I've been looking forward to this one for weeks; I haven't seen it for years, but I LOVE the sequels.
As such, this is a tough one to review on it's own merits, but screw it: These "Reviews" are supposed to act as a discussion for people who have seen (or are interested in) the movies already, hence the liberal spoiler policy, so if comparisons to Evil Dead II, or Army of Darkness show up, then they do!
I will say, right off the bat, If you havn't seen the Evil Dead movies, stop reading, head over to your DVD retailer of choice and buy the trilogy, NOW, come back when you're through watching.
One thing that benefits this film enormously is the small cast - there are literally 5 people in the entire film; the nature of the titicular* 'Evil' (it possesses humans with Canderian Demons) mean that they don't even have to introduce extra characters as villains - the 5 main cast play both sides, with only a voice on a tape to provide a little exposition. Also, while the first possession happen early on, the deaths don't start to mount up until the films final act, which gives us plenty of time to get to know everyone.
Unfortunately, "everyone" includes Scotty, the groups requisite asshat - why does every horror movie group have to have one person that you just can't imagine ANYONE being friends with?
Aside from Scotty, there's Ash, Ashes sister Cheryl, ant the 2 guy's girlfriends, Lynda and Shelly. The group are headed out to a run-down cabin in the woods which they have rented cheaply. Once there, they find severel things, including handy shotguns, an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the Naturan Demanto (Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the sequels), roughly translated (we are told) "The Book of the Dead" the tape turns out to be a reading of the book, which unleashes the evil into the woods (again - we are led to believe that this also happened when the tape was made) and the rest is horror movie history!
Speaking of the Sequels, The Ash we see here is a different man to the sequels' Ash; Here, he's far more sweet than the "Hail to the King" ladies man, and far less assured than the "This is my Broomstick" quoting hero we will come to love.
It's great to see physical effects done... if not actually well, then at least competently enough for a feature of this caliber; The stop motion may not put Harryhausen to shame, but they are good enough that their sheer charm carries them the extra few steps that they're intrinsic quality could not, and they are great to see.
Also - keep a look out for the Wes Craven shout-out - I think this is the first in a chain of Raimi and Craven referencing each other.
Oh, and a woman gets raped by a tree.
Body Count: 4
Boob Count: 0
Animal Body Count: 0
Most Memorable Death: Self-killing demons? That's handy!.
*Side note: Not only does Chrome's spell checker not know the word "Movie" (Which it always wants to correct as "Mo vie" but it wanted me to talk about the "Testicular 'Evil'" too...
Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.
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