The Evil Dead - Festival Review

Only a small handful of horror films have achieved the amazing acclaim that The Evil Dead (1981) has attained over the years. This certified classic, more beloved than ever, has seen 44 years pass since its release, yet this Sam Raimi hit only becomes more impressive with each viewing. This reputation has been grafted for, with The Evil Dead's production being an example of the enduring nature of grassroots horror; the film may have been made on a self-started, small budget, with lesser-known actors and filmed with diy camera rigs, but the result was certainly priceless. The film follows college student Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), and their friends Scott (Richard DeManincor) and Shelly (Theresa Tilly), who venture to a cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway, only for them to discover an ancient gateway to hell. 

Ultimately, The Evil Dead's success story blossoms from its clear devotion and admiration to service the genre, fuelling the excitement that horror ignites. And lastly, it's a film that was and still is demonstrative of accessibility and inspiration within independent filmmaking. 

The fame and glory associated with The Evil Dead was not always the case, in fact, it was quite the opposite of an overnight success, with the film dredging through controversies and backlash before rising from the dead with immense triumph. A closer look later reveals how The Evil Dead wormed its way into the 'video nasties' endemic, due to its graphic content that was (for the time) sexually explicit in a violent nature and unrestrained in its portrayals of demonic possession, both of which were glazed in messy gore and sticky viscera. Now, this reception only works to highlight how daring the film was, particularly in its inventiveness to bring horror to the screen like never before. 

Raimi and Bruce Campbell grew up as childhood friends, toying with cameras and making several micro-budget short films. Retrospection reveals that these featurettes, such as 'It's Murder!' (1977), had more meat on their bones than originally thought, with the productions having a fully fledged script, a decent runtime and showcasing attempts at staging and so forth. These experiments clearly paved the way for his next project, a proof of concept film, 'Within the Woods' (1978), made solely as a trailer to attract financiers for his and Campbell's dream project - the eventual 'Evil Dead'. The pair's begging for theatres to screen Within the Woods to draw in more potential buyers, pleading family members to invest in their venture, bartering and borrowing eventually paid off when a sizeable chunk of $375,00 was left in the kitty for them to make what would be an all-time classic. 

The amateur production did not stop at the budgeting, with the film seeing unfamiliar faces fill the cast, alongside Campbell, whose financial stakes and lifelong commitment to co-creating with Raimi made him the perfect candidate as a dedicated actor to the film. The locations were self-scouted, leaving the crew to stumble upon an abandoned cabin, which would eventually become the infamous wooden lodge where The Evil Dead's happenings occur, as well as becoming the housing for the cast and crew during filming, leading to notorious bickering and fallouts thanks to the sharing of such small confines. 

Injuries were rife amongst the crew, with horror stories such as mask removals causing strips of eyelashes to be ripped off the actress, Betsy Baker. This was followed by Campbell gaining a gnarly, bloodied injury to his leg; alongside various crew members inadvertently being prodded, stabbed and tossed into an array of gruesome prop pieces. The treacherous shoot was cold and dire, prompting the brigade to burn furniture pieces at the back of the cabin for warmth. These behind the scenes snippets, for better or worse, add to the premise of the final product being earned, not manufactured. Literal blood, sweat and tears were poured into the film, and this constraint of ingenuity, authentic, unpolished raw creativity, feels personal and true to one of horror cinema's most unforgettable and remarkable decades. The Evil Dead's muddy underdog production stoked the fire, with the ruthless passion of the horror genre making the film's effectiveness rather disturbing and brutal. 

The Evil Dead has had many readings over the years, regarding fear, isolation, the balance between horror and comedy, and evil itself being unleashed in epic proportions. Irrespective of whichever spin suits personal preference, the film undoubtedly goes heavy on the matter of fear of the unknown: unleashing an untold, ancient evil that is older and therefore deadlier and more powerful than we could ever understand or be. The key instigator in initiating this horror onto screen is the film's most important character, the 'Book of the Dead' - the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis. Whilst developing his interest in horror, Raimi became fascinated with H.P. Lovecraft, notably the text 'Necronomicon', a fictional grimoire that appears in Lovecraft's work. Despite withholding an innately otherworldliness, what piqued Raimi's interest was the connotations surrounding this 'forbidden text', its sorcery-like powers.

As evidenced in the film, this alluring book is enchanting; we just want to pick it up, feel the strange texture of the cursed cover and dive into the occult readings, which, unbeknownst, would unleash uncontrollable demons and possess souls - it is a literacy-based gateway to hell. As The Evil Dead corroborates, the unshackling of these spirits leads the group to rival with 'deadites', a parasitic being that reanimates into living souls, taking over their bodies and beings. This, of course, leads to a plethora of dauntingly visceral moments of terror, most notably observed throughout the various scenes of Cheryl's possession. 

Cheryl begins the film as quite reserved, the only single person attending the fun-filled weekend. She is the first to protest that they stop listening to the ominous, demon-conjuring tapes in the cabin's basement and storms off in hysterics when events turn spooky. However, as the infamous scene reveals, this results in one of the most blatantly horrid snippets from the entire Evil Dead franchise. During her walk to cool-off, Cheryl encounters a lonesome forest clouded with darkened misty fog, housing tonnes of twiggy trees. Suddenly, the shrubbery comes to life, with the tree's branches rising from the ground, worming and twisting like snakes or spindly spider legs across Cheryl's body, ripping her bottoms off and leaving her bare in a t-shirt. She is dragged to the floor as the vines hold her hostage on the murky ground. Slowly, the branches pull her legs apart, and then one of the most affectively horrific moments in horror cinema happens. Cheryl is graphically assaulted by the tree limbs. To recant this scene from memory brings about the terror and secondhand pain of the sequence, but to watch it again, witnessing the abominable dread, and for it to still be as wretched as it once was 44 years ago, is a true testament to the legacy of The Evil Dead. 

The events that follow from this only spiral further into chaos as the film hosts some genuinely gruesome demonic frights, namely, the attack on Scott and Ash by a now demonically possessed Shelly, all whilst a zombified Cheryl goes feral at the jaunt. The scene shows Shelly in some of the most gritty and repulsive makeup from the decade, as she bursts into the room, piggybacking on Scott, tearing into his flesh with her claws, hacking, biting, shredding any bit of Scott's flesh she can get her hands on. Every time we believe the struggle to be over, Shelly employs her deadite reincarnation powers and comes back with a vengeance. 

From the outset, the reviews came pouring in, and they were overwhelmingly positive. One of the key promoters that bid the film's success was a warmly written review by none other than 'The King of Horror' himself, Stephen King. Fellow moviegoers would follow suit with King, with the film also gaining mass attention at the box office, rapidly earning back its budget and then some. However, the year was 1981; there was something dark lurking in the distance, a rampant moral panic that would go on to be a key part of horror's heritage, particularly in the UK. 

To condense an almanac's worth of history, the video nasties were a name given to a list of 72 films compiled by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The list, composed of films such as 'I Spit on Your Grave' (1978) and 'Cannibal Holocaust' (1980), caught national attention with the rise of home video. According to the philosophy of the panic, the prospect of these violent films seeping into the average, everyday home and infesting the minds of the viewers (a particular focus was placed on young viewers) was outrageous. National news took hold of the 'potential' corruption of young Britain's minds and stirred massive anxiety, creating hysteria with their claims that the cinematic depictions of evil could brainwash children into behaving the same way as seen on the television screen, possessing the household and its occupants - ironically like the plot of The Evil Dead. 

Figures such as Mary Whitehouse took to parliament with these claims, leading politicians to take this strange tabloid uproar and turn it into genuine legislation. Using the Obscene Publication Act 1959 as a preface, the parliament introduced the Video Recordings Act 1984, declaring the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to take charge of both cinema releases and home video. The above-mentioned DPP list was formed by the Whitehouse led, NVALA (National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, to guide the prosecutors to the video nasties, i.e. what films had the potential to spearhead the threat of horror in the home. The list had varying sections of seriousness, with some films eventually becoming suitable for release, whilst others held a more stringent punishment, including prison sentences for mere distribution. 

After a few years battling on the nasties list, The Evil Dead resurged concurrently as the video nasty panic became mellowed, and leniency was granted within the BBFC, with the film being legally re-released in 1990. Shockingly, the film was not released fully uncut until 2001, a staggering 20 years after its initial release date. 

The Evil Dead is an unquestionable sensation within cinema. The sheer creativity that emerges from the claustrophobia-inducing setting, combined with the stellar practical effects, is a testament to some of horror's greatest filmmaking. And although 44 years have passed since its release, The Evil Dead's impact only grows with each year. 

Experience The Evil Dead on Sunday, 28th September at 10:30 this year's Dead Northern Film Festival. 

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