The Evil Dead

The Evil Dead (1981)
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DaManincor, Theresa Tilly
Memorable Line: "We can't bury Shelly - S-She's a friend of ours."

To think that the director who brought you the Spider-man franchise got it his start with The Evil Dead. And it's not a bad beginning, but people watching The Evil Dead could never tell that the director of that film would ever go on to direct the amazingly good and lucrative Spider-man franchise.

Five college friends take a vacation to a secluded cabin in the deep woods and come face-to-face with a demon. That pretty much sums up the plot in a sentence, but there is more to The Evil Dead than that. They five discover a demonic book -- the Book of the Dead -- along with a professor's audio tapes detailing his unsettling experience with the book. Of course, the young people in the movie don't just decide to leave once the first few signs of evil appear, but like any Scooby-Do group of intrepid adventurers, they decide to dig deeper -- much to their disappointment and ultimate demise.

The Evil Dead was made on a shoestring budget and that's if you went out and borrowed the shoestring. The lack of a budget shows as times, but that's not to say that isn't any good because there are many inventive and chilling moments in the movie. For what they lack in money, the make up for it with energy and pace. There's a great deal of manic energy in The Evil Dead and it's the energy that propels the movie along.

Bruce Campbell headlines the no-name cast as Ash and this is the part that launched his career. The rest of the cast delivers some fairly uneven performances. But that isn't why most people come to see low budget horror movies is it? It's for the blood and gore and The Evil Dead has plenty of that.

Director Raimi is quite inventive with the camera angles and movement. At times, you'll not only get a little queasy from the graphic content, but a little motion sick from the camera movement. Raimi keeps the movie going by hook or by crook and the whole production seems to totter at times towards the brink of disaster. Still, The Evil Dead deservedly spawned 2 sequels and made a whole pile of money in video rentals and, if you're a horror fan, will provide you with a night of unforgettable entertainment.