Customer Reviews

Evil Dead: Book of the Dead Edition (Widescreen)

5 star:		(326)
4 star:		(85)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Evil Dead(released Oct/81)aka Book of the Dead....wow,what legs this film has grown.Made on a very modest budget of well under 1/2 a million dollars,and now said to have grossed somewhere around 30 million(!),this film has taken its gory place amongst its' followers high on their respective film lists.Of course as we all know this was the film Robert Tapert,Sam Raimi(later of Xena & Hercules,and Bruce Campbell all cut their filmic "teeth" on and the rest is history.The film itself deserves no more than about 3 1/2 stars,being a just above-average flick.I am no fan of Anchor bay but they have put together a three -disc set here,worthy of say a Criterion company release;but more on that later.
The plot as we all know by now involves a couple of guys with girlfriends and a sister tagging along,who all decide to head out into the remote woods to a cabin.There they find a tape recorder and a strange notebook(that we all come to know is the Necronomicon).They play the tape recorder and find it has the voice of a professor on it,and as he chants some ancient words it arouses spirits in the woods that slowly but surely attack the cabin and everyone in it.One by one the girls and eventually one of the guys all become Deadites and attack Ash,who remains the only one still standing and possession free throughout the movie.But Ash has his work cut out for him(literally and figuratively)as he has to kill each one of his friends.The spirits make it clear they want EVERYONE("join us") and at the end,as Ash stands alone outside the cabin,the strange entity comes at him in a head long rush as he screams into the lens...fade to black.
I recall the movie originally and it was quite the gorefest when it first debuted.It certainly looks tame now,as have alot of its contemporaries.They had lightened the rating system I recall in the early 70s so things got a little bit more intense,if that's the word,on screen.Filmmakers really started to push the envelope.What was rated "R" back in the 60s is now about PG today;it's amazing(the times they have a-changed!),but I digress.The special effects,as primitive as they were for the late 70s,still stand up pretty good today.Raimi and company made the most of what they had and used every trick in the book to convey that sense of isolation,dread and horror that became the trademark of the Evil Dead series.Bruce Campbell of course as Ash really makes the movie,as he goes from a very wimpish type character and converts into a much stronger one,due to the forces that he is pitted against.It's do or die and Ash doesn't want to die as his friends did.The rest of the cast do an admirable job and while it is no Citizen Kane,Campbell and company manage to pull it all off pretty well.
Technically speaking the film,though shot in 16mm,looks and sounds very good in these prints.It was originally shot full frame so Anchor Bay has gone and included BOTH the full frame AND widescreen prints here for your edification!Each disc has extras and the third is dedicated to nothing but extras.They include:Commentary on the widescreen print by the directors,commentary on the full frame version by Campbell,poster and memorabilia gallery,trailer and TV spots,make up tests,featurettes about the women of the Evil Dead,Campbell and Ted Raimi WITH the women of E/D,discovering E/D,a premiere in 2006 at a Drive In w/ the full cast,the cast at a convention,a reunion panel AND a replica of one of the original theater posters thrown in for good measure.Phew! As I said this is a release worthy of the Criterion company and as such that is why the high marks;as they just put the whole package right over the top.
All in all a highly recommended release for fans of the first of the three of this gorefest series.Though not the best it's still pretty darn good and it still has some scare the pants off of you moments throughout.This edition has both the original full frame print and the specially made widescreen print.And with all the extras,there is NO other version to get the Deadite of your choosing.Join us!

This film is the ultimate horror movie. Great sneaky gore with a good storyline (unlike most horror movies) and not-so-bad acting or directing to be such a low budget film.

Well, as far as the actual movie itself the Elite DVD version is superior. I have both the Book Of The Dead Anchor Bay edition and the Elite version. The Anchor Bay version is very nice just for the extras and packaging (even though it smells like model glue!). However, the Elite version presents the movie in it's original 1:33 full-screen aspect ratio, exactly as it was filmed and originally released. The Anchor Bay versions present The Evil Dead in a new 1:85 Widescreen transfer which actually blocks out some of the movie at the top and bottom of the screen. It looks nice, but was it really necessary?

Anchor Bay is by far my favorite DVD company, but they really goofed up on the Widescreen transfer in The Book Of The Dead...they should have included both the new Widescreen and Original full-screen versions.

Oh well, the Elite version has recently went down in price to where if you are a fan of The Evil Dead you can just buy both editions.

Working with a very limited budget and shooting over a couple of years, Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, Bruce Campbell, and Joel Coen (along with many collaborators) managed to produce a horror movie where five college students, while having a weekend in a rented cabin down in the woods, uncover a book called the Necronomicon, which releases the spirits of the dead who now haunt, curse, and torture the five college students over a single night.

Shot on 16 mm, the movie shows clever use of the camera, which is not only used to film the characters' actions, but also to play the role of the spirits of the dead as they track and haunt Ash and his friends. The music, composed by Joseph LoDuca, is very effective and adds the perfect tension to the story, along with a few comic elements like during that scene between Ash and Linda when he wants to offer to her a gift. Evil Dead also has lots of gore and clever use of stop motion to show the characters transformation into dead living creatures. The smoke effects in the forest also gave an eerie presence to the wooden cabin and the surrounding woods as they gave another visual demonstration that the evil forces in the Necronomicon were haunting the characters.

This movie also reveals the genre-bending traits of Sam Raimi's movies, as he mixes both comedy and dramatic scenes in his stories and productions. For this movie, it works pretty well though the only few criticisms I had with the story was that there were probably too much characters, including some that were underdeveloped like Shelly. I also felt that the story dragged around the end, like when Ash is trying to get his grip to what is happening or when the corpses decompose themselves, and could have been shortened at seventy minutes. Nevertheless, the story was fun to watch and I especially liked the final camera trick at the end of the movie, which to me will probably become, and maybe already did, a classic element to horror movies.

Although the movie did had some continuity mistakes (i.e.: hair cuts, light directions, etc.) which were due to the shooting constraints that Raimi and his team had on the film's shooting which went over a couple of years, I admired the energy and will that comes out of this project as a couple of people managed to make a movie that launched their careers, but also a series of movies set in the Evil Dead universe, including a sequel that revised for better the events of this movie with only two characters (the most interesting ones of this story and combined with traits coming from the other characters), an excellent ending, and less gore than in this first version.

Evil dead it's a very entertaining movie to watch, but it really impacts to you how bloody and how too much gore does it has, anyway you can't miss this frightening movie which makes you jump out of your sit and forces you to don't sleepp.

I watched this movie tonight not expecting to like it. Why did I watch it in the first place then? Becasue I thought maybe I would end up liking it. Well, I did and I didn't. I love slasher flicks, but im not really into zombie movies. The two other zombie movies I have seen were "Dawn of the Dead" and "Day of the Dead", which I didn't like, and thought were WAY over-rated. This one was to, and certainly is NOT worth all the hye, but is still okay. The thing I liked about was that is was simple, sort of in the way "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was, but it's hard to explain HOW it was simple. It mostly takes place in the living room and cellar of a cabin, not in a big gothic mansion, so it's some-what realistic, and, like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", it's hard to explain HOW it's realistic. There were also a few cool scenes worth the rental alone. What I didn't like about it was it was some-what boring. It was also just felt a *bit* too short. So I wouldi't reccomend fully, unless you really like zombie flicks, or you just feel like you have to see every popular horror flick as I do...

This is the best movie ever made. It was made by a bunch of friends who used to make movies on their old super-8 camera, and thought they could conquer feature films. They were right. Very right. It has inventive camera work, a good storyline, great acting, and loads of blood. Considering it was made for something like 350,000 dollars (really really low budget)it turned out to be great. I am very impressed with the way this film turned out. I think that everyone should at least see it once. The evil dead is a piece of art, and it is a fun ride. I thank you Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell for your outstanding piece of film making.
- Ash: a 33 years old, 6'1'', Bruce Campbell.
- Cheryl: a 32 years old, Ellen Sandweiss.
- Scotty: Hal Delrich.
- Linda: a 28 years old, Betsy Baker.
- Shelly: a 28 years old, Theresa Tilly.

Way to much gore for my liking. But on the other hand, I just thought the acting was pretty good. Everything in this movie is shown, it is incredibly graphic, and there is one absoutley disturbing scene where, a girl gets violently rapped by a tree. Bloody stabbings, axe chopping, decapitation by shovel, dead people returning back to live, white eyeballs, rotting corpses and much much much more gore and graphic violence. Keep in mind, this is why this movie is rated NC-17: for substantial graphic horror violence and gore. *thanks to www.filmratings.com*

The Book of the Dead may be the most extras-laden, fleshiest edition of the original, classic Evil Dead film available in the US. However, like all US DVD releases, it has a problem- the aspect ratio is wrong. Get a multi region player and buy the UK 4 disc set.

There are about 6,000,000 editions of each Evil Dead film to get. The Book of the Dead may be the most tricked out, fleshiest edition of the film, but only diehards should get that version of the original film, and only in addition to this one. The fact is, for all its flair, the Book of the Dead is in the wrong aspect ration, making it unwatchable. If only buy one edition of Evil Dead, buy this one, which has ample extras and most importantly, the correct aspect ratio.