As a rule, horror fans aren’t supposed to be smug about their favourite franchises. How can they be, when the sheer amount of movies usually dilutes the quality of the what many fell in love with in the first place? Fans of Freddy Krueger have to deal with the existence of The Dream Lord, Jason fans have basically the whole franchise, and Halloween is probably due for another reboot in the next few seconds. For the big hitters, even good old Leatherface, there have been way more misses than hits. So, why am I smug? Because I’m an Evil Dead fan.
I say it loud and proud: Evil Dead is the best horror franchise of them all, and in this retrospective (in which I will cover the Ash Williams trilogy, the remake, and this year’s Evil Dead Rise), I’ll try and get to the bottom of just why that is. We begin, as all the best things do, with a little cabin in the woods.
It’s a template as old as 80s horror, a bunch of city-dwelling teenagers go for an inexplicable trip into the woods, awaken something evil, and die horribly. So what makes The Evil Dead so special? How has it not only become an iconic horror classic in its own right, but launched an unlikely series of movies that are still going forty years later? The answer is simple: a little maniac named Sam Raimi.
As you will know if you’ve read my Spider-Man articles, Sam Raimi is one of my favourite directors and the Evil Dead series is a huge part of that. As someone who was terrified of all horror cinema before I turned twenty, watching Raimi’s first movie felt like a horrific rite of passage. Even knowing the master of horror, Stephen King, called it one of the scariest movies ever, I wasn’t prepared. Oh boy, was I not prepared.
The Evil Dead is gory, disgusting, full of wooden acting and questionable plotting, and it’s a fucking masterpiece. There are certain movies that are a ride, rollercoasters to borrow from Scorsese, but The Evil Dead is a ghost train teetering off the rails while both the conductor and driver are trying to eat your liver while you’re still alive. The sheer power of this smooths out the movie’s rough edges, fuelled by the breathtakingly creativity on show.
The Evil Dead still works in the same way that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre works: it’s the vision of an filmmaker who is an amateur in name only. Sam Raimi wants to scare you, he wants to make you laugh, and he wants to disgust you. Take the most famous part of the franchises’ house style: the roving camera. The camera is meant to be an observer, even in stalk and slash movies like Friday the 13th, it puts us in the killer’s point of view. In Evil Dead it is the killer, the pursuer, Raimi’s camera is a weapon. Just because this is a piece of work so early in his career doesn’t mean he’s not already a master.
The Deadites come a close second to the camera in term of terror. Are they demons? Are they zombies? They are whatever Raimi needs them to be in each scene. A little Exorcist here, a little Romero there, Raimi combined them then used the full box of crayons for their insides.
If Sam Raimi just made The Evil Dead, it would be held up as classic splatter curio. Yet, like all great directors, his ambitions were grander. Lucky for him, he had an actor who could match him. Ash is in The Evil Dead but it isn’t until Evil Dead 2 that Bruce Campbell gets real groovy with it. See you then, and if you find a book made of human flesh, don’t read from it. Well, maybe a little…
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By Kevin Boyle
(header image via The London Horror Society)
No But Listen 