ultra low budget but extremely inventive horror film about a group of friends vacationing in a cabin who accidentally awaken an evil force in the woods via the necronomicon , the book of the dead .
bruce campbell stars as ash , who eventually becomes the sole survivor and has to battle both the demons from the woods , and his friends who have become demons ( including his own girlfriend ) .
the results shown on screen are amazing considering the film 's tiny budget , constant location changes , and a filming schedule that was sporadic over two years .
followed by two sequels : evil dead ii ( 1987 ) and army of darkness ( 1993 ) .
the dvd release of this film from elite entertainment contains the film in it 's original aspect ratio of 1 . 33 : 1 .
the disc contains two versions of the film 's audio : a stereo 2 . 0 track and a newly remastered dolby digital 5 .
1 . included are two separate running commentary tracks : the first features writer / director sam raimi and producer rob tapert and the second track features the film 's star , bruce campbell .
campbell 's commentary is informative and extremely witty , as he has a story to tell for virtually every scene in the film .
such informative tidbits include : the original title of the film was going to be book of the dead ( and in fact when the film premiered in 1981 that was it 's title ) and when they were asked to change the title to the evil dead , everyone thought it was the worst title they had ever heard .
also , there 's a scene early on in the film where the group sits around and listens to a tape recorder which they 've found that 's explaining about the demonic forces in the woods .
for that scene , it was written for the characters to be smoking marijuana , so being the wacky kids that they were at the time , they decided to actually smoke marijuana for the scene .
almost all of that footage became unusable because many of the actor 's had never smoked before , and as a result they became " confused " and were unable to perform the scene .
i wish the entertainment factor was as high for the sam raimi / rob tapert audio track .
the two people you 'd think would be more enthusiastic in talking about this film instead barely have much to say at all .
do n't get me wrong here , when they do speak
it 's entertaining to hear , but there are many instances where both are silent for long periods of time .
sometimes after one of those long silences rob will ask " have anything to say sam ?
" to me , that 's not a good sign .
also , it seems like sam raimi does n't remember much about the film and it 's production . . .
well , compared to rob and bruce anyway . also included on the disc is a photo gallery ( which includes pictures from the film 's " gala " premiere ) and about twenty minutes of raw footage from the film .
this raw footage really shows you how much a film can be improved upon using simple audio techniques .
overall , the evil dead is a good low budget horror film , superior to many films
in it 's genre .
and the collector 's edition dvd release is well worth your time if you 're either a fan of the film or just a fan of the filmmaking process .
all special edition dvds should be this thorough and entertaining .
Output: P