The Evil Dead - Classic or Dud?

http://www.bruce-campbell.com/images/mugshots/cover-chins.jpg

*a long story

tell it tell it tell it

(To answer the question, his acting made Evil Dead 2 more than unwatchable camp.)

http://www.evildeadthemusical.com

http://electricityandlust.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/evil-dead-2.jpg

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/Image/Evil_Dead_1.jpg

I just saw the first film. It was awesome. I really loved it. Funny, very funny, at times.

Yeah, thanks Erica for pushing me into seeing this movie. I'll probably see teh rest later next week or sth.

Part II is one of my favorite movies ever. The first one is more straight-faced, but the second balances comedy, horror, and exquisite low budget film effects (and sound and cinematography) with staggering results.

Nath - glad you liked it. :D

I liked Evil Dead 2 even more! HILARIOUS!

I can't understand someone NOT liking this.

i revisited the first Evil Dead a few weeks ago and was disappointed by the fact that it kind of bored me. it was a movie i loved the hell out of when i was younger. don't know if i was just in a weird mood or i'd finally seen it too many times.

evil dead 2 is still #1 for all-time though.

No

This is so so wrong. This is not a good week for retreads of Sam Raimi films, the promo pictures from the new Spiderman movie seem very Twilight-y and twee.

first-time director's calling card short:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhtK-BimWk

demonstrates only that he wants to be michael bay and can capably orchestrate professional-looking, large-scale CGI carnage. disappointing as hell, tbh (though the potempkin nod is almost kinda funny).

when is Ho-wood gonna get around to remaking the Godfather

after they remade tcm I stopped caring, might as well remake eraserhead now

Ugh. I saw this mis-reported on Twitter last night as Evil Dead 4, not a crappy ass remake.

tcm?

Texas Chainsaw?

y

to cull a mockingbird

Evil Dead has a couple funny moments but it's pretty pure horror

perspective, i guess. now that i think about there weren't many other people laughing at the remake either, taking it for "pure horror"

2 has three stooges references and stuff, the first one has rather standard comic relief (the eye closing bit) and the POV shots of the demon spirit but it's mostly just macabre.

wikipedia re: the first one's release:

Woolley, Newman, and several critics complimented the film for its unexpected use of black comedy, which elevated the film above its genre's potential trappings.

I guess it has more comedy in it than Halloween or whatever, but it's like 3 or 4 moments at most, compared to 15 minutes of Ash chasing his hand around

Evil dead (the original) is less funny than the majority of horror films of the time - looking at it as a comedy is pretty wrong headed imo.

Ok that's kind of a grand claim - the point is that any comedy in the original is incedental at best

The "is this comedy?" aspect of the first one is why I like it the best. ED2 is obv a more accomplished movie, but lacks the "what the hell am I watching?!" edge. But we covered this in the horror movie poll rollout.

"Evil Dead" is clearly not comedy because the second one clearly is. Ipso facto.

I haven't seen the new one, but we're clearly at the deranged stage where showers of blood and totally over the top gore=funny.

Happily.

finally!

the evil dead has always seemed pretty funny to me, but maybe i just mean "gleefully absurd" or w/e. it's scary as hell and not broadly comical in the manner of ED2, but it's got this crack-brained, go-for-broke loopiness that's hard to take entirely seriously.

i suspect i wasn't in right frame of mind for the new remake/sequel/reboot. i went alone to a nearly deserted matinee showing, and wound up feeling kind of disconnected from the film. the gore effects are excellent, the energy level stays high throughout, and i had a good time catching all the references to and inversions of the original(s), but the story and characters didn't interest me. to be honest, the cheap and dirty punk rock feel of the original is a big part of its charm, afaic, and there's no way a big slick studio production could replicate that. still, i'll probably see it again sometime in the next couple weeks.

Was mostly just glad that the drugs-i.e.-inner-demons angle was mostly a red herring.

yeah, that baffled me. the suggestion is very prominent but goes nowhere. which is as it should be, but why feint that way in the first place?

It's just a conceit to keep them in the cabin, no?

yeah sure, but the film seems occasionally to suggest that all the deadite mayhem may only be in the junkie protagonist's detoxing head, even up to the business w/ "the abomination" at the end, but wind up going somewhere else. which is just as well, cuz a twist like that would have been complete bullshit, but the movie didn't seem to need even the suggestion.

This is fantastic, easily the best horror film I've seen since The Descent.

this was dire - too much backstory abt the junkie sis and her feckless bro (who fell for the bit where the demon reverts back to normality and pleads to be freed about TEN FUCKING TIMES), and not in the least bit scary.

I put it to you that this is a good thing.

http://deadline.com/2014/11/the-evil-dead-series-ash-vs-evil-dead-sam-raimi-bruce-campbell-starz-1201280595/

Evil dead musical opened or played here.

actually looks pretty fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unnLg1TPCYM

Yeah, looks not bad.

kinda surprised Bruce looks less beat up than he did through Burn Notice
expecting the worst, hoping for something fun

that said the trailer looks as good as I could have hoped

This show has been on a while? I thought it was still yet to come. Nobody here seen it?

watched the first ep, it was good

would watch but not payin for Starz at the moment

Already finished and renewed for a second season.

I liked it! Tonally sometimes it felt a bit weird but overall I dug it

Dud

you know what was nasty as hell? evil dead 2013. you know who was great? jane levy in evil dead 2013

yes!

I feel like it was sorta at the weird nexus of crass remake, new euro extreme and proto "gentrified horror" or whatever

everyone has a very bad time in this

Sitting in the theater waiting for the new one to start! Pretty stoked. I totally forgot there was an Evil Dead tv show that I’ve never seen.

Man, I’m too old for this shit. I can’t tell if I don’t like scary movies anymore or if this one was particularly unpleasant. The first Evil Dead worked because it was ultra low budget but good. The second worked because it was so ridiculous. I’m still not sure if the third one worked. The new one is just relentlessly grim.

oh i thought it was very funny (and bleak and pessimistic… but funny)

Is there anything at all to this? Or is this just over sensitivity?

Enjoyed #EvilDeadRise  but it struck boo thing as anti-queer. Did it hit that way for anyone else?

— Rocco T. Thompson (@roccotthompson) April 22, 2023

It seems to be based on what characters died

No, I didn’t pick up on anything like that. I’m straight, so maybe there is something I missed. But many of my loved ones, including my daughter are queer and I can usually sniff it out pretty easily. I mean…. without getting spoilery, there are only going to be so many survivors in an Evil Dead movie. The characters that died were all portrayed very sensitively and I don’t recall any crude Deadite pokes against anyone’s sexuality except the main (straight) character being slut-shamed, which ties into the story.

yeah imo i do not think a horror film is homophobic just bc the gay characters die. some slashers can feel racist or extremely sex negative and misogynistic bc of the characters they target (but in the realm of horror this can double as a metaphor for existing in a world that places the marginalized in constant life-threatening danger) but idk this movie doesn’t feel that careless

i was surprised at how much this shared thematically with m3gan re: not wanting to be a parent but ultimately finding yourself in a situation where you have to take care of someone in a world that’s grown gnarled and hostile in your inattention and self-involvement

Did the picture seem incredibly dark and murky to anyone else? I thought my theatre might have botched the projection, but apparently dim and low-contrast cinematography is also a big trend right now.

Yes, I noticed that. There were a couple of moments with bad CGI which I normally don't pick up on. Somebody falls in a bathtub and the splash almost seemed like a CGI placeholder that they forgot to refine. In general I thought the effects were good, but I missed the old prosthetics. It would have been another cool way for this to stand out.

I did love that demon-child took the time to explain to their aunt why they were eating glass, it was p lolz

going a third time.

"who's the brainless meat-puppet now?"

In general I thought the effects were good, but I missed the old prosthetics

I'm torn on that because as great as the prosthetics are, they fit into the camp tone of those movies very well, and this one, while definitely funny at times, isn't really going for that. otoh, the prosthetics weirdly keep the movie grounded somewhat, whereas CGI demon films often get off on utilizing every visual trick possible and it becomes like what people derisively called "wire-fu" in the HK scene, where the physical transformations and feats of strength are too much and OTT.

unrelated but did anybody think possessed Ash in ED2 looked like a precursor to Butthead from B&B?

Whoa

https://www.slashfilm.com/1233408/evil-dead-rises-demonic-wall-crawling-was-a-real-practical-stunt-exclusive/

i rewatched evil dead (2013) and still think it's one of the more remarkable studio horrors from the beginning of the last decade. gnarly beyond belief, and i love the meta element where it's kind of reversing the character dynamics of the original (e.g. the ash stand-in is the v pathetic brother character). can't believe i forgot about the resurrection scene, which i find very powerful and beautiful and can even work as a metaphor for hitting rock bottom but i also don't even have to think of that!!!

Addiction is the REAL deadite you see