WARNING HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

Hello Enthusiacs! I am the Lord of Shadows and today we delve into one of the cornerstones of the genre. In 1981 Sam Raimi took the idea of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and placed it in our own world. This leads to a horror filled vacation in the woods of Tennessee for a few unfortunate souls.

If you know horror then you know Evil Dead. This begins what is called by fans the Ash trilogy. The reason for this is Ashley Williams, played by the hambone master Bruce Campbell, is the lone survivor of this film and would later become the face of the franchise.

The story of Evil dead began in 1978 when Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, and Rob Tapert began planning there big screen debut. It began simply by watching drive in horror films and see what people liked and what they didn’t.

Bruce sums it up pretty well here “The message was very clear: Keep the pace fast and furious, and once the horror starts, never let up. The gorier the merrier became our prime directive.”

Raimi has stated several time he was very influenced by the works of H.P.Lovecraftand when you watch the movie you can clearly see not only his love for the material but the immense respect he felt toward it.

The concept feature that ended up impressing the would be backs was a very short film about four kids digging up an indian burial chamber and unleashing the beast within. This short was called A walk in the woods and to be blunt it worked.

The final product would see five poor bastards from Michigan State heading down to Tennessee. At once we see that strange things are afoot down south. Many supernatural things begin to happen around them yet each one keep their own moment to themselves fearing the group will believe they’ve gone insane.

It is then that the trapdoor to the cellar flies open leading to our would be heroes going down to investigate things and finding the book of Naturon Demonto, the Sumerian book of the Dead. This is when things get out of hand as each member of the group winds up facing a supernatural tormentor.

We never really know for sure what the demons end game is. It could be as simple as demons being evil, but I like to find a deep meaning. The beings are clearly trying to see how far they can take these people before the mind breaks. So we can assume the Deadites are learning how best to hurt people before they invade the entire Earth.

We can even assume that these beings grow in power from pain and suffering otherwise these deads would be simple and quick. What do they care about being scary for the sake of being scary. Ash in particular is tested.

Forced to dismember and decapitate the people who were his friends and slowly we see his mind not breaking but twisting. We could even see the idea of him becoming more like the Deadites and as such becoming dark enough to survive.

This leads to the end of the film having destroyed the book of the dead Ash leaves the cabin only to be chased down by an entity and we end of the screaming face of Ashley Williams. A man who has not only been tested but passed that test and come out stronger in the end.

Raimi has stated he ended the film this way as a way to set up that depending on your own perspective either Ash is possessed or Ash is dead. See that’s how you do open ended story telling.

This movie scared the hell of out people when released and still does to this day. The effects were mostly done practically and you can tell that by just how realistic some of these things look. Now yes not every shot is super realistic but there are still some legit scary moments not ruined by poor cgi as many modern horror moments.

In conclusion The Evil Dead is a masterpiece of horror. If you haven’t seen it do yourself a favor and watch it tonight.

Stay Scared my friends

Vega Goose