You can’t go to college and not hear of the Evil Dead. The
film is almost a rite of passage for any fraternity. I still can’t watch the
films without beer and popcorn I just can’t do it.
The first film is also a blueprint for any young filmmaker
on how to make a film on the lowest budget that you can get and what you can
make with nothing.
In his autobiography If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell gives
great detail on the camera mounts that they made with 2x4s and nails and how
they used them for tracking shots.
Evil Dead may not be the original Cabin in the Woods film
but it is by far the standard bearer to which all are measured.
The plot of the film follows a young group of college students
who go out into the cabin for the weekend getaway. As it turns out none of them
own the Cabin and they don’t know who owns it and after investigating the
Basement they discover a mysterious book as well as a tape recording of the
translations in the book.
The group plays the recording that tells the story of the
Can Darian Demons and the words being played awakens something in the woods
that causes the woods to rape one of the women which also allows a demon to
take possession of the young woman who goes on to attack all of the others
leaving just Ash as the only one of the group that is not possessed by the
demons.
What Evil Dead does have is some of the most gross-out
effects with the use of stop motion effects and whatever was built from the
grocery store and left over from dinner the night before.
Bruce Campbell spoke that the advice that they were given
for the film is to keep the blood flowing down the screen and that is just what
they did both literally and figuratively.
Evil Dead was a hit with audiences and remains a hit today.
Evil Dead is considered a rite of passage for the college crowd.
There is even the Evil Dead Drinking Game as well as the
constant rereleases from Anchor Bay.
Naturally a sequel was going to happen and it arrived in the
form of Evil Dead 2 Dead by Dawn.
With a higher budget the original film is changed with the
characters of Ash and Linda being the only characters shown and the film
features Ash facing off against Linda as well as his possessed hand that he has
to cut off and replaces with a chainsaw.
All of this is happening while Ash is being beaten by
everything in the room.
It is revealed in Special Features that Rami is a fan of the
Three Stooges and they served as inspiration for the film.
In the end of Evil Dead 2 Ash is sucked into a portal that
transports him to the middle ages which brings us to the final chapter in the
movie trilogy.
By the time that Army of Darkness was produced Sam Rami and
Bruce Campbell had found more success in other works such as Darkman and The
Adventures of Briscoe County and Army of darkness was the more known movie of
the franchise.
Picking up where Evil Dead 2 leaves off Ash is in the middle
ages and is taken in by Arthur and his Knights in the castle that is in the
middle of battle from the “Deadites” Ash is sent to retrieve the Necronomicon
from the forest where he is to say the words
"Klaatu barada nikto”.
Needless to say Ash doesn’t say the words properly and an
Army of the Deadites awakens and Ash has to battle the Army of Darkness, Save
the Girl in distress and get back to his normal time.
Army of Darkness was the final official film in the series
and there are two versions. The Theatrical cut and the Director’s cut. The
Theatrical cut has the ending where Ash returns to his job at S-Mart where he
continues to fight the Deadites, the other ending features Ash botching his
orders to drink the potion that will return him to his time and sleeps too long
and wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world leaving an opening for another sequel.
Bruce Campbell reprised the role of Ash Williams by lending
his voice talents to a series of PlayStation games. He even appeared in the commercial for the
game Evil Dead: Hail to the King.
References to the Evil Dead Franchise can be seen in many of
Bruce Campbell and Sam Rami’s other works from Spider-Man to Burn Notice.
There is even a popular Musical play based on the franchise
titled Evil Dead: The Musical.
Naturally with the current trend in Horror Films a Remake of
the Evil Dead was going to happen.
However this remake is produced by none other than Bruce Campbell
and Sam Rami as well as franchise producer and frequent collaborator Rob Tapert.
This remake follows a different group of young people who are heading out to a cabin in the woods to
help their friend Mia detox and get clean since she had struggled with
addiction since the death of her mother.
Joining Mia is her brother, his girlfriend as well as two of
her friends who again find the Book of the Dead and after reading from it
awakens the evil in the woods.
Mia while trying to relapse escapes to the woods where after
being raped by the woods, (That scene had to remain) becomes possessed with the Evil Dead.
In what makes all of us think that we are literally seeing a
remake of the Evil Dead the film then changes direction and Mia is saved from
the possession and become the heroine of the film and has to face off against
not just the possession of her friends but the actual Demon that emerges from
the land.
Bruce Campbell Makes an appearance in the Post Credits where
he speaks his iconic line “Groovy”.
Many loyalists to the series have bashed this flick
complaining about the effects and the plot which can be expected especially with
a loyal following that the franchise has.
I admit that I went into the movie with low expectations and
was pleasantly surprised.
I did feel that something was missing from the film which
may have been the fact that the budget of this film was far greater than the
budget of the original and as a result the film lacks the feel.
In the years since Evil Dead the Cabin in the Woods film has
been done many times since. As a matter of fact there was a Joss Whedon
produced film released last summer that was titled Cabin in the Woods.
The fact of the Matter is that the original Evil Dead was
the trendsetter and the remake did not try to raise the bar.
That being said some of the gore scenes were far more cringe
worthy than their predecessors. That probably is because with the larger budget
and the improvements in special effects.
Aside from those points I enjoyed the film. You have a good
horror flick that keeps you entertained for the entire flick and that is all
that matters to me in going the theater.
It was later revealed that sequels are in the works and
there are talks of these current installments of the franchise combining with
the original series and the audiences seeing a team-up of Mia and Ash.
I personally will have to see it to believe it.
6 Dead Bodies
0 Breasts
7 Beasts
1 Dead Dog
2 Severed Limbs
2 Disembowelings
Leg Slicing
Tongue Slicing
Eyeball Gouging
Face Cutting
Human Fu
Cabin Fu
Demon Fu
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