The Evil Dead is an American supernatural horror film that made an appearance in theatres in 1981 and has been reinstalled four times. This film was executive produced by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. Raimi and Campbell grew up together and have been close friends since childhood. The duo has directed many low-budget film projects together, with the majority being comedies. Raimi was inspired to pursue a career in shooting suspenseful movies after he shot a suspense scene in a feature-length film called It's Murder!, which was released in 1976. He began to do his research by visiting horror cinemas at drive-in theatres and soon after, he was on set directing his own horror film. Raimi created a short-film called Within the Woods, which was released in 1978. This short film attracted the attention of producers and the money that he accumulated from this allowed him to shoot a full-length project. To acquire funds for Evil Dead, Raimi approached one of his legal friends and showed him Within the Woods and was not very impressed by the short-film. Although he disinterested with the short-film, his friend still gave him legal advice on how to go about directing the film. Raimi kept his friend's advice in mind and asked various people for donations. Eventually, he raised enough money to produce the full-length film, though not the full amount that he had primitively asked for. Raimi asked for assistance from a plethora of his friends and previous collaborators to make the Evil Dead. In order for him to secure more actors for his project, Raimi put an ad in Detroit News to recruit more cast members, that's when he soon drew the attention of potential cast members Betsey Baker and Ellen Sandweiss. The cast pretty much consisted of mainly close friends and family members of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.
Evil Dead is about five college students, Ash, Cheryl, Scott, Linda and Shelly, who go on vacation to a vacant cabin deep in the woods. The group detects several sound recordings on a tape recorder and they also discover this book in basement of the cabin. Eager to examine the tape recordings, they listen to the tapes a find out that the book is titled "Necronomicon ex Mortis", which means "Book of the Dead." Once they open the book, it releases a bunch of evil spirits and they eventually take over the cabin and wooded area that they were located at. The spirits start processing the group one by one, expect for the main character Ash, who basically kills everybody and escapes.
Cheryl Williams (Ash's sister), was played by Ellen Sandweiss and was the odd woman out of the group. Cheryl was captivated by a dark force in the woods and is entangled and viciously harassed by tree vines. Soon after, Cheryl escapes and she frantically returns to the cabins where her friends were, however, nobody seemed to believe what happened to her. Cheryl tries to convince her brother Ash to drive her into town, but they soon found out that the bridge was completely destroyed, so evidently the evil in the woods does not want them to leave. Subsequently, Cheryl then turns into Evil Cheryl after recuperating from her confrontation with the evil in the forest. Linda, played by Betsy Baker, was Ash's girlfriend and lacked common sense when it came down to certain things. It was evident that Linda was madly in love with Ash and keeps a necklace that Ash gave to her close to her heart at any given moment. Linda was stabbed in the ankle by Evil Cheryl and due to her injuries, she turns into Evil Linda after being infected by the evil when she was unable to be moved out of the cabin. Scotty is played by Richard DeManincor. His character is good looking, goofy and slightly conceited. During this production, Scotty was the best at being able to maintain his composure at all times throughout the chaos going on around him, until he was compelled to murder Shelly, who became possessed by the evil. Scotty then turned into Evil Scotty after being injured from trying to find an escape in the woods. Lastly, Shelly, who was played by Theresa Tilly, was Scotty's girlfriend and was the most immature character during the production. After Cheryl was possessed, Shelly goes back to her room and she ends up being possessed by the evil too. Afterwards, she brutally attacks Scotty, and once that happened, he was left with no choice but to stab and dismantle her.
The Evil Dead and its sequels have roughly become one of the largest cult film trilogies of all time. The making of the Evil Dead launched the careers of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. The duo has since collaborated frequently together: Campbell has made features in cameo roles in all three of Raimi's Spider-Man films, which have become some of the highest grossing films in history and Raimi has also worked with Campbell in all of his films since. Upon the release of the Evil Dead, present-day critical conception was largely positive. According to Los Angeles Times, the Evil Dead was perceived as an instant classic.
I believe that both the film and the play had an awesome turn out for it to be a low budget film. The film combines just the right amount of horror and humor, giving the film an equal amount of suspense and laughter. I also admire how the actors utilized the stage extremely well. I also loved how during the play, the lighting changed colors based on the mood of the scenes. The actors also did a great job at keeping the audience engaged, especially for people like myself who tend to get bored quickly. The costumes that the actors had on during this production was also well put together. The costumes went hand in hand with what the play performance was about. I have never been too interested in theatre making, however, after watching this play, it made me want to jump out on stage and have my own performance as well. The background story of the making of the movie is also inspiring, being that Raimi literally had to beg people for money so that he could be able to produce this film and having the turnout be worth-while is absolutely motivating.