Night 10 of 31 Nights of Horror

It’s interesting to me how many huge directors got their start in horror films. James Cameron’s first was Piranha Part Two, Peter Jackson made Bad Taste, Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles (while that one’s not strictly a horror, it’s got the same feel) Guillermo del Toro is still making horror movies, even after winning three Academy Awards for The Shape of Water and before resurrecting Spider-man from obscurity, Sam Raimi wrote and directed The Evil Dead, which spawned six feature films and a tv series.

I’ll admit, for a franchise that has become so iconic over the years, I’ve never watched one of the movies all the way through. I’d catch it when it was on tv occasionally, but only in bits and pieces, so this was my first experience of seeing it from start to finish.

It works. Despite the tiny cast of unknowns with little to no acting experience, the minuscule budget, the (how do I say this generously uh, inexpert?) makeup and almost non existent visual continuity, the movie just works.

The film is nowhere near perfect. The face makeup is fine, but instead of body paint and prosthetics on the hands, it looks like they went with what seem to be rubber gloves that actually look like they came from a Halloween store. They even rip at one point with the actors fingers poking through. A movie with a larger budget would have a continuity coordinator. Evil Dead has actors drowning in blood in one scene and then the camera moves and their faces are suddenly clean. Holes in doors become spots of dark paint in wide shots and change shape depending on which side of the door we are looking at, but it just doesn’t matter. Once the action starts, it doesn’t let up until the credits roll.

I think the camera work is impressive. Not the camera equipment itself, it’s obvious there was no room in the budget for a steadicam, as the shaking at one point was almost enough to give me motion sickness, I’m talking about the way shots are framed and the cameras moved. When I listened to the directors commentary on Mallrats, it was pretty clear that critic’s complaints about the static camera shots in Clerks bothered Kevin Smith a lot. No-one can make those claims of Evil Dead. The camera almost never stays in one place, it is dynamic and constantly moving in interesting and unusual ways. Some don’t work, but it is never boring.

Another thing that stands out in my mind is the tone of the film. It’s almost the inverse of what you expect in this genre. So, most movies of this type will start out light and comedic and then grow darker and more menacing as people start dying. Raimi does almost the opposite here. It starts off fairly sombre and gets suspenseful and terrifying early, but then as the violence increases, it grows wilder, crazier and wackier until almost everything is drenched in blood and gore. Sooooo much blood. If I actually believed they put a lot of thought into it, I’d say they wanted to mirror Ashe’s descent into madness visually, but it’s probably just coincidence.

One more way this movie stands out is the departure from the ‘silent killer’ standard. With the exception of Freddy, most well known horror monsters like Jason, Micheal and the others make almost no noise, let alone talk. The demons in Evil Dead almost never shut up. When Linda gets possessed, she laughs more than The Joker and that makes it almost more disturbing.

I think I’ll watch the sequel tonight, if for no other reason than because I’m curious to see how Raimi and Tapert’s film-making evolved in the seven years between them, and given a larger budget. Hopefully the lighting is more natural because everything in this one was unnaturally bright. I mean, it’s good that we can see everything well, but a cabin in the woods shouldn’t look like it’s illuminated by flood lights from a football stadium.