The Evil Dead (1981)

USA, 85 minutes
Director/writer: Sam Raimi
Photography: Tim Philo
Music: Joseph LoDuca
Editor: Edna Ruth Paul
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Richard DeManincor, Theresa Tilly, Bob Dorian

Low-budget, loud, and grotesque, The Evil Dead has insinuated itself across the decades into the pantheon of horror. That's probably more on the strength of its sequels, certainly in terms of tone, which yoked a certain Three Stooges slapstick aesthetic onto the usual otherworldly and/or nefarious sources of blood, gore, and screeching. But in terms of the impact of The Evil Dead, a clever parody / homage that came along a few years ago, The Cabin in the Woods, made it abundantly clear. Even as Cabin self-consciously (in the postmodern vein) flattened history and took on all horror of all ages and forms, it was hard not to notice that the fundamental framework traced directly to The Evil Dead. Proportionally speaking, there aren't actually that many horror movies about cabins in the woods (especially when you recall that Friday the 13th was set in the woods, but at a summer camp).

Just so, a close look at The Evil Dead (after the distraction of the initial fear and trembling passes), discloses that, in turn, it has borrowed liberally from classics, new and old. It owes its greatest debt to the look and feel of demonic possession in The Exorcist (if Friedkin and company hadn't already used and owned them so ostentatiously I have little doubt director / screenwriter Sam Raimi would have resorted to his own versions of lines such as, "Your mother sucks cocks in hell"). A chainsaw makes a brief and gratuitous appearance at one point (much more of that in the later installments, of course). At the end of the movie our hero Ash (Bruce Campbell, whose performance is often reminiscent of Jerry Seinfeld ginning up hysteria) is barricaded in the cabin in the woods much as the hero in Night of the Living Dead found himself in that lonely farmhouse. The demon-possessed creatures even spew a white milky substance from their mouths when they are injured, an unusual point seen previously, as far as I know, only in Alien.

Sam Raimi's Transitions

(This is my contribution to Raimifest, hosted March 27-April 2, 2011, at Things That Don't Suck.)

Sam Raimi's most recent outing as a director, Drag Me to Hell, offered a welcome return to the jokey style of horror picture with which he started his career. Yes, it was unfortunate for him that he had lost a reliable paycheck franchise in the Spider-Man movies, but for me—never interested enough to see any of them beyond the first, once—it was just nice seeing Raimi around and kicking again. The billy-goat bits at the séance in Drag Me to Hell alone seemed to show that the old knack for wickedly funny brilliance was still there, beating away.

The transition also affords something of a vantage from which to look back on Raimi's career and begin to chart a road map of how he got from Point Then to Point Now, setting the context for wherever he may go next (which appears to be a treatment of L. Frank Baum's Oz series from the point of view of the Wizard). Among his most significant turning points must be counted the first two Evil Dead movies, The Quick and the Dead, and A Simple Plan. One I think is the best thing he ever did, another one anything but, but they all mark decision points that shaped the director Sam Raimi as we know and appreciate him today.

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

USA, 99 minutes
Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi
Photography: Peter Deming
Cast: Lorna Raver, Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, Adriana Barraza, Chelcie Ross, Reggie Lee, Molly Cheek

I enjoyed seeing Sam Raimi working in the horror genre again—he has to console himself somehow for getting robbed of the Spiderman franchise, right?—and I get the impression he must have enjoyed it himself too because there are a lot of nice touches here along the way. My personal favorite happens to be a goat at a séance, which is very funny. Be sure to watch for that. Lorna Raver is absolutely inspired as Sylvia Ganush, the old Gypsy woman who throws a curse. Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, the overly ambitious bank employee who turns Ganush down for an extension on her overdue mortgage payments and thereby earns that curse, is adequate-plus as the youthful female tabula rasa over which all the abuse gets written. And there's plenty of chills and surprises right down the line. CGI is way overplayed, but when doesn't that happen nowadays anyway? But maybe I'm too old for the kind of heartlessness that finishes this one off? I know it's a time-honored tradition in some of the best horror movies to end on a gut-punch downbeat that also feels like a throwaway (i.e., Night of the Living Dead), so it's not as if it hasn't been done before. But come on, have a heart. Some interesting points here.