing that set a rich atmosphere and Sam Raimi's twisted and interesting camera angles tells a story of madness and suspense with each scare and jump, which brings me to the sound effects: they are so up front and scary for any youngster watching this film for the first time!! It will creep you out, or make you go on to make your own movie and that IS the influence of The Evil Dead in this day and age. A gem of a splatter-fest with comic book violence which, when cut-up by censors makes it even more shocking compared to what might be a gore fans dream with all the blood-letting left intact on DVD these days. I only watched this again last night on British TV and was still shocked in some ways that a horror film like this could be left intact, even for 10pm on the Sf-Fy channel - which proves this film is still full of IMPACT... 30 years later!! The sequels made, tell a different story and another review... STAY TUNED!!
UPDATE: As of April, 2013 a remake/Reboot of The Evil Dead hit cinemas and for the summer of that year, Sam Raimi had spoke again in a recent Interview about writing Evil Dead Part IV.