1001 Movies Club - Evil Dead, The (1982)

#684. The Evil Dead (1982)

Why It's In The Book: "This "ultimate experience in grueling [sic] horror," as it immodestly bills itself in the end credits, changed the history of its genre. Sam Raimi took the gore of Italian horror movies and mixed it with a proudly juvenile sense of humour - making its teenage heroes so vapidly wholesome that we cannot wait, once they are holed up in a remote country shack, for them to die or be zombiefied. Such self-consciousness would subsequently come to dominate screen horror. It is the ultimate "movie nerd" success story, flagrantly amateurish in many if its effects, but powered by a full-on soundtrack and ubiquitous, rapid, low-to-the-ground point of view shots. Raimi absorbed lessons from the 1970s generation of William Friedkin, Wes Craven, George Romero, and Brian DePalma, but added a down-home surrealism, somewhere between Jean Cocteau and Tex Avery. And in Bruce Campbell, Raimi found a sympathetically cartoonish star. Today, it is hard to see anything but comedy in The Evil Dead, especially in the light of its sequels, Evil Dead II (1987) and Army Of Darkness (1993). But we must remember that in 1982 the film had the same terrifying effect on audiences as The Blair Witch Project 17 years later - taking them, momentarily, out of their comfort zone." -1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Member Ratings

Jaime Grijalba - 10/10
"I want to say that this movie is so important that it turns inspiring. Seeing it, makes you want to make
films, especially after seeing it THREE times in a row."
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Doug Tilley - 9/10
"No movie had a bigger impact on my love for ilms and film-making than Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead."
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Klaus Ming - 8/10
"an extraordinary achievement and one of the more influential horror films of all time"
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Movie Guy Steve - 8/10
"The Evil Dead is all about getting as much scare and gore and creeps as possible in a terribly short running time with a cash flow that paid for Karo syrup and non-dairy creamer instead of actual stage blood."
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Squish - 8/10
"Before the Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn reboot in all its slapstick comedy, before the high-budget farce Army of Darkness, there was a genuinely disturbing don't-eat-while-watching-this-like-I-did original film, a film that continues to impress thirty years later, and even one one that created a musical - one I've been to. How many films can say that?"
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Kim Wilson - 7/10
"The Evil Dead is a slightly passable 1980s horror movie.  It has its enthusiasts, I’m just not one of them."
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Overall Rating: 8.6/10