The Evil Dead
(1981)
There are fairly few sequels I’ve seen before catching the
originals. Aliens is one and, for a
while at least (being an action orientated teenager), I preferred it to Ridley
Scott’s clearly superior singular first outing. Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn is another. It was a picture I didn’t catch
until about five years after its release, never having been much of a horror
buff, and being unconvinced by attestations to its comedy value. When I did get round to it, I was bowled over,
and promptly had to investigate Sam Raimi’s shoestring predecessor. And I was
desperately disappointed. So much so, this is the first time I’ve glanced at The Evil Dead since. Was my first
response unfair? No, not really.
It’s probably true enough to say that The Evil Dead is to Evil Dead
II what Mad Max is to Mad Max 2, except that the first Max has significant merits in its own
right as an exploitation/horror/revenge movie. In both cases, the tools,
resources and fundamental approach shifts markedly between sequels, however.
Raimi’s original is a fairly straightforward, no-frills cabin-in-the-woods
movie, where five young people go off for some R’n’R only to discover the
presence of the Book of the Dead and have Candarian demons unleashed upon them
left, right and centre. Essentially, Raimi’s foot-in-the-door approach of recognising
the best way to make a splash debut was to do horror results in his unashamedly
going for it in every department, not least the determinedly copious gore/grue effects
sequences, where the picture stops in its tracks to show them off.
There’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm on display, as you’d
expect from a director who is nothing if not kinetic, but if The Evil Dead was ever really scary I
don’t think it is now. It’s actually rather boring, a succession of mostly
undifferentiated attacks/freak-outs/screaming sessions/splatter that just go on
and on. There’s all manner of impressive Dutch angles on display, and there are
glimpses of the wicked sense of humour that would inform the sequel; the
possessed female characters get all the best lines and silliest behaviour,
which one might charitably suggest (it doesn’t) makes up for such adolescently
inadvisable notions as the infamous tree rape sequence.
Bruce Campbell, as Kim Newman (a big defender of the picture
on its initial release; as Raimi, Campbell and Rob Tappert note on the
commentary track, the picture’s reputation was made in Britain, thanks to Palace
Pictures’ keen marketing) comments in Nightmare
Movies, macho hero Ash is “reduced to
a display of whimpering collapse in the Jamie Lee Curtis manner”. But,
while that cowardly custardness would be ratcheted up to mirthsome effect in
the sequel, Campbell is yet to embrace his true inner-Ash here.
Campbell’s one of the most brilliant hams in the business,
an actor with a natural flair for a cartoonish performance rarely seen (the
Shat is another who can do it effortlessly). That’s a very different thing to
being a bad actor, although some seem to have difficulty distinguishing between
the two. But, aside from being very gamely thrown about the place, have things
dropped on him and being liberally doused in all sorts of goo, and screaming
commendably, Ash is pretty straight here. Without Campbell’s arch bluster,
there’s nothing to drive the show forward, and all the tricks Raimi throws at
the screen can’t actually make the proceedings very interesting. You can hear a
line like “Scott, you’re going to be
okay, you’re going to be just fine. You’ll see” delivered by Dead by Dawn Ash as hilarious, but, even
given that the guy Ash is talking to is clearly not going to be okay, it’s not.
Raimi’s signature Evil
Dead moves, his pursuing demon camera, crazy angles, Three Stooges sound effects, slapstick violence and giggling ghouls
are all there, just not yet infused with his comic sensibility. And
Ash is very much Ashley here, he won’t be groovy for another half decade.
