The Evil Dead

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The Evil Dead
Poster for The Evil Dead
Directed by	Sam Raimi
Produced by	Sam Raimi Bruce Campbell Robert Tapert
Written by	Sam Raimi
Starring	Bruce Campbell Ellen Sandweiss Betsy Baker Hal Delrich Teresa Tilly
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	October 15, 1981
Running time	85 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$375,000
Gross revenue	$2,400,000 est.(As of July 26,2006)
Followed by	Evil Dead II
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Evil Dead (also known as Evil Dead, The Book of The Dead, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and The Evil Dead: The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror) is a 1981 horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss and Betsy Baker. The film depicts five college students and their vacation in an isolated cabin the Tennessee woods, which turns into a nightmare when they find an audiotape that is a key to unlocking evil spirits.

The film was extremely controversial for its graphic violence and gore, being initially turned down by almost all U.S. distributors, until a European company picked it up. It premiered on October 15, 1981 to moderate box office receipts, grossing $2,400,000, considering its $375,000 budget and mixed critical reaction. Today, it is widely accepted by critics and audiences alike as classic of the horror genre.

[edit] Plot

Five college students venture into the Tennessee woods to spend a weekend in an isolated cabin. Instead, they find grief in the form of the Book of the Dead (a separate Babylonian text in the film, unrelated to the Egyptian text) otherwise known as the Morturom Demonto (or Necronomicon in the sequels). They find and play a tape recording of demonic incantations from the book, unwittingly resurrecting the slumbering demons that thirst for revenge. The characters are then possessed by the evil force in sequences of intense, bloody violence.

The ensuing events consist mainly of the last survivor, Ash Williams, being tortured by the powers of the spirits - with blood spontaneously dripping from the walls and ceiling, and clocks going berserk. The film ends with a graphic but dramatic disintegration of the possessed ones as the book is thrown into the fireplace. The final scene of the film, which takes place at the break of dawn, shows an evil spirit bearing down on Ash. At that moment, the frame blacks out for the closing titles.

[edit] Censorship

The Evil Dead Book of the Dead set.

Because of its graphic violence, the original version of the movie was banned in several countries, including Finland, Iceland, Ireland and Germany. The "tree rape" scene was also decried by some as being misogynist.^{[citation needed]} In Germany, the movie's release was hindered by public authorities for almost 10 years. Original 1982 cinema and video releases of the movie had been seized, making the movie a hit on the black market video circuit with pirated copies abounding. Several high-profile horror enthusiasts publicly criticized the German ban on the movie, including author Stephen King (who gave it a rave review in the November 1982 issue of Twilight Zone). A heavily edited version was made legally available in 1992, but the first legal, uncut version of the movie did not enter the German DVD market until 2001. In Finland, The Evil Dead was later released uncut on DVD by Future Film, and rated K-18. In the United Kingdom, the movie was one of the first to be labeled a video nasty in the mid-1980s and was finally released uncut in 2001.

In one scene early in the film, the characters appeared to be smoking marijuana. In an example of "self-censorship", the shot was abandoned because the actors used real cannabis which made them unpredictable. However, in the initial shot of the group in the cabin, smoke from the cannabis scene is still visible.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Evil Dead: The Musical

Main article: Evil Dead: The Musical

With the approval of both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, a musical version of the film was staged, enjoying a successful workshop in Toronto and performances at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal in 2004. The New York off-Broadway production started previews on October 2, 2006. The official Opening Night performance was November 1, 2006. The show continued with 8 performances per week at the New World Stages until closing February 17, 2007.

[edit] Trivia

• The movie was filmed in Morristown, Tennessee off Kidwells Ridge Road, and was screened at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
• Shooting began on November 14, 1979. The original cast left on schedule after six weeks, and the remainder of the filming used family and friends dressed like the actors for rear or side shots. This became known as "shemping"; the person participating is known as a "Fake shemp", paying homage to the Three Stooges.
• In order to finance the film, Raimi made a short film entitled Within the Woods, which starred Bruce Campbell and Ellen Sandweiss and had scenes that would later be redone for this film, as well as a shot that would be used in Evil Dead II.
• The two fishermen on the side of the road at the beginning are writer / director Sam Raimi and producer Robert Tapert. In the film, Professor Knowby's recorded recitation of the Book of the Dead is actually a distortion of the words, "Sam and Rob are the hikers down the road." Tapert can also be seen when the car enters the wooden bridge, hiding in the shrubbery to the right.
• Terminology used in reference to the demonic book shows that Raimi's version of the notorious faux-occult book is influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's work.
• The cabin used for filming in Tennessee had no basement, so a trap door was cut in the floor, and a five foot hole was dug beneath it. The actors pretended to descend into the basement by squatting down lower and lower. The scenes in the basement were filmed in Marshall, Michigan, months later.
• At one point in early January, 1980, filming was interrupted by a shortage of Karo syrup, red food coloring and marshmallows, the components of the film's guts. All of the stores in a 20 mile radius had been bought out of these ingredients.
• Footage from the film's climax was used in the opening sequence of Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares.
• In the scene when Ash first finds the Necronomicon, a torn poster of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes can be seen in the background. In response, a scene from Evil Dead is visible on a television screen in Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. An Evil Dead poster can also be seen in a closet containing a chainsaw in the horror film Dead & Breakfast, and the film plays in a theater in Donnie Darko.
• To make Campbell's terrified screams sound more realistic, he was poked off-camera with a sharp stick to make him scream.
• In the original shooting script, Ash survives and walks off into the dawning day. The film crew objected strenuously to the notion of a survivor, not believing Sam could even consider a "happy" ending. The ending of the film was conceived in a breakfast brainstorming session.
• Numerous shots in the film, in which the action is seen from the point of view of an unseen demonic force, are filmed with a method devised by DP Tim Philo known as "shaky-cam" (conceived when the production dropped the expensive Steadicam from the budget). A camera is attached crossways by a bolt to a two foot long two-by-four, with the cameraman holding the ends and maneuvering the camera over obstacles in its path. Another version utilizes a long 2x4 held by two operators, but it was worthless in the woods. Raimi has continued to use this method in other movies, including the remainder of the Evil Dead trilogy.
• When questioned about the tree-rape scene in the 1990's, Sam Raimi said "In retrospect, it was unnecessarily gratuitous" - an intentionally flippant remark due to the implication that something can be gratuitous without being unnecessary.
• This film was #76 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
• The film's name is shown on a marquee in the movie Splash when Madison is watching pizza makers.
• The computer generated cartoon ReBoot paid homage to the Evil Dead movies by having its main characters play through a gameworld that parodied Ash's adventures including his catchphrase, "Groovy."

[edit] See also

• Evil Dead series

[edit] External links

• The Evil Dead at the Internet Movie Database
• Evil Dead Interactive - Contains scripts, trailers, art, sound clips, and everything else Evil Dead.
• Deadites Online - Internet site with information regarding the trilogy