The Evil Dead
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The Evil Dead is a 1981 horror film directed and written by Sam Raimi, starring Bruce Campbell. It is considered a classic of the genre.
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Plot
The story is simple: Five college students venture into the Tennessee woods to spend a weekend of fun in an isolated cabin. Instead, the teenagers find the Book of the Dead. They find and play a tape recording of demonic incantations from the Book, and unknowingly open a portal to the netherworld. The characters are then killed off in a somewhat disjointed sequence of scenes of extremely intense, bloody and "realistic"-looking violence, and the film ends with the apparently invisible evil spirit bearing down on the last survivor, Ashley J. Williams AKA "Ash."
Trivia
The budget was somewhere around $375,000.
The two fishermen on the side of the road at the beginning are writer/director Sam Raimi and producer Rob Tapert.
The original cast left after six weeks of filming which was the original shooting completion date. There was still much shooting left to do and the remainder of the film was shot with family and friends dressed like the actor for behind or side shots. This became known as "shemping" as an homage to the Three Stooges.
The "Book of the Dead" is referred to as Morturom Demonto and Naturom Demonto in the film and "Necronomicon Ex Mortis" in the two sequels, although it is not actually related to the book of that name from the Cthulhu Mythos.
Censorship
Because of its graphic violence, the original version of the movie was banned in several countries, including Finland, Iceland, Ireland and Germany.
In Germany, the movie's release was hindered by public authorities for almost 10 years. Original 1982 cinema and video releases of the movie had been seized, making the movie a hit on the black market video circuit, with pirated copies abound. A heavily edited version was first made available in 1992. Several high-profile horror enthusiasts, among them even author Stephen King, publically criticized the German ban on the movie. In other German language markets, the movie was never restricted from distribution. The first legal uncut version of the movie entered the German market in 2001, on DVD.
In England, the movie was one of the first to be labelled as a video nasty and was banned for several years.
Sequels
Two sequels were made, Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1993). Each succeeding film has featured more humor than the preceding one, so much so that Army of Darkness is not even considered a horror film. The films' mix of humor and gore has been called "splatstick," a portmanteau of "splatter film" and "slapstick."
At the beginning of each sequel, the preceding story is summarized, though with some small changes. These changes, along with the similarity in plot to the original film, lead some fans to consider Evil Dead II a remake rather than a sequel; the creators, however, have repeatedly stated that Evil Dead II is a sequel.
The series is regarded as a cult classic, and a book, The Evil Dead Companion (Bill Warren, ISBN 0312275013), has been written about it.
In an interview in 2005 [1] (http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=8225), Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert talked about plans to make another sequel called Evil Dead IV or Army of Darkness II, again starring Campbell. There are also plans for a remake of the original Evil Dead, with a different director and different actors.
Sam Raimi's 1978 30-minute movie Within the Woods, also starring Bruce Campbell, has sometimes been called a prequel of the Evil Dead series.
Video games
The Evil Dead trilogy has inspired three video games: Evil Dead: Hail to the King, for PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast, and the Personal Computer, and Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. The third, Evil Dead: Regeneration, is planned to release in Fall 2005.
References to movies
References to Evil Dead have appeared in several different productions:
Movies:
- Dogma
- Scream
- Donnie Darko
- High Fidelity
- A Nightmare On Elm Street
- Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday
- Shaun of the Dead
- The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse
Television:
Video Games:
- Duke Nukem series
- Blood series
External links
- Template:Imdb title
- Deadites Online (http://www.deadites.net) - Internet site with information regarding the trilogy
- Bruce Campbell online (http://www.bruce-campbell.com) - Bruce Campbell's official websitefr:Evil Dead