Groovy! THE EVIL DEAD (1981) and THE EVIL DEAD II (1987) Showing at The Starlite Drive-in in Cadet, MO October 1st-5th

“I don’t think so. We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound “fine”? “

St. Louis Horror movie fans! The Starlite Drive-in (15605 N. State Highway 21, Cadet, MO 63630) will be showing THE EVIL DEAD (1981) and THE EVIL DEAD 2 (1987) double feature beginning Thursday October 1st and running 5 nights through the 5th.  The Starlite’s site 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 at The Starlite Drive-in in Cadet, MO October 1st-5th.

Sam Raimi’s 1987 sequel  to ‘The Ultimate Experience In Grueling Terror’, THE EVIL DEAD II follows the further adventures of Ashley Williams (Bruce Campbell) as he travels to a secluded cabin in the woods with his girlfriend Linda where they find a tape recording of a professor and a book of evil. This unleashes a bunch of evil spirits that constantly terrorize Ash. Meanwhile a journalist comes to the area to study the book of evil. Ash and her end up having to survive this swarm of evil until morning comes.