THE EVIL DEAD Screening Midnights This Weekend at The Moolah

“Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if I had remained on those hot coals, burning my pretty flesh!”

THE EVIL DEAD screens midnights this weekend (October 9th and 10th) at The Moolah Theater (3821 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO). Admission is only $5. Come early for great drink specials, cool trivia with even cooler prizes.

Sam Raimi’s classic horror-comedy THE EVIL DEAD still holds up after almost 35 years. Even though the plot may now sound very clichéd, and it probably did in 1981 too, it never hinders the fun of horror: A group of five friends, Ash, Cheryl, Scotty, Linda and Shelly (played by Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly respectively) drive to a remote forest cabin for a fun weekend but their plans are quickly put on hold by the presence of sinister forces from the unknown. After having inadvertently summoned the evil entities with the help of a strange book and audio tape found in the cellar, everything turns against them: the forest won’t allow them to leave and starts assaulting them in gruesome ways, turning them into zombie-like freaks one after another. Ultimately only one of the friends remains human, intent on making it out alive…

THE EVIL DEAD starts as an atmospheric suspense-driven horror film: the camera crawls near the ground like a preying animal, there’s focus on creepy little details like a swing banging against a wall, a clock pendulum stopping by itself, a bridge ominously falling apart even before anything out of the ordinary has happened. Once the gore starts after about 30 minutes, it keeps escalating to ridiculous levels, conveniently shifting the tone towards comedy without awkward mood changes. The infamous vine rape scene looks genuinely nasty, providing maybe the most horrific moment in the story, and while the wild dismemberments in the latter half of the film are intentionally over the top, the tone maintains a feel of tragedy throughout – the freaks were once human beings, more than fodder for axes, bullets and chainsaws. Despite the excessiveness of the gore, the suspense is never allowed to fade away even at the very end, thanks to Raimi’s skillful direction and the frequently oblique camera-work.

The effects still look excellent for the most part; only the stop-motion transformations of the climactic scenes at the end have dated notably, but I think their old-fashioned cartoon-like quality is really charming in a way. The screen-presence of the pus-oozing plastic monsters is on a wholly different plane of existence than the obviously non-existent CGI creations of many modern action movies.

Don’t miss THE EVIL DEAD when it screens midnights this weekend (October 9th and 10th) at The Moolah Theater (3821 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO).