The Evil Dead (1981) - Where to Watch, Reviews, Trailers, Cast - Watchmode

The Evil Dead (1981)

Five friends accidentally summon demons via an ancient book; perfect for horror fans, especially if you love *The Exorcist*.

Genres: Horror

Cast

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Your Status

The Evil Dead(1981)

NC-17
Movie1h 25mEnglishHorror
7.5
User Score
78%
Critic Score
IMDb
Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Sam Raimi

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Overview

In 1979, a group of college students find a Sumerian Book of the Dead in an old wilderness cabin they've rented for a weekend getaway.

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Featured Comments/Tips

The Evil Dead is what most, if not all horror movies should be, very real and powerful.

Hands down: one of the scariest movies I'#39;ve ever seen! After watching it alone at night and with the curtains shut, you know what I'#39;m talking about...

Boring as hell, but quite impressive given the budget and resources they had. The camerawork and editing have a very distinguishable taste, but everything has been remade with more money and a more comedic approach in the sequel.

I understand that the "Evil Dead" is considered a horror classic but it's not a scary film or a particularly good one. I can give high marks to some of the special effects namely the stop-motion stuff. The camera positioning and moving shots were impressive at times. The tape of the professor explaining the "Book of the Dead" was interesting and setup the potential horror to come. But once the first possession of one of the girls occurred any additional scares that could have been conjured up within the story were overwhelmed by campy "grueling" gore which is pretty much repeated for the last half of the movie. Yes I like Bruce Campbell's Ash and his character will become a horror legend in the next entry in the Evil Dead trilogy.

Being a low budget movie with limited resources is no excuse to make it a cult movie. The movie is just bad. Bad acting, bad fx, bad audio, it's just stupid. I've watched low budget movies much better made that this crap. I really can't understand why this movie is so loved. I get that it brings good memories from old times, but even that doesn't make movie a cult movie.

An absolutely unhinged fever dream of a movie that dances back and forth over the lines of torture porn, satire and comedy like it's had a few too many to drink. A descent into madness with some of the most over-the-top prosthetics and B-movie effects you'll ever see. I can see _why_ it's a cult classic, but for a new viewer like me, this was just absolutely too chaotic and silly to be truly enjoyable. Wild, too wild.

That damned book inked in human blood and bound in human flesh is just one bad motherfucker right? Anyway this one is the horror part of the Evil Dead trilogy as the others move on to a more Horror/Comedy style. The low budget feel, the innovate camera movements, the birth of Ash, the gore, the atmosphere, those damn possessed trees, the amounts of blood being spilled and that awesome looking stop-motion near the end. Sam Raimi started his career off good here. I love those early independent horror films. They have some kind of charm and Evil Dead is one of the best. If you haven'#39;t seen this trilogy yet, what are you waiting for! Hoop-tober is the perfect time for it.

Well, maybe it'#39;s just me, kicking the hornet'#39;s nest and all, but it doesn'#39;t appeal that much for me. I do understand the cult status it got, though. I myself have seen it as a child and a lot of images got stuck on my head and that'#39;s my main point for checking it out again. The final 20 min or so concentrates a lot of decent camerawork, before the last moments they'#39;re more scattered through the scenes. Being a low-budget flick and having in mind the gore it intended, I get its flare. After this rewatching thing, gonna do it right and head to the latter movies, for everything I remember more vividly about Evil Dead, from my childhood, came from the other two.

Bruce Campbell is perfection. Enough said.

I think this movie would be better if it were comedy like Army Of Darkness, at least I would laugh a little. But, i don'#39;t like horror movies, not because it'#39;s scary, I just don'#39;t like the pace of the movie, it'#39;s like '#34;wait and you'#39;ll get scared'#34; but in the mean time I get sleepy, I slept during the first Exorcist movie (the original old version) and since then i don'#39;t watch a lot of horror movies, and for me to be watching a Cult horror movie it'#39;s obvious that I would rate with a lower rate than someone who does.

This was my first time watching The Evil Dead. I watched the remake a few months back, it didn'#39;t impressed me and I already watched Evil Dead II, which I absolutely loved! Sam Raimi did a fantastic work all over again! The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II have all of the requirements for a perfect horror film. Everything about them is horrible to watch, the atmosphere is so creepy so intimidating and you really can get scared! Both are amazing but I have to admit that I liked Evil Dead II a little bit more than this one. Let'#39;s see what I'#39;ll think about Army of Darkness. Oh...and I forgot one thing, Bruce Campbell you are awesome!

Classic horror from my childhood

Tom Sullivan flexing for an hour and a half.

I have recently got back into watching horror movies, I remember being terrified when watching this movie almost 20 years ago for the first time as a kid. It was the first ‘demonic’ kind of flick I’d seen, I watched pretty much all the cult horror films but the Evil Dead was the one that kept me up at night. I have started to re-watch all the cult classics and The Evil Dead, is right at the top for me.. Sam Raimi’s imagination is something else.

Ok first time i watched this movie so funny the tree rape scene wtf :D But was just ok some horror effects where preety cool and some more distgusting then in stuff like ash vs evil dead :D

I understand that the '#34;Evil Dead'#34; is considered a horror classic, but it'#39;s not a scary film or a particularly good one. I can give high marks to some of the special effects, namely the stop-motion stuff. The camera positioning and moving shots were impressive at times. The tape of the professor explaining the '#34;Book of the Dead'#34; was interesting and setup the potential horror to come. But once the first possession of one of the girls occurred, any additional scares that could have been conjured up within the story were overwhelmed by campy, '#34;grueling'#34; gore which is pretty much repeated for the last half of the movie. Yes, I like Bruce Campbell'#39;s Ash and his character will become a horror legend in the next entry in the Evil Dead trilogy.

[8.0/10] This one, as the kids say, still slaps. Still so impressive what Raimi and company were able to accomplish with a shoestring budget, some down home pluck, and buckets of blood.

Featured User Reviews

It still shows that today's multi-million movies can sink where others can swim when compared to the original 1986 scare-fest 'The Evil Dead'. It cost only $350,000 to produce at the time and the box office receipts were around $2.6 millon, the remake of the original movie cost over $17 million and even with inflation amounts to nowhere near that cost, and having said all that it's not so-called nostalgia that pushes me to rate this horror movie highly, not even the way it set of a whole new way of how the public devoured horror and creator's started to follow Sam Raimi's lead, it was the way the movie made you felt with no quick fix stupid jump scares however, a lost feeling of nowhere to run or hide from the impending evil force accompanied by clever camera work and the sort of music you wouldn't like at your mother's funeral. Take the simple scene where some of the forsaken holiday from hell punters attempted to escape the evil entity, by taking the only dirt track out of the grim forest only to be met by an upturned bridge so blocking their attempt to reach civilization, the only safe place they knew of to return to was the battered hut they was calling home for the weekend, how much more could you feel open to attack than just a few old nailed planks between you and doom? And I think this was Raimi's whole intention and many didn't understand what makes the whole movie work, it's just the simple feeling everyone gets wherein they just feel exposed, unprotected, have no idea of their attacker or where their coming from, especially then if you notch it up a gear with a centuries old evil malevolence intent on screwing your whole body inside out. This is why over thirty years later new formats by the way of Evil Dead steel book bluray, to sort after original VHS copies and hand painted models sell in their millions still, how many other movies can testify to that? There is vast interest all over the globe in this horror flick there is no denying that, so it shows you don't need vast amounts of money to make a great movie, you just need vast amounts of imagination to create an exceptional movie.

$hubes
$hubes
5/10

I think this was the 4th time I've watched this, and every time I'm left wondering _"Was this supposed to be horror, or satire, or just campy B-movie horror with over-the-top buckets of blood?"_ I've still yet to figure it out. It's gruesome enough to be considered "gorror" (gory horror) but insanely stupid enough - and satiric enough - to be almost comedic. Yes, there are some jump scares but the whole thing was just so incredibly asinine that it's impossible to see it as a real "horror" movie. I can imagine that, in 1983, it was probably "th' bomb" with teenagers who were starting to get into really gruesome stuff (with the advent of the _Friday the 13th_ and _Nightmare on Elm Street_ movies) but watching it today, it's just impossible to take it seriously. The first time I saw the "tree scene", it was pretty freaky; now it's just stupid. The one "shout out" I can give to this is the pencil through the ankle; that scene STILL makes me cringe like only the Achilles' tendon scene from _Hostel_ can do. Hopefully this will be my final time to watch this; it's gruesome and probably as gory as they could get back then but - I don't care what any other review states - this one, by today's standards, is just ridiculous. Kudos to Sam Raimi for what he created back then, but that was then and this...well, today this just reeks.

10/10 THIS 1981 MASTERPIECE IS TIMELESS AND STILL ONE OF THE BEST LEADING HORROR MOVIES FOR THE GENRE OF ALL TIME, AT THE SIDE OF PHANTASM. THE EVIL DEAD FULL UNCUT UNRATED VERSION IS PHENOMENAL A OUT OF THE HOLE OF MY MULTIVERSE ARCHIVES (4500+) THIS IS STILL RIGHT AT THE TOP OF MY HORROR SECTION AND I GAVE AN UNCUT UNRATED NAUGHTY HORROR SECTION AND THIS AWESOME AMAZING MOVIE DEFINITELY BELONGS RIGHT AT THE TOP WITH A SELECT FEW. BECAUSE THE EVIL DEAD ROCKS WOW..JUST...WOW THEY JUST DON'T MAKE THEM LIKE THIS ANYMORE AND THAT'S A CRYING DAMN SHAME. GORE,BLOOD,CUSTARD, RICE PUDDING, MILK, COCKROACHES AND STOP MOTION, PEOPLE GETTING WALLOPED WITH FIST AND 2 BY 4s, DECAPITATION AND FULL BODY DISMEMBERMENT OH YEAH AND RAPED OFF A FOREST... X FINAL THOUGHT: THIS MASTERPIECE IS THE APEX OF HORROR AND IT DEFINITELY CHANGED THE GAME FOREVER AND FOREVER THIS MOVIE WILL REMAIN AT THE TOP NOT JUST IN MY ARCHIVES BUT IN THE WORLDS ARCHIVES IMMORTALISED AND QUITE RIGHT TO. "PERFECTION". I JUST WISHED WE WOULD HAVE GOT ASH VS FREDDY VS JASON LIKE WHAT NEW LINE WANTED TO DO BUT RAIMI SAID NO BECAUSE HE WANTED TO DO THE EVIL DEAD 4 INSTEAD AND THOUGHT THAT IF HE LET NEW LINE GO AHEAD WITH THEIR IDEA IT WOULD SHIT ALL OVER THE FRANCHISE, I GUESS WILL NEVER KNOW. OH I HAVE BEEN WAITING 25+ YEARS FOR THE EVIL DEAD 4 What happened their Sammy..... probably same thing what happened to Spider-Man 4 (Just saying). At least I have Jason vs Freddy And The Evil Dead full unrated version so I can live with things that never came to pass.

Now THAT is a lot of blood. Why, oh why, do I love this movie, so? Why do I love you so much, Raimi? However, in this case, I can understand why someone wouldn't enjoy the film. The story can be a little poor at times, the pacing is occasionally slow, and the characters aren't the most developed. I think the movie gets more epic towards the finale, but that's not to say there aren't good points in the beginning and mentioned categories. I love the thematic connections that came back at the end of the movie to wrap a nice little bow to Ash and Ashley's arc. The necklace Ash gives Ashley from the beginning prevents him from chainsaw-ing her neck at the end, and his eye-open eye-close game Ash played on here, demon Ashley plays later on him when he's burying her. But aside from a couple beats like that, the story is very simple. A group of friends go to a cheap cabin in the forest, they find a demonic book, then all hell breaks loose... literally. What I really love about this movie is it's presentation. The red and blue color palettes and framing of shots are just gorgeously wild, as excepted from Raimi. My absolute favorite parts are the hand-held moments from the POV of the demons. I've never seen a horror movie before tackle a motion like this, and it turned out beautifully. There's something a slight amateur-ish about it, but lovable. Actually, the whole movie is very obviously low-budget independent. The cabin is clearly on a sound stage with propped lighting and fog machines, but something about it's look is just intoxicating. It's the ideal cabin for a horror movie. Everything about it is mesmerizing. I think what fans like to draw from this movie is the experience it provides. The mythology behind the book of the dead and the ride you take with Ash throughout this movie, and the subsequent sequels, is something I can see people getting rallied behind. It's amazing how Raimi was able to take, what seemed like just a simple horror movie, and provide a whole successful franchise around it. Now that I think about, I actually want my own copy of the book of the dead. Highly recommend viewing for this October! Lots of fun horror action and plenty of blood!

**A case study on makeup and pre-CGI effects.** I saw this film recently, and I wasn't particularly pleased. I recognize Sam Raimi's talent and his special aptitude for horror films, but the films he made in the 80s, in my opinion, have aged poorly and today seem extremely dated. And that defines this film quite well. Even so, the film was important at the time, a huge box office success that made the fortunes of several of those involved and still has its loyal legion of fans, who will forgive me for not liking it very much, I'm sure. The film takes place in a cabin in the forest, with a group of friends, and the undead who appear to carry out the usual massacre. There are a lot of points of contact between this film and other living dead films with a similar script, it seems that they all drew from the same primordial source. Furthermore, the film's script was clearly not the most important issue in the conception of the overall work. The story is flawed and it is the most violent scenes that save the film from being worse than it is. The ending is particularly bloody and unsuitable for sensitive people or those with more irritable stomachs. I've seen other works by Bruce Campbell, and the truth is that this actor has never been able to convince me of his talent. He's a decent actor, but he's not a nationally or internationally talented actor. In this film, he simply does what a hero destined to survive would predictably do, under the same conditions, and jumps from cliché to cliché until the final outcome. The rest of the cast is so immeasurably weak that I won't waste time analyzing it. Suffice to say, they are there to die. Where this film truly excels is in the use of special effects to visually accentuate the various fight scenes between young people and the undead. From the blood, to the bizarrely colored goo, and several convincing makeup effects, this film is a case study in pre-CGI makeup and visual effects, done in very cheap but surprisingly convincing and pragmatic ways. It lacked the necessary budget for more competent work, and a better cast and story.

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