The Evil Dead

The Evil Dead (originally released as Book of the Dead) is a 1981 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi starring Bruce Campbell (Maniac Cop).

The film focuses on five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a remote wooded area. After they find an audio tape that, when played, releases a legion of demons and spirits, four members of the group suffer from demonic possession, forcing the fifth, Ash (Campbell), to survive the resulting gory mayhem.

Warning: Graphic Content

Filming took place on location in a remote cabin located in Morristown, Tennessee, in a difficult filming process that proved extremely uncomfortable for the cast and crew. Because of the crew’s inexperience, filming was a “comedy of errors” and the first day of filming led to them getting lost in the woods during a scene shot on a bridge.

Horror author Stephen King gave a rave review of the film, which resulted in New Line Cinema acquiring its distribution rights. Despite a very modest budget of about $350,000 The Evil Dead grossed $2.9 million worldwide. Both early and later critical reception were universally positive; in the years since its release, the film has developed a reputation as one of the most significant cult films, cited among the greatest horror films of all time and one of the most successful independent films.

After its release The Los Angeles Times called the film an “instant classic”, proclaiming it as “probably the grisliest well-made movie ever”.

“I made the mistake of watching this movie when I was a child, and it gave me nightmares for about 2 weeks! Now, it’s one of my favourite 80s Horror films.”

The first VHS release of The Evil Dead was in 1983 during the height of the “video nasty” craze in the UK; its theatrical version originally passed with some cuts but the video version did not so it was soon banned in the UK. The film was called the “Number One nasty”, because while it was labeled as a video nasty, it was also the year’s best selling video release, and the most notorious film on the list. However, the BBFC understood its tone was tongue in cheek, and removed it from the list in 1985 after a court case with the distributors.