Book Of The Dead - The Definitive Evil Dead Website

This page covers only legal retail DVDs containing Super-8 shorts which can be bought online or in stores. For more information about the various bootleg releases, please see the 'Releases & Bootlegs' page. You can also view detailed information on two fanmade DVD projects via the sub-menu above.

There have been various rumours & releases of Super-8 shorts over the years, but as the copyright for each short seems to reside with it's director, any form of official release is entirely at their discretion. In 2002, there was much excitement when Anchor Bay Entertainment revealed that Within The Woods would be an extra on the forthcoming Book Of The Dead Edition DVD of The Evil Dead. The short was remastered and listed in publicity materials, the fans got excited, but and then at the eleventh hour, it was pulled from the DVD. Separately Anchor Bay UK tried to get the short for their Evil Dead Trilogy boxset in 2004, but again had no luck. Additionally; clips from Within The Woods and Six Months To Live were edited out of the Incredibly Strange Film Show featured in the same boxset. You can see the Within The Woods section for more information on this.

In 2002, the German distributor Dragon Films Entertainment released a special edition of Scott Spiegel’s gory 1989 slasher Intruder (under the title Night Of The Intruder) on Region 2 PAL DVD. The DVD features two shorts directed by Scott Spiegel, Attack Of The Helping Hand and Torro! Torro! Torro! (the latter co-directed with Josh Becker). However, Dragon is one of a handful of German distributors notorious for releasing official-looking bootlegs of films they haven’t actually licensed, and Intruder was no exception. The two shorts (as well as some rare workprint footage from the film) may well have been mastered from a bootleg VHS tape. If it had been an official Special Edition with Scott's involvement, it would likely have included digitally remastered versions of both the shorts, as per the French Alien Apocalypse DVD (see below).

For anyone wishing to buy this DVD, its worth noting that Dragon Films also released a bearbones standard DVD alongside their special edition, which comes without many of the extras (including the shorts). You can tell the difference between the two by their covers; the special edition DVD cover is shown above, and the standard DVD cover can be seen here

Within The Woods was included on another German DVD, the distributor T.U.T. (The Union Television) released Evil Dead with the short as an extra, in 2004. The quality is very poor, and is not the best generally available. Again this would likely have been taken from a bootleg VHS tape. It's highly unlikely they would have been given permission to include the short if Anchor Bay couldn't in the USA or UK.

A low quality version of The Blind Waiter was available for a time as streaming RealMedia file on Josh Beckers website Beckerfilms. Over the past few years, Josh has had a number of his Super-8 shorts professionally transferred & remastered to DVD at CinePost in Marietta, Georgia. The results are stunning - crisp, bright, vivid, full of colour, a world apart from the widespread poor quality bootleg VHS tapes.

In 2005 Josh licensed two of these new transfers; Oedipus Rex & The Blind Waiter for inclusion as extras on the French DVD of Alien Apocalypse, released by Free Dolphin Entertainment. A number of other shorts were scheduled to appear as extras on DVDs to be released by independent US distributor; Synapse Films. Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except was to include Stryker's War, the 45-minute Super-8 prototype for that film, and Running Time was to feature Holding It. One of the DVDs was also to feature a documentary on the making of the Super-8 shorts featuring interviews with Josh & Bruce Campbell, which has apparently already been filmed. With little news since the original announcement, and Synapse dropping both DVDs from their upcoming schedules, it is unknown if these DVDs will ever happen.

Early in 2010, rather than continuing to wait on Synapse, Josh decided to move forward alone and sell all the shorts directly to customers via his website. Currently there are five shorts discs available; disc one has Stryker's War, disc two has The Blind Waiter & Oedipus Rex, disc three has Holding It, disc four has Acting And Reacting & The Final Round, and disc five has Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter, The Case of the Topanga Pearl, Super Student, and Public Enemy Revisited.

Each short has it's original untampered musical score, and all five DVDs come with printed disc artwork (as shown above) in blank paper slipcases. To buy everything costs $60 plus postage, although it's well worth the price with all the profits going directly to the shorts' creator, as well as the fantastic quality of the telecine transfers. Josh will also autograph the discs free of charge if you ask him. Here is a direct link to the DVD purchase page on Josh's website. It is unknown if Josh will make additional titles available in the future, but if this venture proves lucrative, the idea could be taken up by other members of the Super-8 group making their own shorts available for sale too.