The Evil Dead opens with a porch swing moving on its own. Scott grabs the door key and it stops. That is the whole method of Sam Raimi’s 1981 film in one image: something wrong is happening, nobody says so, and the group walks inside anyway. Clay Tribune scores The Evil Dead 9.5 of 10. That is this paper’s own verdict, not an aggregate.
Five Students Rent a Cabin
Raimi wrote and directed the film as his feature debut, and it became the first entry in the Evil Dead franchise. Five college students vacation at a remote cabin in the rural hills of Tennessee. Ash Williams, his girlfriend Linda, his sister Cheryl, their friend Scott and Scott’s girlfriend Shelly make up the group.
The setup is spare and mean. A cellar trapdoor flies open during dinner. Ash and Scott go down and find the Naturom Demonto, a Sumerian version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, next to an archaeologist’s tape recorder. Scott plays the tape. The incantations resurrect the Kandarian Demon, a tree branch breaks a window, and the weekend is over.
The Bridge Is Destroyed
What follows is not a haunting. It is a siege with no exit. Cheryl walks into the woods, is attacked and raped by demonically possessed trees, and returns to the cabin bruised and anguished. Ash agrees to drive her to town and finds the bridge destroyed.
That detail does the film’s heaviest lifting. There is no rescue coming, no road out, no authority to call. The tape later tells Ash the only way to kill the entity: dismember the possessed host. The movie then commits to its own rule without flinching.
Cheryl Calls the Cards
The possession scenes escalate in plain domestic spaces. Linda and Shelly are playing Spades when Cheryl, without looking, calls out the cards correctly. She turns into a white-eyed monster and levitates. In a raspy voice she threatens to kill everyone, stabs Linda in the ankle with a pencil, and throws Ash into a shelf. Scott knocks her out.
The Evil Dead does not build atmosphere and then spend it. It spends as it builds. The prosthetic makeup and stop-motion effects, made by artist Tom Sullivan, are the engine here, and the film’s tagline promises “the ultimate experience in gruelling terror.” For once the marketing is accurate.
Bruce Campbell and the Survivors
Bruce Campbell plays Ash, and the film belongs to him by the end. Ellen Sandweiss is Cheryl, Richard DeManincor is Scott, Betsy Baker is Linda, and Theresa Tilly is Shelly. Raimi himself appears uncredited as a local fisherman and as the voice of the Evil Dead. Robert G. Tapert plays another fisherman, and Bob Dorian voices Professor Knowby.
Most of the group suffer demonic possession. Ash is the sole survivor, and the film’s final act is an onslaught of increasingly gory mayhem aimed at him alone. Campbell plays that transition without irony, which is why the sequels could later add irony without breaking him.
Ninety Thousand Dollars and a Proof of Concept
Raimi, Campbell, producer Robert G. Tapert and their friends made the 1979 short Within the Woods as a proof of concept to build investor interest. That secured US$90,000 to begin work on The Evil Dead, not to finish it. Principal photography took place on location in a remote cabin in Morristown, Tennessee, and the process proved extremely uncomfortable for the cast and crew.
The film had its first, private screening for friends and family on October 15, 1981. Producer Irvin Shapiro took interest there and helped screen it at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Stephen King gave it a rave review, and that led New Line Cinema to acquire distribution rights.
The Numbers
- Title: The Evil Dead
- Year: 1981
- Director and writer: Sam Raimi
- Runtime: 85 minutes
- Genre: Horror
- Budget to begin work: US$90,000
- Private screening: October 15, 1981
- Cannes Film Festival: 1982
- Clay Tribune score: 9.5 of 10
What the Cheapness Buys
The Evil Dead looks like it cost what it cost, and that is not a flaw to forgive. The remote cabin, the limited cast, the practical effects and the destroyed bridge all come from the same constraint, and the constraint is what makes the film work. A bigger budget would have given Raimi more room and less pressure. Pressure is the entire product.
The tree attack remains the clearest proof. It is ugly, cheap and unrelenting, and it tells you the film will go anywhere. Nothing after it feels like a cheat, because nothing before it did.
A Franchise Starts Here
The Evil Dead runs 85 minutes and never asks for more. Its private 1981 screening, the Cannes slot a year later and King’s review are the chain that got it distributed, and every link in that chain is a business fact rather than an artistic one. The artistic fact is simpler. Raimi made a film with five students, one book, one tape recorder and one bridge he could knock down, and he made the audience feel the trap close.
Forty-five years on, the sequels have gotten funnier and the budgets larger. Neither improves on this. The first Evil Dead is the one where you cannot tell whether the filmmakers are in control or losing it, and that uncertainty is the horror.
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