Horror Film Review

The evil dead, such a classic film from the early 80’s.

The story takes place when a group of friends travel to an old wooden cabin in the woods for a little break away from what stresses they had before, only to be confronted with the evil dead, one by one they turn into the zombie dead possessed and it soon becomes a struggle for survival for the remaining few, the spirits of the dead are waiting.

This is a fun film at times and it really was a breath of fresh air at the time and even today, while some hail Evil Dead 2 as the best of the trilogy, which it is, (but I’ll be reviewing that one next!) I think this had the makings of a cult classic from day one, as the idea behind the story was a simple one, it deals with bringing the dead out of hiding with a sumarian script and bobs your uncle the evil dead appear, although they are invisible they appear in the form of possessing the living, which makes it a great idea to pick off some of the annoying characters (even though they are all annoying in some way)

When the darkness approaches the evil dead come, knocking down trees in their wake, some of the effects are quite good considering the low budget of the films production, it is all about however the creative direction of the director Sam Raimi and all of his production team the reason why they pulled it off right.

I also remember at the time of first watching this film that the location of the film was an original one and one that was a good choice, in the woods around a log cabin, such an iconic horror movie location as it almost seems like others seemed to try and emulate it in many sub standard horror films that followed.

The necronomicon which is in fact the book of the dead, is what was used to bring the dead back to life or undead life at least, only by reading the passages from the book would the dead rise again, the book itself was made from the skin and written in blood, which was nice.

The evil dead also launched the career of Bruce Campbell who went on to star in the two sequels which was of course Evil Dead 2 and the Army Of Darkness.

The original evil dead film brought with it a cult following that transcended on to the demands of the sequel, although the chainsaw is an iconic image for this film alone and the shotgun comes a close second.

Like all low budget movies starting out, especially the creatively inventive ones, there always seems to be a family of fun atmosphere that goes into the creation of these films and everyone and their granny seems to want to be a part of it and this shows for some of the bad acting, but this is forgiven for just the fun ride of the film that delivers on all levels.

Deadites as the character Ash refers to the zombie dead are the main reason why anyone would want to watch this film alone, so go and watch it again and again, because I do at least twice a month, maybe more.

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