Vintage Horror Review: The Evil Dead (1981)

To celebrate "Ash" wednesday, I figured I'd review one of the best horror films ever made (and one of my favorites) The Evil Dead.

The Evil Dead begins with a group of college-age kids on a trip to an old cabin in the middle of the woods in Tennessee, where they plan to spend the weekend, party and just have fun together. Soon, they discover an odd book in the cabin's basement and a tape recorder that, when played, reveals that the previous occupant was a researcher who had unearthed the book. The man on the tape reads a few passages aloud from the "Book of the Dead", unleashing an evil in the woods that begins to possess the group one by one.

Despite spawning two fairly comedic sequels (The Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn & Army of Darkness), The Evil Dead remains one of the scariest horror films to emerge from the golden age of horror (the 80's).It doesn't rely on jump scares, found footage, or any of the other various conventions that "scary" horror movies usually contain these days, something about it all just makes for a very scary film. It is essentially the best horror film to watch alone in the dead of night if you're looking for a real scare.

However, The Evil Dead has much more to offer than simply being a scary movie. It is also probably the best "Do-It-Yourself" horror film ever made as well. It contains actors that were completely unknown at the time, homemade special effects, no sets or stages (the cabin in the film is a real abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods) and still manages to be as great as it is.

The perfect example of this is the films impressive opening shot from the point of view of the unseen entity traveling through the woods. The shot is simple director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell running with the camera attached to a wood board. The part where the entity "floats" over the lake is simply Campbell pushing Raimi in a dinghy.

I could go on for hours talking about every little aspect of The Evil Dead that just makes it the perfect 80's horror film but I'll end this by saying that if you haven't seen The Evil Dead, you need to watch it as soon as you possibly can. It is dark, scary, original, enjoyable and one of the best horror films of all time.