This is what a low-budget horror movie should be.
I've never seen the Evil Dead trilogy in its entirety so I decided to make it my mission to watch Bruce Campbell's magna opus. Obviously the first film of the trilogy is the rawest of the bunch, encumbered with a low budget, poor acting, and limited locales, but, God, what Sam Raimi does well, he does very well. Some people seem to forget that before all the over-the-top violence and Ash's ascension to campy action hero, The Evil Dead was just another horror flick working on a limited budget and Ash was kind of a bitch.
Some of this movie's obvious weaknesses (the most obvious being the low budget) are also its greatest strengths. The fact that the Evil Force is nothing more than a shaky camera creates a real sense of horror in this film, most likely because Raimi is such a master behind the camera. The effects are cheesy and the gore is over the top, but the movie rides the line between horror and comedy so well that it all works perfectly.
And then there's Bruce Campbell. Really, ignoring his legacy, through the first half of this film, Campbell is painfully average until he's the last man standing and everyone else is a creepy, flesh-eating psycho. And that's when he steps up his game to LEGENDARY status because you can tell he's working his ASS OFF to make this film work in spite of all its shortcomings. At no point does he come off as anything but a complete pussy during the course of this film and yet, you're still rooting for him to make it. He gets his ass handed to him by every zombie teen in the movie until he's drenched in blood and he just keeps on ticking. Once you add in the funny one-liners, there won't be anything to stop him...
Oh, and then there's the tree raping scene. How could this not become a classic?
Why It's Awesome: The beginning of the Bruce Campbell legend, complete with a book made of human skin, tree-raping, ankles being stabbed with pencils, and dismemberment. And it only gets better from here...
Best Quote: Nope...not quite yet. We'll fill this section quite a bit with the next installment...
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