Released in 1983, this was Sam Raimi's first major feature film. It was made on a relatively tiny budget and, far more than its sequels, was a gore-filled, fairly straight horror film. Its major claim to fame is the tongue-in-cheek way it mocks modern horror films and at the same time, breaks some new ground. The film found its best audience at late night drive-ins. It wasn't until "Evil Dead 2" came out, however, that "The Evil Dead" gained true cult status.

The forest, of course, is already an old horror standby, the favorite location of such fairly notable horror films as the "Friday the 13th" series and the "Sleepaway Camp" films. In the cabin, the victims find an eerie old audio tape and play it, and on it a professor reads aloud certain passages from the Necronomicon exmortis, "The Book of the Dead" as the films calls it (There really is a Necronomicon; however, what the title means is "Book of Dead Names" and there are no demon resurrection passages in it, contrary to popular belief. The Necronomicon is the basis of much of the fictional Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft).

The first victim to turn evil is the aforementioned rape victim. It is worth noting that this girl represents the typical horror victim; even though she senses an evil presence outside her window and is quite frightened, she goes outside alone to find out what it is. This kind of idiocy is essential to the modern horror film; but Raimi goes out of his way to make his victims look quite brainless, making a point about the lack of plot in other modern horror films. The girl is subsequently raped by trees and somehow becomes one of the "evil dead." When this girl suddenly attacks her still-living former companions, her first violent action is to stab another girl in the ankle with a number two pencil. Raimi has admitted to being a fan of the Three Stooges, and this scene almost looks like a Stooge routine gone horribly wrong. The number two pencil goes surprisingly deep in the victim's leg and the blood that gushes out is incredible. This is the first real part of the film where the audience, if they can stomach the blood, may actually laugh out loud. Seeing a monster attack a human victim with a number two pencil is certainly unusual for a horror film. Raimi's love for the Stooges will appear again and again in all three horror films, particularly in "Army of Darkness".

After the stabbing, this monstrous girl is thrown down into the cabin's cellar (she escapes later to cause more havoc until she is killed). This cellar will reappear in "Evil Dead 2" and plays a fairly central role in that story as a way to tap humanity's ingrained fear of the subterranean as a place of death and suffering. From here the film begins to turn quite gory as one by one, the victims are killed and turned into Deadites, the absurd name Raimi gives these monsters, almost giving them a Deadhead-like ring. To prove a point (for the thought of one doing this for pure gratification is far too disturbing for contemplation), the gore from here on end is completely over-the-top. When the only character to survive the film, Ash (whose last name is never revealed in all three movies), has to kill his Deadite-converted girlfriend, he swaps off her head with a trench shovel (the use of the odd item to kill as a staple of horror films will be discussed with the chainsaw in the section on "Evil Dead 2"). When the headless body of the dead girlfriend falls on the supine Ash, blood spurts from the neck all over Ash in a completely disgusting display of gore (Ash's tendency to be surprisingly clean after such torrents of blood will also be discussed in the next section). The dying monsters throughout the film often spurt a strange white milky fluid along with blood that is somehow even more disturbing than the blood itself; it almost makes the death seem more real, since other fluids do flow from eviscerated corpses besides blood.

In the most gut-wrenching and violent scene of the entire film, a monster is dispatched by being completely dismembered by a still-human (future) victim. The victim is the other man besides Ash, Scott, and the monster is his girlfriend-turned-Deadite. As the axe comes down again and again, blood spurts all over the cabin, drenching everything and everybody, even covering the camera lens in one of Raimi's infamous camera techniques. After the teenager finishes, the camera pans down to focus on the still wriggling limbs of the evil dead monster (which still resembles a human enough to be quite gruesome). Up to that point, this scene was unparalleled in modern horror cinema. Raimi wanted to take it to the limit, and he did. He made it clear just how gory films could get, and couched in this sarcastic format it was a warning to film makers everywhere. Perhaps dismemberment had occurred in other films, but the horror at watching a desperate victim chop his beloved girlfriend to pieces with an axe is something the moviegoing audience had never before been forced to endure.

Other strange moments in the film include when one of the Deadites is dispatched by being thrown in a fire, a remorseful human decides to pull the cadaver out of the fireplace. The monster thanks the human, then proceeds to attack them again. This kind of quirky humor is one of the groundbreaking parts of the film. The final, and sometimes most hilarious, aspect of the film is what I and my friends call the "Evil Camera" technique. This effect, created by a camera running full speed through the forest or house as if the range of something's point of view and accompanied by a roar that rises proportionally to the camera's increasing speed, is a staple of many horror films and all three Evil Dead films.

The basic idea behind the Evil Camera is that some presence, some strange monster or force that we never see, is pursuing and attacking the victims; this effect can be seen in such horror/science fiction films as "Predator" and "Alien 3", as well as the "Friday the 13th" series. In the Evil Dead films, the Evil Camera strikes Ash twice, at the end of "The Evil Dead" (the results of which are not shown until "Evil Dead 2", as Ash is hit by the Evil Camera in the final shot of the film) and again in "Evil Dead 2". The apparent effect of the Evil Camera is to turn its victim into Deadites. When it hits Ash the first time, we see him get hurled into the air and watch from the Evil Camera's perspective as it bashes Ash through trees and spins him around, finally dropping him in the mud in a hilarious sequence; after this, Ash turns into a Deadite (Ash is freed from Deadite-hood the first time by the coming of dawn; the second time, he sees the necklace of his beloved Linda and comes out of it). What makes the effect comical is that the roar only occurs when we are seeing through the Evil Camera; otherwise, when it cuts to the humans' action, there is no mounting roar. This effect is played for laughs in the next two films; in "Evil Dead 2", Ash actually hides from the Evil Camera, and the Evil Camera looks around for a second, as if confused, then recedes backwards out of the cabin, with the according diminishing roar. In "Army of Darkness", Ash slams the door on the Evil Camera, and it bashes at the door repeatedly before giving up.

Unlike the next two films, "The Evil Dead" is a very suspenseful film, particularly when Ash alone faces two Deadites lurking somewhere in the cabin. When he enters the cellar for the last time, the audience is literally gripping their seats; this is the most intense part of the film. Finding a small pipe leaking blood, it breaks and Ash is covered with blood (a much greater torrent hits him in the next film). And after that? An old film projector clicks on, and a Victrola plays a record with a jaunty old tune. As the disoriented Ash reloads his shotgun, the audience is left similarly puzzled by the lack of surprises or violence. Raimi's decision to keep the scene monster-free unnerves the audience and keeps them off-balance for the rest of the film. The final sequence of the film, where Ash figures out that by burning the Necronomicon that he can stop the Deadites, is not as disturbing as the dismemberment scene but far more gory. It begins with the two Deadites beginning to burn and then fall to pieces, chewed by insects, melting to blood and bone, with what looks like mashed potatoes leaking out their arms.

One last important part of "The Evil Dead" is just how much the audience is made to care for these victims, particularly Ash. At no point do these teens really come off as jerks; if we ever feel they've gotten what they've deserved, it's only because they went outside alone or something similarly stupid. But a scene where Ash gives his girlfriend Linda a locket is played to make these characters appear as more than just targets to be possessed and hacked apart, and when Ash is forced to kill the Deadite Linda, we feel pity for him. As mentioned before, the film was a modest success, and eventually made enough money for the studio to ask for a sequel. Thus, in 1987, "Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn" was released in theaters.

PART II: "EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN"

PART III: "ARMY OF DARKNESS"