Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DaManicor, Betsy Baker
Have I Seen it Before: No. I’m usually tempted to say at points like this “strangely, no” but I’m more tempted in this particular case to question whether most people have seen it.
Did I Like It: I’m going to try real hard not to blur the lines between my review for this and my eventual review for Evil Dead II (1987), even though Raimi and company didn’t feel much of a need to differentiate between the two films while making them. My memory of the sequel was that I didn’t see the big deal that everyone was going nuts over, and the same can be said here.
I’m all for horror. I’m all for Raimi’s other work*. There’s just something about the Deadites that always left me cold to varying degrees, and seeing them in their prototypical form doesn’t do much to dissuade that. You’ve got to wait for Army of Darkness (1992) or even Evil Dead Rise (2023) before my heart grows big enough to embrace the carnage.
The film isn’t entirely without charms. Seeing a horror movie made with the same kind of near-zero budget and in the same era as Halloween (1978) but that embraces the supernatural aspects of horror, even if the budget isn’t always there to back it up. It’s also worth glancing—if for only the jarring quality that may be my most lasting memory of the film—at a version of Bruce Campbell so youthful that it’s difficult to imagine the Bruce Campbell residing somewhere in his future.
*Drifting through some of the information on this film, I can’t help but be consumed by a desires—as we all must, from time to time—to watch Darkman (1990).