The Evil Dead

This is a good movie but the only downfall with this version is, it's not wide screen. Avoid the other version because with that version, the top and the bottom of the screen was pointlessly cropped off and the screen was pushed inwards from both sides to fill the TV screen where everything and everyone is thin and tall where everyone's heads are an oval shape like looking at a frames of cine film from a wide screen movie. What I mean by that, that is how wide screen movies are as a cine reel version and the projector requires a wide screen lens to expand the frames of film outwards on the projector screen.

Released in the years before cable TV and before video cassettes made low budget schlock available to the average viewer, Evil Dead found its audience with the midnight movie horror festival crowd. No way did it get a nationwide release. Privately owned cinemas bought prints and slowly the film spread from coast to coast and even made its way to Britain. But by this time videos were gaining popularity and it was released on cassette at the same time as a very limited theatrical release.Critics and censors dismissed it as trash and not long afterwards it was relegated to the video nasty bin and banned. As silly as this may seem, that was the lunatic logic of James Ferman's BBFC. The fact that it is inventive and well directed was lost on them. And until fairly recently only cult audiences appreciated its value. With Sony's new Blu Ray we can all finally enjoy the uncut, definitive and best-looking presentation possible.Originally released in 1981 as The Book Of The Dead, this was a feature length re-make of Sam Raimi's short film, Within The Woods. The plot (excuse) and story (violence) involves a quintet of friends, enjoying a few days of quiet at a remote cabin in the Tennessee woods. These are not Friday the 13th goofballs who want nothing but sex and skinny-dipping. They are realistic. And it all goes nicely until Scotty (Hal Delrich) finds an ugly-looking book (with a face) and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder in the basement. The tape is of an archaeologist explaining how he resurrected demons that took over his wife in the very same cabin. The professor is nowhere to be found, but the haunting burial rites and incantations written in Sumerian text in the ugly book, The Necronomicon Ex Mortis-Book Of The Dead, are on the tape also.Sheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) freaks out. She hears a demonic voice out in the woods. "Join us!" Foolishly going out to investigate, she is raped by a tree. Although this particular scene isn't so hard to watch, the film still has the power to disturb and make you squirm. Once Sheryl returns, all hell breaks loose and Raimi has a helluva time firing torrents of blood of varying colors throughout the cabin. Limbs are hacked off with carefree abandon and poor old Ash (Bruce Campbell) has to take them all on at once.The supernatural hijinks were repeated to a much lesser effect in the sequel, but here Raimi creates an atmosphere of dread and whatever that force is out in the woods - it's scary. It does have some humour, but first time around the filmmakers obviously wanted horror first. You'll wince a few times, no doubt. The raw tone goes hand-in-hand with the low budget and Raimi's bizarre, hardcore cartoonish style is much in evidence.More time is spent building character. Ash loves his girlfriend and a simple little scene between them makes us root for him. He is still to become the hapless buffoon, as he will repeat in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. At the very least, Evil Dead is so popular that it can no longer be regarded as a cult movie. It's not a classic. Not yet. But it is highly regarded and definitely worth several viewings.The Blu Ray sports a 1.85:1 1080p transfer that is wonderfully grainy and a DTS HD-MA soundtrack. Loads of extras are included, but sadly Within the Woods is not one of them.NOTE:The film was shot open-matte with a cropped theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Some shots are a little tight but it still looks good. Purists will disagree but the US edition is in 1.37:1. I guess you can't please everyone but at least you can choose which one suits you best.

Happy

Was really glad when they finally announced this was being released on Blu Ray. Could never understand why they released the second and third ones before the original, which in my mind was always the best. Having said that I do feel a little let down by the UK release. The American one seems to come in a much better 'book' type packaging with a booklet inside I believe, whereas the UK one is just in your bog-standard blu ray case. More disappointing than that though is the fact that on the case and in the menu it says the audio is 5.1 DTS HD Master - it isn't!! It is just good old Dolby Digital 5.1. When I put the film on I expected to be blown away with the music at the start and by other things in the film and I just wasn't and I thought - "this is a very poor DTS transfer". Then I looked at my amp to see it was saying that it was just Dolby Digital. A real shame as a DTS track would have been awesome. Should it have been done in DTS and someone somewhere just screwed up, or is it just a mistake on the cover and on the menu? I think it is probably a screw up by someone as I can understand a printing error on the sleeve but to repeat the error actually on the disc menu seems unlikely. I hope they correct it and release it again and let us poor people who have bought this one, get a new one free and also give us a better packaging too. Oh look, another pig has just flown by. If the sound had been what it said on the tin it would have got 5 stars. UPDATE 26/10/2010: Thought it was the disc not in DTS HD as The Exorcist came thru ok etc but when my Alien film also only came thru as normal 5.1 I knew that another reviewer must be right so I started checking things on my Blu Ray player and I then remembered that I had recently switched on PIP to watch a couple of commentaries and didn't realise that this was going to affect output in other ways. I switched the PIP setting off and hey presto!! - we have DTS HD Master. Don't know why it still worked ok with The Exorcist but at least I now have Evil Dead in DTS. So please ignore my earlier comments re this matter and buy and enjoy!!