The Original THE EVIL DEAD This Weekend at The Des Peres – Late Nite Grindhouse

“I’m all right now, Ashley! Come unlock this chain and let me out! I’m all right now! It’s your sister Cheryl!”

Destroy the Brain‘s monthly ‘Late Nite Grindhouse’ film series is back in a new location! Head to the Marcus Des Peres Cinema (12701 Manchester Rd, Des Peres, MO 63131) this Friday and Saturday (November 15th and 16th) at 10pm for the original THE EVIL DEAD. Since this is a Marcus Theater, you’ll need to reserve your seats ahead of time HERE. There may (or may not be) Tickets available the nights of the screenings, but they may be going fast! Tickets are $8.75. This special edition of EVIL DEAD presents the horror classic for the first time with a reimagined score by original composer Joseph LoDuca and a thrilling new 5.1 surround mix created by Marti Humphrey and Jussi Tegelman. A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE

Low budget horror does not get much better than the original THE EVIL DEAD from 1981. In fact no other low budget horror film even looks like THE EVIL DEAD thanks to Sam Raimi. So if you want to see how a future major director starts from the real bottom end of film making and works his way up then you need to watch THE EVIL DEAD at all costs. Besides, Raimi was just a young kid when he made it (using a school’s 16mm film camera)….. and so were his friends who acted in it…. The movie was filmed in 1979 and released in 1982 where it hit the video market just at the right time. It was one of the very first cult classics promoted by the advent of video tape.

THE EVIL DEAD still is one of the nastiest films ever made. It contains extreme violence, blood, tree rape, torture, beheadings, dismemberments, mutilations, gore, violence towards women, chain saws – all in full view of the camera. The camera work is used unusual and skillful, the editing is dramatic and the low budget special effects beat the pants out of some of the neutered CGI we’re subjected to these days.

The premise of THE EVIL DEAD is simple. Five young kids go to a cabin in the woods for a short vacation. In the house they find a tape recording which manages to invoke an incantation which wakes up the evil in the woods. It comes after them – turning some of them into the undead, demons, zombies and flesh eating ghouls. Cue lots of household items being used as weapons, an initially sissy anti-hero (Bruce Campbell) who became, thanks to this film and its two sequels, the god of millions of adoring horror fans Copied by a hundred other horror films, exploited by a million uncensored bootleg copies – THE EVIL DEAD is still the low budget horror king. And that is a hard act to beat! Now you can catch it again on the big screen when it plays 10pm this weekend (November 15th and 16th) at the Marcus Des Peres Cinema