The Evil Dead (1981)

The Beastly Beginning

Total Score: 20/23.

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T.W for discussion of sexual violence and gore.

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As I write this I feel a great shadow sweep over me. There is an unshakeable feeling that this review, this starting gun for my next miniseries, is The Big One. This is silly, but nonetheless, the shadow swoops and circles.

I have always thought this film was great, but rewatching it for this review I really came to realise that it significantly defined my taste in Horror. People have asked me before, what was a moment for you that set you on the winding path to Horror and time and again I’ve struggled for an answer, but I realise now that The Evil Dead played a bigger role than I gave it credit. The sequel always comes up in my top ten, but I forgot just how much I love the original.

Concept art.

The funny thing about the above sentiment is I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen this brilliant movie twice. Now I own it on DVD I’m sure that’ll change.

Anyway, let’s load up our shotguns and follow The Forest™ into the darkest, evilest place imaginable - Tennessee.

The first-person shot streaming across water and through the trees was achieved with an inflatable raft. Truly, a testament to the filmmakers. It sets the tone excellently, leading nicely into our meeting five plucky college kids. They’re cruising to a spooky cabin in the truly iconic 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale. What a car - I’ve been appreciating it a great deal in Ash VS Evil Dead (2010) and it’s just as cool here.

The camerawork, the first thing people usually remember about the franchise, is superb. The way we follow the group along the winding forest road is just the spookiest shit - you really get a sense of how remote the cabin is, and, in a classic Slasher sense, of how closely they’re being watched. The chair on chains banging relentlessly against the cabin wall is great - could we get any more ominous? The way the banging stops just as Scotty seizes the keys, and the quietly shrieking strings stop dead with it, it all just makes you itch with dread.

By the way, I’d forgotten the music in this film. Joe Laduca is fucking awesome. It’s so varied and yet always fits the atmosphere of the moment. And there’s so much of it! I really got sucked in listening intently to the backing tracks.

Speaking of stuff I forgot - the forced drawing of the Necronomicon! According to leading man Bruce Campbell, makeup artist Tom Sullivan made the template for this sinister illustration. I saw this exact scene referenced in the aforementioned TV spinoff too, and it had slipped my mind that it was a callback. Love that!

The shot of the trapdoor shuddering like the waiting mouth of a predator is splendid. When it slams soon after you’re completely confident things have gotten way past the point of no return. Yet, as far as we (well, those of us who haven’t seen the film a dozen times) know, nothing has even happened.

I gotta say, watching Ash be a normal guy is bizarre. Campbell really sells him as likeable, if not entirely clever, and just plain ordinary. His hesitance to get violent, his genuine fear and panic in moments of high distress, and his semi-capable but still bumbling confidence, it all comes together to give an altogether different impression to the Ash we know and love.

Scotty’s entrance into the cellar is a stereotypical but super effective way to build tension. Even his little ‘back in a minute’ is enough for you to write him off as a corpse. Ash’s journey to find him, and I do say journey, feels painfully slow (in the best way) as we pan through the dark and dingy room. Fun fact - while they did dig a small cellar at the site of the cabin, a lot of the sequences were filmed in a whole different location. Makes a lot of sense, honestly, but it feels very seamless despite the location changes!

Another fun fact - I’m full of them - you know that torn The Hills Have Eyes (1977) poster? In that movie, there’s a Jaws (1975) poster torn in the same way, to show that the film we’re watching is scarier even than a monster shark. Raimi used this same idea here - The Evil Dead would eat those cannibals for breakfast.

Anyway, also in the cellar we get the gun, and more significantly, The Necronomicon and the dagger. It is the detail of these props that really elevate the film for me. Bound in human flesh, inked in human blood, designed by an artistic genius, eh? I just love the brief glimpses we get of the internal illustrations in that cursed tome. It has an eerie unrealness to it that really works.

Soon after, we get The Recording, with a giant storm crashing outside for ambience. The voice reading this summoning spell is Bob Dorian - an iconic actor and TV host. While he didn’t return for the sequel, he did for the 2013 remake, so you have to respect it. He’s got a great voice for a scarrrrry reading, akin to Vincent Price in Thriller (1983). When the recording begins to echo just as the evil speech is chanted you feel you really are in for an exciting ride. This film is never dull - in fact, I’d say it’s almost entirely a thrillride, even in the quieter moments.

Something I’ve really come to appreciate about The Evil Dead is that fundamentally it’s just a fucking great haunted house story. The inanimate becoming animate, the dead becoming undead, the restless spirits in the woods just waiting to seize you. It’s all there. I know the Cabin In The Woods (not the film, the trope) is a horror staple but you gotta admit, this particular cabin is a haunted house if ever there was one. Sure, it’s lacking the traditional Gothic architecture but who needs that when you have walls that bleed?

Anyway, I think that seeing our heroes being watched is a great addition in this case. I don’t always love it, but it’s really fun being in on the hunt sometimes. Michael and Jason often take us along for the ride, and The Forest is no different.

Now, I will talk about the infamous Tree scene. If you don’t want to read about sexual violence, skip ahead a few paragraphs.

The fog is full of distorted howling, and trees tumble to the ground before something huge and unseen. Branches snake through the dirt. This is the build up to a scene many consider a misstep. It is undeniably pretty distressing stuff, as rape scenes always are, and personally I feel that it is overly gratuitous. The remake also contains a scene like this, and honestly it feels more thematically justifiable there, as that film is about heroin addiction, but it is still pretty hard to sit through. It is difficult to portray sexual violence on screen in a way that is tasteful and respectful - in fact, it may even be impossible, but this scene in The Evil Dead is neither. My final notes on this are just film facts, as I feel I’ve made myself pretty clear - 1. They reused some sounds from Within the Woods, their proto-Evil Dead short, and 2. The vines in this scene are filmed in backwards motion to achieve the effect of them snaking along.

Cheryl pelts away from the woods and barely makes it back alive. It is a fucking close call, and she makes it damn clear she wants out, and that the trees are alive. Honestly she has the makings of a Final Girl and I had forgotten how solid of a character she is. She and Ash leave to make their way to town - she will not back down on that goal, which I have a lot of respect for - and you really do feel for her. In any other film she genuinely might survive. However, here our villain destroys any means of escape, and the pair are forced to return to the cabin.

Within, the tape is playing again. ‘The act of bodily dismemberment’ comes up, something that will one day become a rule as iconic as ‘Don’t feed ‘em after midnight’, but for now is overshadowed by our first possession. It opens with an act of psychic reading, then floating, then distortion of the vocal cords as a horrible promise rings out.

“ONE BY ONE WE WILL TAKE YOU.”

Now is the moment which stuck in my young brain just as a pencil sticks into a human ankle. It is the pencil scene, and BOY does that thing get wiggled about. Nasty, gnarly, gross and perfect. We know now what we’re dealing with and what we’re dealing with is happy to mutilate you before it kills you. Ash, for the first time, is thrown headlong into furniture. Little does he know this will become a hobby.

Credit to HorrorOfTruant.com for the horrible gif.

Shutting Cheryl in the cellar does not do a whole heap of good. A shadow grows across the moon.

I must say, the sound design for the Deadites is so bestial and throaty. Their laughter is brilliantly grating, too. I think, for me, it might be one of the best elements of the film, and what has made the devils so memorable as antagonists. I’ll be interested to see if and how that’s carried forward into the reboot.

Something else I had forgotten about this movie is the slower moments. The pacing varies wildly across the trilogy, but here tension is built patiently. We get a classic shower curtain pull, and then BAM, just as we see there is nothing to fear, something to fear appears. Before you know it, someone’s head is in the fire and Ash is flying off into another bit of furniture. Scotty’s desperate attempts to not have his head baked are nail-biting, and speaking of, the gnawing off of one’s own hand is fucking intense. Non-stop warbling brings the whole thing into a kind of mad hysteria as Ash hesitates in the background with an axe. Who can blame him - it’s his sister after all. We get a single moment of silence before carnage reigns once more, and Scotty gets to axeing. The screen fills up with red as he dismembers the demon before him. Now we’re in True Horror Territory.

The dialogue that follows is pleasantly simple. You can’t really blame Scotty when he ditches Ash and his girlfriend Linda. It helps that he isn’t entirely likeable, too. Anyway, he couldn’t really have left at a worse time as Linda is now a giggling Deadite. Lucky for Ash, Scotty is straight back, his demeanour hopeless and his face disturbingly marred. Finally, our hero takes charge, but unfortunately he’s met with the true extent of the Deadite’s evil. Ash struggles to kill his girlfriend, and it preys on his weakness, returning to a pre-possessed look. All the while Cheryl’s normal voice echoes from beneath the trapdoor. Of course, it is a ploy, and as Ash realises it he is met with the singsong mockery of We’re Gonna Get You. A piano jangles as Ash drags Linda into the woods, snarling and growling as a shadow mists over the moon once more.

What I really love about Deadites is how they attack. They fight like you would, with hands and teeth, grabbing at your face and your ankles. They jump on you, cling to your soft parts and jab at your eyes. No blundering forward like zombies, no careful hunting like vampires. They scuttle and crawl and jolt toward you just as you might if you were driven to it.

There is a decidedly meaty feel about the injuries. When you finally see the chainsaw, you brace yourself for something awful, but Ash can’t bring himself to carve up his lady love. A far cry from the ruthless combatant he will become. In true romantic fashion, he buries her, and us along with her, dirt piling on the camera to drag us back in.

Her return is no shock, but fucking hell does she claw his leg bloody. Her decapitation with a spade is a classic. You have to wonder if this is the moment Ash goes mental as his girlfriend’s body writhes on top of him. When he returns to find the trapdoor open, you wonder where he finds the strength to continue.

Finally we get our first gunshot, and then it’s down into the basement for more ammunition. What is this, Resident Evil?

Anyway, the pipes, lightbulbs and outlets spilling blood is awesome. I really can’t understate how much I love this sort of thing. The visual of the blood spilling across the projector is etched onto my horror Hall of Fame list.

Interestingly, I’m normally not a huge fan of jumps between loud and quiet. Here, the contrast really works, and I think it’s solely because the Loud always signifies something genuinely scary and exciting is here.

The clock winding backwards is another banger visual, and the following combo of upside-down camera angles and a loud beating heart create a mounting sense of panic that puts you right in Ash’s shoes. His stress becomes the centrepiece. Campbell nails it, as you’d expect - his reaction to that amazing the-mirror-is-water shot is spectacular - that Final Boy yell is perfect, as are his shuddering breaths, muttering, and wide-eyed sweaty panic. He’s also a handsome SOB, but that’s neither here nor there. The film makes you really feel that it is a miracle that our protagonist survives up to this stage.

Interestingly, when the eye-squishing takes place (hooray for eye-squishing) it seems to suggest Deadites feel pain.

Back to Bruce for a second, the way he sells being knocked around adds so much to the performance. He really sails through the air. And oh god, being chewed on as you’re beaten with a poker is a fucking rough time. What kind of George RR Martin affair is that???

Anyway, into the fire goes the Necronomicon. The Deadites crunch and split apart at their seams, hair falling off and skin dissolving in stop-motion beauty. Flesh bubbles and melts in a nightmarish selection of visuals. We even see what looks to be mushy peas. The final moments of demonic hands bursting from what remains of the bodies just seals everything as just the right amount of disgusting. Ash is caked in gore, and insects slither through the mess. Originally they wanted snakes to turn up as well, which I feel is a missed opportunity.

The dawn comes with twittering birdsong and classical music, and Ash finally leaves the darkness of the cabin behind, caked in blood and God knows what.

But somewhere in those old, dark woods, something stirs, springing up growling and smashing forward straight into Ash’s open scream. A joyful old-timey tune follows, leaving you gaunt and breathless.

What a fucking awesome film.

Now it’s time for some bonus information!!! Thought I was done? HAHA! Good one! Let’s crack open the Content Coffin and ransack the bare bleached bones!

This section of the review is really just shooting off facts about the film, so if that’s not your bag, don’t feel like you have to read it. It is reallllllyyy interesting though. Looking behind the scenes you get a sense of just how much work went into creating this film, particularly with regard to the effects.

Anyway, the “secret” deets:

• Stephen King labelled the film ‘ferociously original’. I learned this from watching some “TV spots” used to advertise it - the concept of which I might be a bit too young to remember. Did any of you guys see these at the time?

• The film was released unrated because they didn’t want to compromise, and quickly it became a Video Nasty, a censored and banned classic.

• Seeing some shots in black and white really made me think they should release a full BW version, like horror classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), which inspired it.

• Raimi went for ‘the gore the merrier’ as opposed to going all out on sleazy nudity. The right choice, for sure.

• Raimi and a few others made a short film, Within The Woods, to sway investors to pay towards the making of The Evil Dead (first named Book of the Dead, a name the filmmakers preferred but were told was too boring).

• Fascinatingly, with regard to Army of Darkness, Raimi mentioned in an interview with Fangoria two Harryhausen films I covered SUPER recently as points of inspiration. Not to blow my own horn too much but does that not paint me as someone who knows my shit? I organised these miniseries a mere month apart and I was absolutely right to do so.

• Raimi is a fan of Pal’s The Time Machine and Metropolis. Not necessarily relevant, but man, great taste in movies.

I’ll end with some bullet points from Bruce Campbell’s DVD commentary. I didn’t get time to watch it all, but here are some of the earlier tidbits he mentions:

• Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert cameo as the hitchhikers. I’m sure a lot of you knew this, but I was pleasantly surprised.

• The cabin genuinely was in the middle of nowhere. Nowadays it’s partially burnt. It didn’t initially have a basement, and the crew did a lot of work fixing it up. Their goal was to make it a bit TCM (1974) without going crazy overboard - a look I feel they achieved pretty well.

• The ‘trilling wind’ sound they used is from Orson Welles’ The Third Man (1949).

• Filming took years! It was a labour of love, for sure.

• The music that plays as Ash gifts the necklace replays later when Linda is possessed. Inspired.

• One of the ways they achieved certain shots was by filming with the camera on a wheelchair. They also mounted it on a board.

• The fog they created was noisome and oil-based.

• They destroyed a real bridge and it curves into a creepy hand! You can kinda see it in the film! How sick is that?

Right, that’s all from me on the first film. I really want to hear your thoughts, especially those regarding Campbell’s performance, the Video Nasty era, and all that jazz.

As ever, thanks for reading,

Until next time,

H.E.

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