The Evil Dead

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Movie Details

• Genre: Horror, SciFi/Fantasy
• Release Date: 1981-10-15 Limited
• Running Time: 85 min.
• Director: Sam Raimi
• Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Hal Delrich, Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly, Philip A. Gillis, Dorothy Tapert, Cheryl Guttridge, Barbara Carey, David Horton
• Producer: Robert Tapert
• Writer: Sam Raimi
• Distributor: New Line Cinema
• Official Site: The Evil Dead Official Site

Released in 1982, this relentlessly inventive horror movie by director Sam Raimi established the modern blueprint for young filmmakers with tiny budgets, clever ideas, and little interest in art for art's sake. The drill: Make a grubby genre picture and load it up with ironic humor and excessive style. The Evil Dead follows five college students to a cabin in the woods, where the discovery of an ancient text unleashes a demonic force that possesses the kids and sends them on a killing spree. Raimi would later remake the movie, essentially, as the self-consciously campier Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and then blow a stack of Hollywood money on the third installment, a half-baked homage to Ray Harryhausen called Army Of Darkness (which appeals to the sort of cultists who prefer their love objects to be deeply flawed, the better to celebrate their own offbeat taste). The original balances awkwardly between gory exploitation trash and slapstick comedy, lowlighted by a clumsy lead performance from the now-iconic Bruce Campbell, and a regrettable bit of business involving a woman getting raped by a tree. But it endures because of Raimi's outrageously wild approach to visceral shocks. (Noel Murray)