PopHorror Let's Get Scared
As a pre-teen (and, of course, throughout much of my life) “monster kid”, Fangoria magazine was my de facto bible. Imagine my anticipation when, in snippets and grainy photos, the story of an upcoming film called The Evil Dead started to appear in it’s pages! Gory violence, rumors of vomiting during screenings, and finally, that iconic poster, complete with a glowing quote from none other than Stephen King, followed! I HAD to see this movie…my very existence depended on it.
Obviously, HBO carried the more mainstream horrors, so, thanks to the then burgeoning VHS boom, I was able to procure a copy through a local mom & pop rental place (with the ultra-clever name “Home Video”). To say my socks were significantly knocked off would be an understatement.
An ambitious cabal of Michiganders, led by the incomparable Sam Raimi, went into the woods of rural Tennessee and re-emerged with a film that effectively changed the game for both indie, and studio, horror forever!
Bringing together the soon-to-be-stereotypical group of co-eds: Scott (Hal Delrich aka Rich DeManincor), Shelly (Theresa Tilly), Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), Linda (Besty Baker) and her man, the lantern-jawed hero, Ash (Bruce Campbell) to a remote cabin in the woods, where, the unseen professor Knowby had been translating passages from an ancient Sumerian text. Curiosity gets the better of Scott (life hack: NEVER play random tapes!!) and soon a Kandarian demon is unleashed upon our unsuspecting group of kids, and they’re possessed one by one…
The Evil Dead (yes, I use “The” when referring to the OG) was groundbreaking in so many ways, that it is impossibly to list them all, just appreciate them in the sum. From the crazy cinematography that became a hallmark of Raimi’s career, to the formation of a future horror icon in Campbell’s Ash, the film has been cribbed from, analyzed, and dissected by much more qualified scholars than I. So rather than attempt yet another case study of the said film, I’ll just list the things that had a suitably groovy effect on me.
The gore! Unabashedly splattery, The Evil Dead used plenty of red stuff, and even more green stuff (to avoid an X rating). This was definitely the wettest film I’d seen up to this point, as it would be a few years before it’s own 1987 sequel, and later, films like Re Animator, upped the ante on the red stuff. Tom Sullivan’s inspired prosthetics and gonzo stop-motion effects (on the cheap) really set a high bar for indie horror films, and hold up exceptionally well when viewed today.
The book! The Necronomicon has featured in every film since the original, and inspired hundreds of ancient relic plot points for both occult, and straight up gore, flicks for the decades that have followed. A perfect plot device for the mayhem to be unleashed, “there’s something in the woods…”
The cast! The possessed ladies especially seem to take a sadistic glee in their portrayals of demonic possession, and of course, the world of fright would be considerably poorer without the wise-cracking, reluctant hero Ash Williams.
The lore! The plot of The Evil Dead was the jumping off point for a wild ride of two direct sequels, an incredible 3 season run of Ash Vs. Evil Dead, a 2013 re-boot, and two very intense companion films in Rise and Burn. The franchise is still adding to the canon and shows no sign of slowing down with Wrath forthcoming.
A truly psychotic blend of crazy angles, sexual assaulting foliage, unrelenting violence, cellar doors, iconic characters, nasty set-pieces, chainsaws, porch swings, ancient tomes, and magical daggers, The Evil Dead set the genre on it’s ear on it’s release, and continues to shock, entertain, and inspire horror nerds to this day. Raimi, Campbell and company have (literally) made their careers on, and because of, it. Who would have thought that a cheap little film, made for peanuts, in torturous conditions, that almost didn’t see the light of day would eventually become such a landmark film?
Those nutty Michiganders managed to capture lightning in a bottle way back in 1981, and we, as horror fans, have been feeling the reverberations since! Join us indeed.
