I kept putting it off because it’s one of the best. I wanted to hold out; I felt like I was supposed to. But what am I saving it for? It’s not like I’m going to make it through the night with all these demons possessing my friends in this abandoned cabin in the woods. I know I’m next unless I manage to dismember them all before dawn. I think that I just might be safe then, and I can find my way back on that trail that Scott found in the woods..

Or maybe it will all end with my own scream. Or maybe it will ultimately end two movies later at S-Mart.

I’m talking about Ash and you know it. That’s Bruce Campbell to you. Although, when you’re talking about Evil Dead movies, it’s okay to call him Ash. It’s who he is.

This is at the top of a lot of people’s lists. It’s easy to see why. This movie has got a lot going for it. Creepy woodland setting, good writing, tremendous atmosphere, gore scenes that still make me say eww after more than twenty years, demons inhabiting humans, and even a little claymation, kids. Decomposing demon claymation.

So what is it you like most about this movie, you sick bastard? Is it:

The Tree Rape

Man, when this movie first came out, I was only a kid. I knew that rape was a terrible thing and that the forest was a nice place. Then I heard about this movie where this chick gets raped by a tree. I hadn’t even seen the movie but just hearing about it was fucked up enough that, well, I remember first hearing about it when I was a kid. And for anyone who has any fear of the woods at night – at all – this is some scary shit. Demons in the forest, making the trees come alive and fuck you. Why the hell she went out there, I’ll never know. Cheryl was the one that I initially figured might last a little longer, just because she seemed more aware, more anxious than anyone else. You’d think she would have picked up on the whole deal sooner, but I guess there’d be no movie if she didn’t get things started, so fuck it. That loophole, her behaviour, is about the only real problem I have with the movie as a whole, and considering horror plot issues in general, I think that’s pretty damn good. It wasn’t a big enough problem that I would wish that fate on her though.

The Pencil In The Leg

It kinda looks a little rubbery, but it doesn’t matter. That fucking pencil right into the soft space behind the ankle. Jabbed right in there and twisted and worked around until the hole is just puking blood.

The Lovely Ladies Of The Evil Dead

These demons are essential to your collection of movies. Or demons. First of all you got yourself Cheryl. She was the first to go down, the first to notice anything wrong, the first to get nailed by a tree. She spends an awful lot of the movie just looking up through the crack in the trap door she’s locked under. I love her shots from down there. Just patiently being a demon, trying the door and taunting the mortals in the dark, only one crack of light on here face. But that’s enough to show you that she’s not giving up. “Soon you will all be like me, and then who will lock you in the cellar?” Yeah, she got all night dude. Grab an axe and put your fucking back in a corner.

Then there’s Shelly. Scott’s girlfriend. Man, that Scott was such a dick, he didn’t deserve a girl like that. Scott was a looking out for Scott kinda guy. When Shelly went all demonic on him, it only took him a few minutes to take the axe to her. You’d almost swear he’d been thinking about it anyway. She was feisty though; even when dismembered she had this kind of nervous energy about her.

Then you got my favourite, Linda. “We’re going to get you, we’re going to get you”. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, dressed in white and completely fucked up in the face. I find her to be the creepiest of them all, and it’s definitely got something to do with that smile, that fucking grin of hers. She didn’t even really seem to care when she got decapitated.

So what do you like about this movie? I know, there’s very little to dislike, but I’m stupid. Spell it out for me. I’ll leave you with a few things that you might or might not know about the movie…… You know, now that I think about it, the DVD I have is a pretty new one but there’s hardly any extras. I guess they don’t have much.

I’d always heard that the demon guts was oatmeal, but apparently it’s creamed corn. I’d have used applesauce.

When they’re listening to the tape of the professor, some of the words are Latin or Arabic, and translate to “Sam and Rob are the men on the side of the road”. Remember those two hitchhikers? One of them was Sam Raimi. Aw, go to hell, I wasn’t blowing at you.

You know right at the very end when the demonic force is coming through the woods and it all ends with Ash screaming? Seems that the scream is real. Sam Raimi put a camera on a bicycle and rode it through the woods for that shot. When he got to Bruce Campbell he just kept going, and crashed right into the poor bastard. Good times!

Dan dreams of Ash everynight, which is kinda cool actually.

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