I cannot remember what year I actually 1st watched this movie, I know it was in the early 80’s but I think it was after it had been removed from the video nasties list so somewhere around 1983 or 1984. What!!, yes this was one of the 1st movies to be placed on the ‘video nasties’ list and was partly responsible for the film classification system that is in place today. 

If you look closely at a picture of the original video sleeve there’s no certificate on it, just a small ‘x’ under the main logo.  These versions are now worth a lot of money if they are in good condition as the later ones all had the ’18’ logo on them and were probably cut.   Why was this added to the growing video nasties list ? Well 2 scenes that stand out in my memory were when one of the female’s is raped by the demonic trees and the other was when one of the deadites stabbed someone in the ankle with a pencil.   It was the pencil scene that the board of censors objected to and it was re-edited so it could be re-released with an 18 classification. 

I will be honest, I did not watch the original movie again for a few decades. I did watch the ‘remake’ Evil Dead II, otherwise known as Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and Army of Darkness when they came out. In the 2010s there was a very funny TV show called Ash vs Evil Dead, starring the original actor and produced by American pay TV network STARZ. When I went back to watch the original Evil Dead, I watched the uncut version and I enjoyed it a lot but, I guess it shows how times change as I found it more comical than scary. I do not know if that’s down to me being much older, or the fact the we as a society have become de-sensitized.

So, why I am writing this review for my blog after so many years? Well, on Friday the 18th of October I went to a convention called “For the Love of Horror”. I am not a big horror fan, and like sci-fi much better, but I was asked to go as a carer for my friend PD who is wheelchair bound and needed a chaperon. On the 1st day it was all about getting to the hotel, getting checked in and resting. The Saturday and Sunday were convention days and Saturday was all about meeting other likeminded friends from the UK, getting any replica props, posters etc and on Sunday getting them signed. 

Although the original movie is over 40 years old, there were three of the original cast members in attendance for both days doing talks, photo shoots and signing (both as they are now and in character from the movie). Hence why I am writing this now.

One thing that did become quite clear was that after talking amongst ourselves, we could not think of ANY modern film that would still have the same attraction as the evil dead did, in fact we could not think of any modern film that will be as popular in 10 years’ time, let alone 30+ years.