The Evil Dead (1981)

"Kill her if you can, loverboy!"
Sam Raimi's first full-length film, about a group of college-age kids who find a necronomicon-like book and unleash the evil spirits of demons who possess them sequentially, has an enormous cult following, and it's easy to see why. Low on both plot and character, the film instead offers an enormous number of scares and thrills, and exhibits a precocious (and highly effective) use of camera placement, make-up effects, and editing and story rhythms--this is one of the best-paced horror films ever made. Raimi makes reference to almost every film you can think of that preceded it, from the expected (CARRIE, HALLOWEEN, SUSPIRIA) to the surprising (THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, with the shot of the tendril creeping up Cheryl's dress, and THE WIZARD OF OZ, with Cheryl's zombie mocking Ash just like the Wicked Witch of the West mocks Dorothy). The tone is mostly straightfaced, with little indication of how tongue-in-cheek the series would later become, though there are some indications in the demons' impossibly but enjoyably arch dialogue. The film won no prizes for progressive gender politics: the hero, Ash (the strongjawed and likeable Bruce Campbell) basically learns how to be a man by ceasing to protect the possessed female characters and instead beating them literally to bits. But on the level of delivering purely shocking thrills it would be hard to match this lowbudget work.

The Ulimate Release In Grueling Terror!
After so many reincarnations (Book of the Dead, THX release, etc), this is the Ultimate Experience in what is known as the Evil Dead.

My review is not about the movie. There are plenty of those already. This is a review on the latest release called The Ultimate Edition. With this edition, you get three DVDs chock full of movies and special features that should whet the appetite of any possessing demon that should come your way.

DVD 1:
This DVD contains the widescreen version of the movie in Dolby Surround 2.0, Digital EX and 6.1 DTS-ES. It contains audio commentary from Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert. Also included is a 50+ minute documentary called "One By One We Will Take You: The Untold Saga of THE EVIL DEAD". This new special from Anchor Bay interviews the cast and crew of the movie and goes into such in-depth detail of how this movie was made. Do you think you know everything that happened? You may and you may not, but you'll definitely learn more with interviews with Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly and others from behind the scenes. The picture itself of the movie is as pristine as you can get it to be.

DVD 2:
This contains the full screen version in Dolby 2.0 and contains the commentary from Bruce Campbell. Again, wonderful, pristine picture and it also contains a 59 minute feature of deleted scenes and outtakes entitled "THE EVIL DEAD: Treasures From The Cutting Room Floor". There is no commentary with it, but still, it's a wonderful introspective into the making of this film.

DVD 3:
Wow. What can be said. This is just chock full of Evil Dead treasures that should keep you possessed. You have numerous features concerning the "Ladies of the Evil Dead". There are plenty of videos from conferences with the cast and crew, including a reunion panel, make-up test, trailers, TV spots, still gallery and more. Also included is a two-side poster containing the original "touched up" Evil Dead poster and on the other side is the original photograph before it was touched up. There is also an Easter Egg on the 3rd DVD that has a panel discussion after the movie was released in 2001 by Anchor Bay to a capacity crowd at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood.

Overall, this tops them all as far as what it contains. It is well worth the price to own this Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror. It has swallowed my soul!

the ladies get their due
anchor bay has released 'evil dead' more times than you can throw a quivering severed demon limb at, so why did i pick up the ultimate edition? a few reasons. number one, the packaging is incredible. it's well-made and the cover is the original poster art complete with fold marks (artificial or not, i don't know or care). two, i do not hold out any hope for a future edition that includes the well-known short 'within the woods' that raimi and crew made prior to 'evil dead' (bruce campbell has said in many interviews they will never release this, and it's very easy to find online for anyone who is curious). three, and probably most important, the 'ladies of the evil dead' disc! at long last, the female leads come forward and share their experience making this landmark film. they have a truckload of new and interesting stories to tell, and i loved watching all the footage of them together after all these years. if there is a future edition that features a commentary track by these ladies, i'll buy it (reference to a commentary is made in one of their interviews, but it's not specified whether or not it was for dvd or if they did it live at a public screening). they're awesome and frankly all we've heard for the last 20something years on this film series is male perspective. anchor bay was smart to seriously acknowledge the female contributors to this classic film as they make up the majority of the lead roles and endured the same pain and makeup torture as everybody else.

my only complaint, and the reason this edition gets 4 stars instead of 5, is that i can't give away my previous 'collectors edition' anchor bay dvd of 'evil dead' because they put bruce campbell's commentary on a separate disc from the one with sam raimi and rob tapert. if anything happens to one of these two discs you still have the movie but you'd be missing one very important commentary track.