The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror: THE EVIL DEAD

Funny thing about horror is, there are exceptionally few cases of a greatness in the genre that comes along by financial resource and professional experience; movies like John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and Tobe Hooper's THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE come along from young and hungry artists with the freedom to craft their vision with real nerve, but the line between the dreadfully inept PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE or TROLL 2 and the inspired but rough-around-the-edges schlock that makes careers can be surprisingly thin.  Mixing graphic gory mayhem with Three Stooges slapstick can be a step in the right direction though.

THE EVIL DEAD  (HORROR, 1981) 
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Hal Delrich, Betsy Baker, Sarah York
Rated NC-17 for substantial graphic horror violence and gore.
85 minutes
SCAREmeter: 5/10 (fairly scary, but mitigated by overall cheesiness)
GOREmeter: 10/10 (gratuitous though generally unrealistic blood and guts sprayed and splattered with reckless abandon throughout)
LAUGHmeter: 4.5/10
OVERALL: 3/4 

The Part Where I Talk All About THE EVIL DEAD in the Context of British Film Censorship and "Video Nasties"
Conservative social activist Mary Whitehouse called Sam Raimi's ultra-low-budget horror film THE EVIL DEAD "the number one nasty," which is obviously how you know it's amazing.  When Mrs. Whitehouse referred to the film as a "nasty", she was referring to "video nasties", a term she is also attributed with coining.  Back in the early 1980s, when home video technology, ultimately dominated by VHS cassettes of course, was just then becoming widely available and popular, films that had been banned in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) when seeking theatrical release were then being released on home video, which the BBFC had no jurisdiction over at the time.  The BBFC was and is charged with enacting the UK's obscenity laws by discerning which  media materials (primarily films) are "obscene" and "harmful" to the public, and thus illegal.  Their decisions are not final and may be overturned by local film boards, but it is the BBFC's legal mandate to interpret the laws and apply them to films seeking distribution in the UK.  A "video nasty" was any film considered prosecutable as "obscene" under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, and a total of 72 films were identified by the Director of Public Prosecutions Office as "obscene"; these 72 films were the official video nasties, THE EVIL DEAD being amongst them.
The title of Number One Nasty as bestowed by Whitehouse was a little misleading, considering that it would be hard to argue that THE EVIL DEAD was the most graphic or violent or traumatizing on the DPP's list, but it was probably the most popular, or at least, one of the most popular (it's doubtful that many of these films would have been as popular as they became without Whitehouse's moral crusading against them).  Among the small few that are still given much attention, and even then only by film fans, and especially horror aficionados, including CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (particularly notable as an early "found-footage"-style film with extreme violence that led the director to arrested in his home country of Italy, because legal authorities believed it was a "snuff film" showing actual murders, however, after demonstrating the gore effects in court, the film was still banned in many countries for showing actual animal killings), THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and ANDY WARHOL'S FRANKENSTEIN.  The video nasties panic was finally resolved by the Video Recording Act of 1984 passed by Parliament, which authorized the BBFC, re-dubbed the British Board of Film Classification, to interpret and enact obscenity laws, making the film classification system a legal mandate for films to be distributed theatrically or on video with only a small few and very specific exceptions, and unclassified films not excepted by the law were made contraband.
The BBFC was not so sure that THE EVIL DEAD was as bad as Whitehouse made it out to be, considering the highly stylized context of the violence and over-the-top gore blended with comedy.  It had been cut by 49 seconds to play in theaters in 1982, and that was the same version released on video without a classification.  The 49 seconds of cuts involved reducing the "potentially imitable" stabbing of a girl's ankle with a pencil, a lengthy eye-gouging and some more explicit bodily dismemberment.  Due to its since-developed notoriety, the BBFC was forced to apply stricter standards, and to be released on video with an '18' certificate, it was subjected to a total of 1 minute and 55 seconds in 1990.  It wasn't until 2000 that an uncut version of THE EVIL DEAD was passed by the BBFC, which decided the film could no longer be considered taboo.

"It's your sister Cheryl!"

The Part Where I Finally Get to the Film Itself
Sam Raimi was only 20 years old when shooting began on THE EVIL DEAD, which he made with a bunch of friends and associates in rural Tennessee for an unspecified budget estimated at no more than a few hundred thousand dollars which Raimi scrounged together from investors and friends.  His high school friend Bruce Campbell was cast as the leading man, and other cast members had worked previously with Raimi on his similarly-themed short film Within the Woods or responded to an ad that Raimi placed in a newspaper.
It may not have been the first "Cabin in the Woods" horror movie, but it is the definitive one that others try to imitate.  Five Michigan State University students drive into the Tennessee hills to spend spring break in a woodland cabin that they've rented for cheap.  Ashley "Ash" Williams (Campbell), with his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), their friend Scotty (Hal Delrich) and his girlfriend Shelly (Sarah York) all arrive at the cabin and discover the Naturon Demonto, the Sumerian Book of the Dead in the cellar, along with the audio recordings of scholar who had been studying the book at the cabin.  Playing the recording, the scholar recites some of the ancient book's passages which, unbeknownst to them, unleashes evil spirits in the woods.  The first victim is Cheryl, who is physically attacked by demonically-possessed trees in the forest which rape her.  You read that right, a girl is raped by trees.  There is a shocking but mostly sickening humor to this, but it's undoubtedly the big unfortunate misstep of this film made by crass young men, so there you have it.  Not long after this attack, Cheryl appears possessed by the demons herself, which threaten and taunt the others and Cheryl cripples Linda with a pencil to the ankle.  They lock her in the cellar, which she peeks out from, continuing to taunt.  One by one, they fall victim to these demons which, as they learn from the scholar's recordings, can only be stopped by physical dismemberment.  Heads are chopped off with shovels, possessed girlfriends are hacked to pieces with axes, and when they try to leave, the bridge on the only road out of their has been destroyed.
Ash, our strong-jawed hero with a bad haircut is soon the only one left, relentless tormented by the demons, but nothing a little hacking and burning won't cure, even if he'll have to get dirty, as in lots and lots of gory substances spraying him in the face, to get the job done.
In the Evil Dead trilogy, THE EVIL DEAD is the only one that is really a true horror movie, even if it has its humorous touches, which would become more prominent with each subsequent installment.  This humor came to be called "splat-stick", a combination of slapstick comedy and splatter horror.  Although it was a tiny, no-name film, Raimi met with producer Irvin Shapiro, one of the co-founders of the Cannes Film Festival who expressed an interest in distributing it and arranged an out-of-competition screening of it at the 1982 Cannes, where none other than horror author Stephen King, a well-known purveyor of low budget horror.  King loved the film and raved about it to just about anyone who would listen, which rocketed the film into a spotlight rarely afforded such an otherwise obscure film.  The critical attention and word-of-mouth publicity turned the film into a sleeper hit, grossing over $2.5 million, which is nothing to say of it phenomenal success on video release.
It was the first NC-17-rated film I'd ever seen, although I didn't even realize it was rated at the time.  I had assumed it had never been rated when I first saw it some years ago, but that rating, which was issued in 1994, opens some interesting questions about the rating system and violence in film.  It's no secret that the MPAA rating system is inconsistent at best, but don't get a film student going on that topic, because they all think they know something just because they've seen THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, a dreadfully overrated documentary.  The 2013 remake, EVIL DEAD plays it a lot more straight than the original, and while the gore isn't quite as in-your-face as the original, it's far more realistic and disturbing, while it received an R rating (it also had the "tree-rape", which there's just no excuse for a second time, jeez).
THE EVIL DEAD is not a well-produced movie; it looks cheap, feels amateurish and the acting leaves something to be desired to say the least (Hal Delrich as Scotty is probably the lowest point in that regard), but it doesn't just get by on luck alone.  There are glimmers of young talent, diamonds in the rough, and their enthusiasm and ingenuity shine through their inexperience, which gives the movie an affable quality.  Most of the tracking shots depicting an unseen, evil force speeding through the woods, including the famous opening shot, would most likely have been achieved using a Steadicam (a camera stabilizing mount to create smooth, non-shaky footage unaffected by the cameraman's movements, notably used in THE SHINING (1980)) on a big budget studio production, but Raimi's crew settled for a plank of wood to mount the camera on, and with one person carrying each end, sprinted through the swamp.  Other shots that might have been created using a dolly (a large rig on rails used to smoothly capture movement over a space) were made by sliding the camera across a board.  Joel Coen of the Coen brothers (with Ethan Coen, the makers of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and FARGO) was also among the crew of THE EVIL DEAD as the assistant film editor, and would later use some similar innovative techniques on films like BLOOD SIMPLE and RAISING ARIZONA.
It is a schlocky, exploitative horror movie; cheesy, gory, demented and dumb, but when its enjoyable, it isn't quite in the sense that you enjoy a crappy low-budget horror movie because it's not just a crappy horror movie.  It's a dumb movie with sparks of brilliance and aware of its limitations without caring.  It's the ultimate experience in grueling terror, just because, but it would only get better with the sequels.

If chins could kill, right?