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The Evil Dead: The horror shocker that set off a culture war

Adam Scovell
Features correspondent
Alamy (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
(Credit: Alamy)

As the latest Evil Dead film is released, promising more demonic possession and extreme gore, nothing will beat the provocative power of the original, writes Adam Scovell.

"The ultimate experience in gruelling horror": so suggests the subtitle of Sam Raimi's infamous, brilliant film The Evil Dead (1981). Made when the director was just 20 years old, Raimi's calling card quickly earned its place in the horror pantheon with its mixture of extreme gore, sly humour, and technical trickery. Now, more than 40 years on, the film's lineage continues with a growing body of sequels that includes Evil Dead Rise, the fifth film in the franchise, written and directed by Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin, that is released next week. But all the while, the original remains a landmark work, which still has the power to scare, influence and entertain.

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The Evil Dead is a love letter to genre cinema. Based originally on Raimi's short film Within the Woods (1979), the film perfectly embodies the "lost in the woods" genre cliché – a popular trope in horror films that sees characters isolated in woods where evil of various forms dwells. It tells the story of five 20-somethings who make the mistake of holidaying in a lonely wooden cabin. In its basement, they discover a cursed tome called The Book of the Dead, subsequently summoning spirits from Hell.

Alamy With its tongue firmly in cheek, The Evil Dead focuses on the bloody trials of leading man Ash (Bruce Campbell) as his nearest and dearest are demonically possessed (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
With its tongue firmly in cheek, The Evil Dead focuses on the bloody trials of leading man Ash (Bruce Campbell) as his nearest and dearest are demonically possessed (Credit: Alamy)

Leading man Ash (Bruce Campbell) is then forced to watch as his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), his partner Linda (Betsy Baker) and his friends Shelly (Theresa Tilly) and Scott (Richard DeManincor) succumb to violent demonic possession, something that can only be halted by bodily dismemberment. The question for Ash – aside from which implement is best to hack apart the possessed – is whether he'll survive the night.

Nowadays, Raimi's film is rightly celebrated for its innovations, as well as a legacy that includes, previous to Evil Dead Rise, two sequels by Raimi himself, a remake by Fede Álvarez in 2013, and a television series, Ash vs. Evil Dead (2015-2018). With all of this success, Christopher Brown, host of the Video Nasties Podcast and a great Evil Dead irer, is unsure whether it sits so comfortably as a cult film today. "I'm loath to call The Evil Dead a cult classic," he tells BBC Culture. "How big is your cult if you've got two sequels, a successful remake, computer games, comics and a three season TV show off your back">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });