#80's horrror

[the-eldritch-goblin]

Marko from the Lost Boys painting study I’m self taught so I appreciate tips! Colour is in an overlay layer, there has to be a better way to do that right?

[hollowfeathers]

Imagine using your eceleb powers to be a techbro scammer or sex pest or whatever, and not to meme wierd or obscure old fantasy/sci-fi/horrror heartbreaker TTRPG's from the 80's and 90's into relevance.

[oceluna]

The Karate Kid + Vampire & Werewolf Au

[bonnierosebryan]

Inktober Day 4: David (Keiffer Sutherland) from the film The Lost Boys

“It’s only noodles, Michael...”

I was about 11 (cira 1991) when I first saw this movie, on t.v. It was the raddest thing I’d ever seen! Of course, I wanted to run away with the vampires. After all these years, it’s still one of my favourite movies. David is the only person, ever, to make a mullet look cool af! BRBryan.com

[popculturebuffet]

Evil Deadtrospective: The Evil Dead

Hello all you happy Screwheads! It’s Halloween which means it’s time prime for me to dive into a genre I really haven’t tackled all that much here: Horror

I admit I wasn’t much of a horror hound as a kid and teen. I saw a horror film ocasionally, Fallen, 1408, and Wait Until Dark are still all favorites of mine.  But I fully admit to being just too chicken to really dive in deep, convincing myself I just couldn’t take it. But during this mostly horror free period of my life there was one gory, racuous hororr comedy that burst right through my walls and despite my fright I loved the hell out of it. That film.. was Evil Dead 2.

It was one of the first horror films I truly loved, alongside the ones mentioned and stuck in my head ever since. The weird thing though is while I did eventualyl bulid up a tolerance for horror, diving headfirst into it in 2018 after trying out IT (which I still find excellent if not AS great. The sequel... is best left forgotten. ).. I ONLY watched the first Evil Dead. Despite owning Army of Darkness my procrastinating ass simply never got around to the best of the films nor i’ts remake. I still loved the franchise.. but something felt incomplete without diving into the whole thing. I didn’t even do it on purpose, I just got distracted by other films, years went by and I kept forgetting to check out Army of Darkness

So naturally the best solution for this is for me to take on a full retrospective of all four movies, which have a well deserved cult following and a fanbase that likely knows way more than  me for my good buddy Kev. 

Yeah i’m a touch absolutely nervous diving into the deadites this time, being a relative rookie in a fandom that has decades worth of dedicated fans.  But like our good buddy Ash has taught us there’s only everything to gain from facing your fear, screaming your head off and taking to it with a chainsaw and a boomstick. So i’m going to do just that, doing my best to give these films a look, cracking jokes and diving into what makes them great from a pair of realitively fresh eyes who hadn’t seen the first two movies in years and hasn’t seen the second two at all. If that sounds at all engaging to you, please join me under the cut as I read aloud from the book of the dead and summon the deadites of movies past, starting with one of the most iconic Horror Films period, The Evil Dead. 

Content Warning: This review contains mentions of sexual assault. You likely know exactly why, but in case you do not , discretion is advised.

Background: I won’t go too long on the background with this one as i’m sure most of you reading this are very familliar, but I feeel with films of this calibur not doing any backgroudn research is a mistake on my part, so I’ll still be covering a little each time. Thankfully the wonderful youtube channel GoodBadFlix has an episode of exploring, their series diving deep into the making of various cult movies, on this one. It was a invaluable source of information for this and I highly recommend you check it out. I’ll link it bellow. 

The short version: Sam Rami and pals were filmakers in high school, who made films and goofed around. When they got to college, they started a buisness making films to show to college kids and when realizing that made them more money, dropped out to do it for real. They decided to do a horror film, based on one of said films Within the Woods, because Horrror was a MASSIVE industry in the 80′s. With a small budget, 5 actors, including their longtime friend and collaborator Bruce Cambell in his star making role, they set out. They faced all the problems you’d expect: Cold (not helped by a lack of window), Injuries due to lack of stunt doubles (With behind the scenes footage showing them in pain), makeup that burned the crap out of them as they really WEREN’T supposed to wear it for long hours, and my personal favorite due to how UTTERLY batshit it was using an ACTUAL LIVE SHOTGUN for the scenes where Ash had one. 

It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder how many Dopey High school and college film makers have tried to use an actual gun as a prop and tried to shoot down their friends concerns with “Well sam rami did it”. Remember kids just because a director did something insane doen’t mean you need to. 

So despite all odds, the production eventually wrapped over time, using “fake shemps” as Rami himself dubbed it to finish some shots by having him, his brother or bruce wear wigs to replace the rest of the actors, and with no gunshot wounds. The film became a world wide success, with even it’s stupid and puritanical banning in the UK as part of the video nasties list only growing it’s legend. It’s become an icon of horror, spawned a franchise we both know and love. So let’s talk about it shall we? The Plot:

Five College Students are jammed in a car going really far, deep into the trees with hot dogs, chips n cheese to an old abandoned cabin in the woods, woo-ooo. They are: Ash, a chisled nice guy, Linda, his girlfriend, Scott, walking talking anus given human form, Shelly, Scott’s girlfriend for some reason, and Cheryl, fifth wheel and Ash’s kid sister that Scotty bullies from time to time. But as they innocently drive up a mysterious force stalks them. It’s an eerie and atmospheric setup and the POV shots are really something special and part of what gives the film it’s unique creep factor. Scotty is a dick to two random guys who thought he was honking at them played by the writer/director and his producer, because apparently Rami was trying to see how much he could make us long for a characters’ death in the span of five minutes. They drive over a rickety bridge that barely holds their car and on they go. 

Our heroes eventually arrive at the Cabin which is run down, and which Scotty neglected to tell anyone was previously and mysteriously abandoned. His one brain cell is clearly located in his pants. At the cabin everyone settles in but Cheryl notices some creepy stuff, and is unsettled, in particular the cellar. 

So naturally during a hardy meal of purple stuff, what looks like salad and tetanus, the Cellar pops open suddenly. Naturally the only one not freaked out by a part of a creepy abandoned cabin suddenly shooting open is Scotty, who volunteers to go down. Now given everyone’s tense, worried, and for some reason, ()maybe he gets them the good weed) care about him what do you think Scotty Does? A) Goes down, finds some old equipment and asks ash to come back up B) Fakes his own death to traumatize Cheryl C) Hides for a while so he can scare ash, making everyone worry he’s dead? D) Stop on a nail, get tetanus, finally mercifully die E) Jerk Off  F) Jerk Off while telling everyone he’s jerking off The answer of course is C, but if you guessed anything but A, fair enough the rest are based on proable things that could’ve happened. 

No it’s C and he scares Ash, then shows him some old recording equipment he found from the prevoius resident, alongside a creepy book made of human skin with unsettling images inside. 

So NATURALLY Scotty decides to take it upstairs with them and play what’s probably someone’s last words as a fun party game. I mean they all play except Cheryl who clearly thinks this is a bad idea, but Scotty’s the only one not remotely disturbed as we hear the recordings of Professor Knowby, a researcher who was studying the people of Kandar, and found a mysterious book, the Book of the Dead or Naturom Demento.. or as it’d be called the Necrinomicon Ex Mortis. He talks about how he and his wife went up here so he could study in private and they could relax... and how by saying the words in the book the people of Kandar could summon demonic spirits.. and recites the words causing weird shit to happen. Cheryl begs for it to be turned off... so naturally Scotty dooms them all by continuing to paly it bro despite EVERYONE asking him to stop. Unsurprisingly this fully summons the evil in the woods, dooming all but one of them and fully causing the bloodshed that ensues. 

Okay now some of you might say “Well jake the demons were luring them and were clearly there”. Which is true... but they aren’t fully up or able to DO anything to them till the incantation is read. They can watch and be creepy, and apparently open cellar doors, but no one had to read from the Necrnomicon and no one had to play someone doing the same. I”m not saying someone wouldn’t be this stupid in real life, the entire “I won’t wear a mask because ma freedom” movement has proven that, but I am saying it’s Scotty’s fault, esepcailly since as we learn in a bit the professor had no idea what he was unleashing, while Scotty was warned by a combination of Cheryl’s panic and you know WEIRD SHIT HAPPENING IN PLAIN VIEW. 

Cheryl is shaken after this and goes to bed, with Linda checking up on her. We then get a REALLY cute scene as Ash pretends to be asleep holding a little giftbox for Linda, Linda plays along and the result is just really cute and makes you understand why Ash cares about her so much. Which is good because this film’s women are cardboard. I don’t blame it on the actresses, they do their best, but it’s clear Sam Rami, who wrote this one, wasn’t the best at writing women and their more there for canon fodder and the male characters own angst than treated as actual characters. 

The worst example of this, is what happens to Cheryl: She not only stupidly follows the evil force she’s terrified of into the woods.. but then gets raped by a tree in one of the film’s most horrifying and infamous scenes. The scene itself is well shot, utterly gut-wrenching, with masterful effects work that really does treat the rape with the seriousness it deserves, and afterwards the poor girl is shaken, demanding to leave, and ranting about the trees attacking her. Naturally Scotty refuses to go anywhere despite you know his friend’s sister CLEARLY having been attacked by something. 

So it’s treated with enough gravitas.. but it still comes off uncomfortably exploitive to me. Not only do they linger on her clothes getting ripped off, but more to the point said rape is only used to further the plot, and her trauma is more general horror trauma than “I just got sexually assaulted by trees” and would’ve been about the same had we not had the rape scene. It wasn’t necessary and even for the early 80′s the filmakers really shoudl’ve thought this one through. 

So Ash, not being a total douche, takes his sister, who by the way the movie dosen’t bother to mention is his sister till towards the end, tries to get her somewhere safe.. only to find that the bridge is GONE, and they can’t really find a way in the darkness. 

Ash brings her back, and decides to be the smart one and actually listen to the recording more, hoping to find something. It’s also some nice storytelling as they don’t TELL us that’s what ash’s doing, we just see him with an earbud in the flim reel. As it turned out the Demons possess people, killing more people, possessing more and rampage, and possessed the professor’s wife.. and that he had to dismemeber her as it’s the ONLY way to kill a Deadite, a term not used here but i’m using for simplicity’s sake. 

Things quickly get dire though when Cheryl turns around, in a VERY well executed jump scare, before asking why they’ve disturbed them and taunting our heroes that one by one they’ll take them. She then goes on the attack throwing ash tot he side and stabbing Linda in the Achilles tendon with a pencil, an excellent and horrifying effect. Scotty proves to be not totoally useless and throws Cheryl in the cellar locking it. 

Arguing insues; Scotty wants to leave now, Ash wants to wait till morning when it’ll be safe, and Shelley goes to her room to have a lie down.. and gets taken next by a random demon. She then goes on her own attack, throwing ash into a wall. And while chainsaw hand and boomstick will definitely become his signature moves, I feel getting thrown into shit and falling over has been overlooked as one of Ash’s most iconic traits for far too long. 

This leads to the second most horrific scene in the film to me: Scott stabs her with a Sumerian dagger they found and chucks her into the fire place, only for Shelley to get back up and attack him.. forcing Scotty to dismember her. While I may hate the guy, I have to give it to Rami that he makes us sympathize with him, as does the actor Richard DeMancior, who just puts VOLUMES of anguish and pain into his expressions as he’s forced to brutally murder his girlfriend to surivive. It’s an utterly gut-wrenching scene. 

So naturally Scotty decides to kill all sympathy by stupidly running into the woods at night, despite there clearly being something out there given Cheryl’s attack earlier. So he comes back barely alive, covered in scratches having clearly been horribly fucked up by the trees. 

Credit again to Rami: I can’t even enjoy his death like I thought I would (I’d forgotten it since my last viewing) It’s a great death scene as Scotty collapses into despair but despite all of this, his stupidity, bullying, and the fact he CAUSED all this.. I can’t help but pity the guy. He could’ve had a life, become a better man.. he may of been shitty.. but even after all this he didn’t deserve to die. 

So Ash is left alone. I really like Ash as a character and feel that he goes through a natural progression through the films, at least from my memory. Here he’s nothing like what he’s known for being: cocky, a tad arrogant, but badass to the core. But it’s understandable: at this point in the films he’s a normal guy who just went up to a cabin with his best friend, his best friend’s girl, his own girl, and his sister to have some fun, and wound up instead watching every one of them get horribly possessed while he can do fuck all to stop it, and the demons who posed them taunt him. He was a likeable, heroic young man who simply ended up in a nightmare and has no way out, and thus breaks over it. He declares they’ll all escape in the morning and truly seems to have mentally broken by this point, not helped by the Deadites playing with him: linda’s wound from earlier turns her, and her Deadite Replacement simply gigles unsettlingly and stares at ash, mocking him for his failure before finally attacking. Ash can’t bring himself to kill her, and simply brokenly carries her outside to bury her. It’s a truly horrific and solemn scene, the poor guy having lost everything and being too far gone to continue. 

Or so he thinks. The Deadites end up making a huge mistake... they have LInda attack ash, which forces him, in the heat of it to decapitate her with a shovel. Having finally crossed that threshold... Ash is snapped out of his justifiably traumatized Stupor, and decides internally that he can’t let this stand. If he just dies here or leaves things as they are, someone else will die... and his friends will never truly rest. So he grabs a shot gun, though a single barrel, he won’t get the iconic one till next time, and goes to fight back.

The finale has some truly great effects, with blood dripping everywhere to taunt ash, things feeling uneasy in the cabin, as if it’s shifting, and a general mastery. Cheryl has escapes and attacks ash, but he manages to put her down temporarily, and soon has to fight Scotty as well, the two overwhelming him.. till the book lightly catches fire and they wail. Realizing this may be his only way out, ash fights them, using the chain from Linda’s locket as a grapple... because it was supposed to set the book on fire via the glass in it, they couldn't get the effect to work and they spent too much time on it not to have it be important. So ash burns the book of the dead, and the zombies melt away in a really obvious claymation effect.. but hey it’s what they had and it’s still good stop motion for the time. 

So Ash stumbles out, unsure of his future, unsure of anything and throughly exhausted when the camera jolts from the back of the cabin all the way forward and attacks him. 

TO BE CONTINUED

Final Thoughts: 

The Evil Dead.. is a truly masterful horror film. Rami’s inexperience at the time shows in a few places, like the lack of good writing for the women, the tree rape scene, and a few technical things i’m sure I missed.. but on the whole the film is a masterpiece and it’s cult following was gained for a reason. 

The gore effects, especially for the budget, are spell binding, utterly disgusting and horrifying in just the right ways. The horror is a nice mix of said effets and true psychological terrror, with the people you love most slowly turning into horrifying demonic versions of themselves who taunt you and your only way to stop them.. is to tear them to shreds. It’s haunting stuff and easily some of the most horrific and striking imagery i’ve seen in a horror film up to present day. 

The acting is decent, though the standout of course is Bruce Cambell. While Ash would slowly transition into hammy action hero in the next two films, here he plays a vunerable, carasmatic guy, and was the rare final guy in a horrror film at the time. He shows off great range from Ash being a fun loving, charasmatic dude early, to his utter shell shocked thousand yard stare towards the end, to his determination in the climax. Bruce utterly dominates the film and all the better for it. 

So the Evil Dead is every bit as good as it’s rep, and I recommend rewatching it or watching it if you somehow haven’t seen it. You can catch it on HBO Max as of this writing along with the sequels. 

Next time, it’s time to take it up a notch with the rare sequel that utterly one ups the original. So join me next week.... as Ash and a new batch of victims must fight to avoid becoming Dead by Dawn. Thanks for reading.