Starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly
Directed by Sam Raimi
Expectations: One of my all-time favorites.
The Evil Dead. It’s hard to believe that this movie is 33 years old. It still elicits scares and laughs just as much as it did the first time I saw it all those years ago. But this re-watch was something extra special: I saw it on the big screen. This was a pleasure I had never experienced before, only discovering the film on VHS in the ’90s when a friend let me borrow it. While it’s cliché to say that the big screen made the film a much better experience, that’s exactly the case here. I’ve seen this movie more times than I could ever hope to count, but the theater experience still revealed to me things I had never taken the time to notice or care about specifically.
The first of these is the sound design. While the original soundtrack is only mono — and a fairly abrasive mono with all the shrieking and such — the sound design that accompanies the coming evil of the woods is paramount to the film’s success. The wonderfully inventive camerawork that Raimi uses to realize this spirit flying through the woods is impressive enough, but coupled with the sounds of voices and brooding synths it makes for something that you’ll never forget. I’ve always loved how alive the forest around the cabin in The Evil Dead felt, and I have to credit a lot of that atmosphere and staying power to the ever-present, excellent sound design.