Are you folks getting tired of the 80s yet?!? Me neither!
However, while I’d love to keep slashing away at the genre’s best decade, there are other periods in horror’s illustrious 105 year history that deserve our time, and they must not be ignored.
So, let’s do one more double shot from this distilled decade before hitting the road. Sound like a good plan? Groovy…
The Evil Dead (1981)
Perhaps the quintessential ‘cult classic’, this 1981 outing sprouted forth from the mind of a talented young film director (and fellow college dropout) named Sam Raimi.
After doing numerous movies on his Kodak Super 8, this nobody from Royal Oak, Michigan decided to try his hand at making a horror movie. His first try was a 1978 short film called Within The Woods, which he made with the help of hhis friend and eventual Hollywood producer Robert G. Tapert for a budget of $1,600. And in the starring role, Raimi cast his lifelong buddy Bruce Campbell.
Why does any of this matter? Because Within The Woods not only served as a protoype for tonight’s first feature, but it also helped Raimi secure The Evil Dead‘s estimated $350,000 budget.
Originally titled Book of the Dead and intended as a straight-forward remake of Within The Woods, the film instead follows five students from MSU who take a vacation trip to a remote cabin in the backwoods of Tennessee. This crew would include Ashley Joanna “Ash” Williams (Campbell), his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Shelly (Sarah York), and their friends Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) and Scotty (Hal Delrich).
Excited for relaxation and debauchery, much to the group’s dismay, upon their arrival they find that the cabin is the very definition of a rustic ramshackle sh-t shack. Things are even worse on the inside, and it’s not just the aesthetics either, because within its wall is where they find…the book.
Bearing the name Naturom Demonto (also known as ‘Necronomicon Ex-Mortis’), the ‘Book of the Dead’ is a Sumerian grimoire that was found in years past by an archaeologist named Raymond Knowby.
Bound with human flesh and inked in human blood, the ancient tome contains various prophecies, funerary incantations, and demon resurrection passages that give them license to possess the living, the book was brought to the cabin by Knowby in order to allow him the peace to dedicate himself to translating its words.
However, not only is Knowby nowhere to be found, but neither are the translations from his book. Instead, there is only an audio tape recorder – and when the group, in a move of pure genius, decide to press play, well, that’s when the real party begins.
Pure, low-budget paradise – That’s the best way to describe this movie.
Its effects reflect the amount of money spent, but the atmosphere provides the perfect distraction, and luckily for Raimi, it’s hard to make gore look bad. Meanwhile, there is no plot or character development whatsoever – and nobody asked for them! There’s also a particular scene with sister Shelly out in the woods that does not paint a good picture of trees, or their true intentions with mankind…
Dark and raw, The Evil Dead contains none of the humor that would become more of franchise focus in later entries. As such, following its screening at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, it received a rave review from horror scribe Stephen King, which in turn caught the attention of New Line Cinema and led to the film getting a theatrical release in 1983. And with its debut, all of a sudden, Sam Raimi was no longer a nobody.
And while Raimi’s story continues in our next feature, before you get there, it’s best recommended that you start with The Evil Dead on TUBI.
RELATED: Bruce Campbell Willing To Return As Ash For An Evil Dead Animated Series
Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (1987)
No longer the ‘literally who’s they were before, in 1987, Raimi and Campbell reunited for what is quite possibly the greatest sequel in horror history.
A comedy disguised as a scary movie, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn is both a quasi-remake of the first Evil Dead and also an expansion on its narrative.
Sound confusing? Don’t worry. It is best to leave your disbelief properly suspended throughout the duration of this feature. You won’t need it anyways.
The sequel starts off with a brief reenactment of what happened in the first movie – only in this version, it’s just Ash (Campbell) and his girl Linda (Denise Bixler) in the cabin, and no dead weight friends.
However, the events themselves play out much like before, with the group finding the Necronomicon and making the predictably dumb move of hitting play on Professor Knowby’s recorded translation of its text, after which Linda gets possessed, beheaded, buried, yadda-yadda.
Now, in the aftermath of these events, Ash is alone in the isolated cabin and is being screwed with by a bunch of evil – to the point where his own hand turn against him.
And as if Ash things couldn’t get any crazier after he and his hand part ways, Knowby’s daughter is on her way to the cabin! Suffice to say, she’s going to have a big surprise waiting for her, especially in the fruit cellar.
Over-the-top gore, slapstick comedy, and brilliant filmmaking techniques are a few good terms to use when describing Evil Dead II. Guts spill in copious amounts, fountains of blood gush out of holes in the wall, and a man gets the one-finger salute from his own severed hand. The violence quickly reaches an extreme where it becomes surreal, but never loses its low-budget charm (which is a notable feat in and of itself given that its estimated $3,600,000 budget isn’t exactly peanuts). Some will say the movie is in bad taste, while the more cultured will perceive that it is about bad taste.
As for Campbell, he brings more personality to the character this time around, and his performance here is what elevated Ash to the level of horror icon, where he’ll stay from now until the seas run red with blood once again.
And it wasn’t just its protagonist who received such elevation. Thanks to the ever-growing popularity of Evil Dead II, it spawned another sequel, a remake, an amazing series, and another remake – not to mention a number of comic book and video game adaptations. To this day, the film continues to be celebrated as a classic, with many even considering it to be superior to its predecessor.
With this release, Raimi caught his big break, after which he would go on to have a truly Amazing career as one of Hollywood’s best directors. He can never be called a nobody again.
Grab a boomstick from S-Mart and JOIN US to catch this one over on Prime.