"The Evil Dead- Demons that were resurrected when Ash and Scotty play a recording of recited passages from the Necrinomicon. The demons possess the group, one by one, until only Ash is left standing. The only way to stop a demonicly possessed person... is to dismember them completely.

Many years ago, a cousin of mine told me all about the coolest horror film he'd ever seen! No it wasn't The Evil Dead, but it's sequel, Evil Dead II. Months later I was in a Sam's Club with my parents and I came across a double feature package containing Evil Dead II and Day of the Dead. Needless to say I was excited when good ole ma bought those for me! So yes I loved Evil Dead II and well... enjoyed, Day of the Dead. But I wanted more gore and mayhem. More time passed and I finally acquired the theatrical cut of Army of Darkness. Again I was awestruck with Sam Raimi's work. After viewing those films, I had to see the original Evil Dead film. Thanks to Wal-Mart, my personal quest ended quickly and I finally got see the film that started the Evil Dead craze.
After watching it, the disapointment hit me pretty hard, so I watched the other movies again and banished the first film from my sight. Yes folks, I simply hated, The Evil Dead. Years have passed and DVD has become very popular, so when a Limited Edition Book of the Dead (click the link at the top of the page to buy it on Amazon or Movies Unlmited), I kept passing up the chance to buy it. Until one fateful day (09/30/02) I purchased the Evil Dead Trilogy (did I ever mention I'm an impulse buyer?) on DVD! So for the second time in my life, I sat down and watched The Evil Dead... and liked it? Yes! My god, what a simpleton I must have been in my (much) younger years!
While not the best horror film ever made (of course horror films generally suck, so it's hard to gauge. Especially nowadays... sigh...), there are a lot of impressive things to be found here. And before I officially begin to tell you about this movie (which has, I believe, been reviewed by every other b-movie site on the web), I just want to congratulate Sam Raimi. You've finally hit the big-time Sam, keep up the spectacular work! With that said and done, let's take a look at Raimi's first major film, The Evil Dead (which by the way is based on a previous short film titled, Into the Woods).
The movie starts out with a point of view shot of some invisible force (aptly named by Raimi as "The Force") moving through the woods. Simultaneously, a group of friends are driving up to a cabin in the area (Ash, Scott, Linda, Shelly, and Cheryl. Hey that's just enough for a T.V. sitcom about Friends!). Things are going smoothly, until Scotty loses control of the car and nearly has a fender bender with a large truck.
Do these guys find it weird? Naaaah! Must've been that damned steering wheel. Soon they cross a dilapidated bridge and finally arrive at the cabin. It doesn't look like much, but boy, inside it's quite spacious. Scotty enters the cabin and looks around, while Ash and the women folk unpack the car. As night falls, our characters are enjoying a meal at the dinner table. As Ash makes a toast, the door to the fruit cellar suddenly flips open in the main room. Everyone runs over and peeks into the darkness. Scotty decides to be the man, and goes down to investigate. Some time passes and not a single sound is heard, so Ash decides to go into the basement to retrieve his macho friend. Scotty decides to leap out at Ash as a joke, and scares the bejesus out of him (and I must say, Bruce's reaction was pretty convincing). The two of them then discover some "neat" stuff in the basement, namely the Necrinomicon, a strange skull dagger, and a tape recorder.
So our two upstarts take this items upstairs. Ash plays the recording, until Cheryl shuts if off (can you tell she's the smart one?). Scotty, being the rambunctious guy he is, fast forwards the recording a bit and hits play. The strange language emanating from the tape player starts freaking Cheryl out, causing her to scream "SHUT IT OFF!" before she storms out of the room (and the fact that a tree branch crashes through a window at that exact moment, adds to everyone's uneasiness). Later on, Ash gives Linda the ugliest necklace I've ever seen (Bruce even admitted that it's ugly in the DVD's commentary track)! It's a mini magnifying glass on a chain. It looks as if he got the damn thing from a vending machine (I bet he only had one quarter left and was hoping for the fake diamond ring).
Linda for some reason loves the necklace and she and Ash get a little cozy. Meanwhile, "The Force" is zooming about outside and peeking in the cabin's windows. It calls out to Cheryl and she stupidly ventures deep into the dark woods. For her sheer idiocy, she is raped by trees (insert "woody" joke here), in a sequence that is sure to make any female wince . Cheryl manages to break free from the deciduous bonds and runs back to the cabin, with that pesky "Force" in hot pursuit. She gets to the door and it's locked! Oh no! She reaches above the door in a panic to get the keys and knocks them down. As she grasps for the keys, Ash grabs her hand and pulls her into the cabin. Naturally, after her horrible ordeal, Cheryl wants to get the hell out of the cabin and go into town.
Ash complies with her request but can't get to town. Why? Because the bridge, the only means of escape at the time, is destroyed (and what's left of it is curled up into a sort of, hand or claw). So back at the cabin, everyone's in the main room (except for Scotty, he's out chopping wood). Linda is trying to guess cards that Shelley's choosing from the deck, Ash is listening to the rest of that cursed recording, and Cheryl is sitting by the window. Things seem fine, until Cheryl starts guessing the cards correctly and spins around to reveal her pinkish/white eyes. She levitates for a bit and spouts some demonic threats, then falls to the floor. Ash and Linda check to see if Cheryl's ok... bad idea.
Linda gets a pencil to the Achilles heel and is sent flying into a wall whileAsh is thrown into a shelf, which topples over and pins him to the floor. This leaves him completely helpless, but luckily Scotty is there with his handy axe. He hits demonic Cheryl in the face with the axe handle, and sends her reeling into the fruit cellar. Scotty then chains the cellar door shut and everyone tries to regroup. The next person to be possessed is Shelly. "The Force" crashes through her bedroom window and claims her. As Scotty searches for her, she suddenly pops up and begins her assault. Scotty ends up tossing the demonic Shelley into the fire place, where she gets slightly toasted. Scotty pulls her out of the flames... and again, BAD IDEA!
He wrestles with her a bit and ends up driving the skull dagger through her. Thinking that she's dead, Scotty tries to walk around her body. Naturally demonic Shelley isn't dead. She gets up and stumbles towards Scotty and Ash. Scotty grabs the axe from Ash and proceeds to hack Shelley up into bits and pieces (some of which are seen twitching on the floor). Afterwards, Ash and Scotty clean up the body parts and bury them outside. When that deed is finally done, Scotty decides to leave the cabin (you jerk! Some friend you are!), pretty much saying it's every man for himself. Then Ash goes to check on Linda who suddenly becomes yet another host to a Khandarian demon. And guess who comes crawling back? Yep! Scotty discovered offscreen that the woods around the cabin won't allow anyone to leave.
Ash drags Linda outside (that horrible giggling was driving him crazy), after the demons screw with his mind, and then goes back inside to tend to Scotty, who soon dies. Suddenly demonic Linda appears and stabs Ash with the skull dagger. They wrestle for a bit until Ash sticks the skull dagger in Linda's back. Learning from past mistakes, Ash takes Linda out to the shed and prepares to cut her apart with a chainsaw. Of course the love sick loser changes his mind and buries Linda instead. As he's about to return to the house, Ash notices the necklace he gave Linda on the ground. He reaches for it, only to discover that demonic Linda still has some fight left in her. After beating the hell out of her with a huge board, Ash finishes off Linda by lopping off her head with a shovel.
When he goes back inside, Ash notices that demonic Cheryl has escaped from the fruit cellar. He immediately arms himself with a shotgun and defends himself. But alas, he needs more shells for the gun, which happen to be in the basement. Though no demonicly possessed friends pop up, we do get a twisted and bloody tribute to the Three Stooges (confused? Then you're too young to know what I'm talking about. But the commentary on the DVD will clear it up for you). Ash goes back upstairs only to experience more weirdness. After a long moment of almost complete silence, demonic Cheryl attacks, and Ash is all too happy to show her his shotgun. A blast to the fast makes Cheryl think twice before entering, that is until Scotty rises from the floor. Ash scuffles with Scotty (during this, the Necrinomicon is knocked to the floor, very close to the fireplace) while Cheryl breaks through the door.
Ash notices that both of his possessed friends are starting to smoke a little bit and puts two and two together. He tries to grab the Necrinomicom but ends up getting battered by the demons. This is where the ugly magnifying glass necklace comes into play. Ash uses it to sort of lasso the Book of the Dead, which he then tosses into the fireplace. The book burns up and the demons melt into puddles of clay and oatmeal (with some cockroaches and worms tossed in for good measure). By this time, morning has finally come so Ash has survived to see another day. Or so it would seem. As he goes outside, ready to escape the horrible cabin and start life anew, something stirs within the woods. "The Force" rises up, zooms through the forest, through the cabin, and out the front door right into Ashley's screaming face.
So now I do enjoy The Evil Dead. It truly must have been a labor of love, since it took three long years of filming and editing to complete. Though Ash isn't a total bad-ass in this movie, I think it worked in his favor. You see him develop as a hero as the film progresses. At first he's pretty much a wuss, but a good guy nonetheless. After Scotty acts selfishly and tries to talk Ash into leaving Linda behind, Ash proves to be the stronger man, and chooses to stay behind. By the end, no demonicly possessed human was tough enough to keep Ash down. Also, I have to say that Raimi has a real eye for camera angles. During the last ten minutes, I saw a lot of different shots that just caused me to scratch my head and say, "How'd he do that?!" The effects, while not the greatest, are pretty effective (especially those milk-white contact lenses), and the movie has an all around creepy atmosphere. Though I like this film, the sequel is a lot more fun to watch. More blood, more laughs, and one total bad-ass Ash!