As reiterated throughout this book, The Evil Dead was a film made by a group of relatively amateur young filmmakers for three main reasons: to turn their interest in filmmaking into a potential career; to make enough money from box-office returns to pay back those who had invested in the film; and, for Raimi, to allow himself the space to experiment with a range of filmmaking techniques in order to improve and enhance his abilities as a filmmaker. As I hope to have illustrated, the film’s limited resources, chaotic production and its status as an initial experiment in feature filmmaking all contributed to its cult status and reputation. If, as Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik have argued, many cult movies ‘seem to happen, more than to be planned’ (2008: 7), then The Evil Dead can be seen to exemplify this. While the talent and hard work of the filmmakers clearly fed into the film’s initial reception and success, its take-up was informed by a series of shifts and changes that couldn’t have been envisaged when the film was made. These include the emergence of video and, subsequently, the Internet and DVD, the growth in specialist journalistic interest in the horror film, and the emergence of a range of horror and fantasy festivals and conventions within Europe and the US. While Raimi, Tapert and Campbell clearly had a targeted audience and exhibition context in mind when they conceived and then made the film (namely the American drive-in audience), these changes in film culture worked to shift The Evil Dead’s status from drive-in fodder to the, ultimately, more lucrative domain of the cult horror film. Consequently, this solidification of The Evil Dead’s status as cult ably illustrates J. P. Telotte’s claim that many films ‘seem to become cult works largely because their audience – their potential lovers – cannot be accurately assessed through conventional wisdom, much less segmented and targeted’ (1991: 8; emphasis original).
The Renaissance partners’ strategy of fusing together elements from a range of horror sub-genres can also be seen to have contributed to The Evil Dead’s subsequent cult status. On the one hand, the film’s use of scenarios and formal strategies employed in other successful horror films (as well as its more explicit references to Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and Jean Cocteau) allowed it to be read and appreciated intertextually, thus enabling fans and reviewers to draw on ‘cinephile knowledge’ and engage in a ‘game’ of ‘horrorgenre reference-spotting’ (Hills 2007: 446). On the other hand, the inconsistent or jarring quality caused by this fusing could be seen, as argued in the last chapter, to give the film an ideologically ‘dubious or ambiguous’ quality (Mathijs & Mendik 2008: 9), particularly in terms of its representations of women. As Mathijs and Mendik have argued, this ambiguity, particularly if it relates to culturally sensitive issues associated with gender, violence and sex, can inform a particular film’s cult reputation, giving ‘the impression’ that the film ‘problematise[s] as well as reinforce[s] prejudices’ and serving, simultaneously, as a ‘core reason’ for that film’s cult appeal (ibid.). The fact that The Evil Dead was, in many ways, a flawed experiment is illustrated by Raimi’s subsequent regret at the inclusion of the controversial tree rape scene. This scene seems to have been the product of both naivety and, arguably, the fact that the filmmakers were more concerned with creating a rollercoaster film experience than considering the potential thematic meanings that would be generated by their fusing of different sub-generic conventions. However, the jarring tones created by this technique gave The Evil Dead the kind of ‘transgressive edge’ (Fowler 2003) that has been seen to be a key appeal of many cult movies. Gaylyn Studlar has argued that ‘the midnight movie’s sexual politics … are full of the contradictions of patriarchal ideology’ (1991: 142). Whether intentionally or otherwise, The Evil Dead’s contradictory and ambiguous ideological perspectives enhance the film’s potential to horrify and disturb, illustrating the way in which its contradictory treatment of gender and sexuality feeds into its status as a cult film on the one hand, and a particularly effective horror film on the other.
What I have done here, so far, is to almost ‘tick off’ those aspects of The Evil Dead (both textual and extra-textual) which seem to make it a cult film, in relation to the dominant characteristics that a range of theorists have associated with ‘cult’ (most particularly, the film’s intertextuality, its play with, fusion and consequent subversion of generic and sub-generic conventions, its ideologically ambiguous or transgressive qualities, and its status as an ‘accidental’ cult film). However, a number of more specific contextual factors have, clearly, also fed into The Evil Dead’s distinctive cult reputation.
To begin with, there is the issue of The Evil Dead’s status as a horror film. During the time I have been researching The Evil Dead (first as a video nasty and then as a cult film), I have always been struck by the fact that it does not tend to be discussed, at length, in books, articles and chapters that focus on particular trends or movements in the history of the horror film. When The Evil Dead is focused upon in reasonable detail, it is either in relation to a discussion of the ‘video nasties’ phenomenon, in relation to its status as a key independent American film,40 or in the context of a discussion of The Evil Dead trilogy as a whole. Consequently, The Evil Dead has been categorised, in academic circles, in a number of different ways. Firstly, and as illustrated in the last chapter, Julian Petley and Peter Hutchings have argued that the entire trilogy can be placed within the category of those films that are influenced by H. P. Lovecraft or that are particularly concerned with a kind of horror that focuses on ‘beyondness’. Secondly, Julian Hoxter and Barry Keith Grant have placed the film in the category of the ‘splatstick’ or ‘splatshtick’ films of the late 1970s and 1980s. However, at least in the case of Hoxter, the definition of ‘splatshtick films’, and The Evil Dead trilogy’s inclusion in this category, seems largely based on Evil Dead II rather than the first film. Hoxter, for instance, focuses on Bruce Campbell’s comedic performance in the second film in order to separate The Evil Dead trilogy from those slashers whose primary aim is to frighten, such as Halloween or Friday the 13th. In a similar vein, Philip Brophy considers The Evil Dead to be a key example of the employment of ‘horrality’ in the modern horror film (a term that, for him, encapsulates the tendency, in many modern horror films, to draw attention to and play with the film’s status as a text, to affront moral sensibilities and to draw on perverse comedy). However, while The Evil Dead does exhibit some of the characteristics which he associates with ‘horrality’ – a perverse sense of humour, the affronting of morals, a focus on excessive gore and a play ‘with the contradiction’ that the film ‘is only a movie’ (1986: 11) – other identified characteristics (a lack of interest in the psychology of characters and a focus on loss of control of the body) seem to apply much more clearly to Evil Dead II than to its predecessor.41 Indeed, the academic pigeonholing of The Evil Dead as an exemplar of ‘splatstick’ or ‘horrality’ seems to disregard the film’s careful use of suspense, atmosphere and the kind of disturbing, raw qualities that connect the film with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
One possible reason for the fact that The Evil Dead has generally been considered in relation to the trilogy as a whole is that the first film was conceived and then released at a transitional stage, in terms of the historical development of the horror film. The film was made as the key exhibition context for independent horror filmmaking was shifting from drive-ins and grindhouse cinemas to home video and, as Geoff King has noted, at a time when Hollywood studios began to invest again in horror film production after the success of Halloween (see 2005: 7–8). In addition, the film was released as American horror film production was broadly, as Brophy and Hoxter identify, beginning to shift from raw, gritty independent horror to the kind of ‘splatstick’ horror films that were prevalent in the early to mid-1980s. In this context, The Evil Dead could be seen as a film that, because of the lag between its production and release, served as a bridge between these shifts.42 On the one hand, its employment of a range of scenarios and stylistic elements from horrors past meant that it served as an inventory and summary of dominant trends in the Anglo-American horror film from (if this includes the Hammer Horror references) the late 1950s to the end of the 1970s. However, the film’s use of ‘mischief gags’ and the critical appreciation of its perverse, gory (but possibly unintended) humour meant that it would, ultimately and retrospectively, be identified as one of the progenitors of the ‘splatstick’ trend that would continue to develop subsequent to The Evil Dead’s release and success on the home video market.
The Evil Dead had generically located itself by drawing on formal patterns and scenarios from a range of previously successful horror films. However, the idiosyncratic tone and stylistic distinctiveness that had emerged from the fusing of these elements in the first film meant that, by the time that Evil Dead II went into production, the primary sub-generic template that the filmmakers were working from was The Evil Dead itself and the subsequent ‘splatstick’ horror comedies that had come in its wake. By focusing on those qualities that had become specifically associated with The Evil Dead – its blend of horror and comedy, its hyperbolic use of sound and camerawork, and the ‘Shaky Cam’ point-of-view shots that Hoxter argues have ‘become the signature moments of “Evil Deadness” in the cycle’ (1996: 79) – Evil Dead II didn’t need to rely as heavily on earlier genre precedents because the filmmakers were now much more confident about the kind of film it was and the kind of audience it needed to target. As a consequence and unlike its predecessor, Evil Dead II was held up by Bruce Kawin as an exemplar of the purposeful, programmatic cult film, because it was clearly ‘addressed to the fans of the horror magazine Fangoria’ and was ‘absolutely confident that its inventiveness and nonstop creativity’ would ‘be appreciated by that target audience it knows is out there’ (1991: 24; emphasis in original). Furthermore, the maximising of the signature qualities and moments of ‘Evil Deadness’ in Evil Dead II also explains why, in academic circles, it is the characteristics of the second film in the trilogy that has largely determined how the trilogy as a whole has been categorised and approached.
This may all seem very pedantic, but, for me, what this illustrates is the fact that a film’s sequels can potentially impact on the way in which its predecessor is labelled as cult. In an extremely valuable essay, Matt Hills argues that the identification of a film as ‘cult’ can be seen as a shifting process that involves ongoing interactions between audiences and fans, film critics, filmmakers, and film industry marketers and publicists. For Hills, what therefore ‘requires study in each empirical instance is the extent to which any “cult” film is actually designated a cult, by whom, and with what further cultural repercussions or appropriations’ (2007: 448).
One of the first identifications of The Evil Dead as a cult film was the 1983 review of the film in the Los Angeles Times, on its initial theatrical release in the US. Here, Kevin Thomas begins his review by noting that The Evil Dead had ‘opened last month in New York amidst furor and long lines’ and was thus ‘already on its way to becoming a cult film’ (1983: K4). Two months earlier, Gerry Putzer in the Hollywood Reporter had concluded his review of the film by noting that it would ‘benefit from sporadic engagements on the weekend midnight-show circuit’ (1983: 3). This suggests that both of these identifications of The Evil Dead as a cult film were informed by a conception of it as a potential ‘midnight movie’ which would primarily achieve success via repeat viewings in urban theatres in the US. However, The Evil Dead would ultimately achieve its greatest success through the then nascent home video market, where its reputation grew, amongst young teenagers, due to its famed gruelling and disturbing horrors and, in the UK, because of its impounding by the Obscene Publications Squad and association with the ‘video nasties’ panic.
The Evil Dead’s subsequent association with home video and, as the sequels emerged, its status as the second film’s rawer, scarier, lower-budget predecessor thus both clearly fed into a shift in the film’s cult status. Firstly, the release of Anchor Bay’s award-winning Book of the Dead Special Edition of the film in 2002 served to consolidate The Evil Dead’s status as a cult film of the video era. In a booklet tucked away in the DVD packaging, Michael Felsher explicitly states that what had predominantly made The Evil Dead a cult classic, and perpetuated its cult reputation through the years, was its status as a video hit, with Felsher then going on to discuss the film’s cult history through an account of the variety of video, laserdisc and DVD versions of The Evil Dead that had been available since the film’s initial video release (see 2002: 5–6). In this respect, The Evil Dead’s shifting status as cult related not only to the fact that it initiated the style and tone which would subsequently come to be associated with the trilogy as a whole, but also to the fact that it could be identified as a pioneering example of a cult film which had predominantly been experienced on video rather than in the context of a midnight movie screening.
Secondly, the first film had something that was missing from the film’s two sequels: a particularly distinctive, engaging and entertaining making of story. As Bill Warren notes, in a Video Watchdog article, ‘the emphasis’ in his The Evil Dead Companion book, ‘was always intended to be on the first film in the series, because the story of its production … is much more interesting than the stories of the other two’ (1998: 23). This appealing characteristic of many low-budget cult films was thus effectively harnessed not only in Warren’s book but in the Raimi, Tapert and Campbell commentaries that accompanied the Elite and Anchor Bay DVD versions of the film. On the one hand, this illustrates how the production histories of low-budget independent films can be distinctly DVD-friendly, assisting in the perpetuation of a film’s long-term cult reputation. On the other, it illustrates the potential for low-budget, independent cult films to be appreciated and experienced not only intertextually – in terms of ‘how a film invites comparison, connections and linkages with other films’ (Mathijs & Mendik 2008: 3) – but also extra-textually (or even meta-textually). As noted in chapter 2, a key way in which The Evil Dead has come to be appreciated is not just in terms of its references to previous horror films but in relation to its gruelling and eventful production. The extra-text of the film’s making of story has thus allowed many fans to overlook the film’s flaws and inconsistencies, to feel inspired to make films of their own and, in some cases, to state a preference for the first film over its sequels not only because of its ‘claustrophobic, cold, distant hopelessness’ and ‘the handson, rough hewn look of the special effects’ but also because of ‘the gambles that Sam Raimi took’ (Steven Nyland, New York, 27 May 2006). If, as Telotte argues, the cult status of a number of classical Hollywood films relates to the fact that they include film stars (Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Joan Crawford) who function as ‘admired, idealised images’ for particular audience members (Christopher Lasch in Telotte 1991: 9), then the equivalent ‘admired, idealised images’ amongst many of The Evil Dead’s most devoted fans are not the film’s stars but the three Renaissance partners who serve as the protagonists of the film’s production, financing and distribution story.
Furthermore, the related extra-text of the DVD commentary has allowed these production stories and the appealing, funny, self-deprecating personalities of the three filmmakers to become a significant part of the cult experience of watching The Evil Dead. On the one hand, these commentaries invite viewers to appreciate the film through the context of the Renaissance filmmaking universe as a whole and thus, potentially, to enhance the potential to read and appreciate The Evil Dead as a self-conscious, reflexive piece of moviemaking (through its references, for instance, to Sam Raimi’s Oldsmobile car and his brother, Ted, whose appearances graced The Evil Dead, the sequels and the majority of Raimi’s subsequent films). On the other, the self-deprecating way in which the Renaissance partners draw attention to The Evil Dead’s mistakes and inconsistencies and recount the struggles and experiences that informed particular scenes can be seen to work, potentially, to contain any criticisms that could be made of the film’s flaws, to allow audiences to feel closer to these fallible and human filmmakers and to enhance the distinctly non-mainstream nature of the film. The DVD commentaries continuously note that particular production strategies would not be permitted ‘nowadays’ or that The Evil Dead includes particular shots that you just wouldn’t ‘get in normal movies’ (see Raimi & Tapert 2002; Campbell 2002a). Such comments work to solidify The Evil Dead’s distinct appeal as a film that can be loved for its flaws as well its innovations. The stories and memories that are associated with particular parts of the film serve to authenticate and consolidate the first film’s specific appeal and status, amongst fans, as a ‘raw’ piece of horror filmmaking which can more easily be opposed to ‘diluted’ Hollywood horrors than the film’s two sequels. Other factors and issues clearly feed into this status. Most prominently, the film’s censorship history in the UK has been emphasised in a range of extras produced specifically for the UK market by Anchor Bay,43 and this has served to maintain and perpetuate another key distinction between the first and second Evil Dead films: the transgressive and controversial aspects of the first film, which have enhanced the film’s reputation as a particularly disturbing horror film.
Matt Hills has argued that ‘to view “cult” status only as a strategy of “anti-mainstream” cultural distinction’ is to ‘downplay … the extent to which many cult films invoke cross-generic “textual strategies”’ associated with popular film and popular culture (2007: 446). While, as illustrated throughout this book, Raimi and company clearly attempted to balance the use of generic conventions with the kind of artistic and stylistic innovations more commonly associated with independent filmmaking, the inevitable comparisons made between the first film and its equally popular and equally cult sequel have clearly fed into the amplification of what is distinctly cult about the first film. When Rebecca and Sam Umland state their preference for Evil Dead II over its predecessor or, as noted in chapter 2, when fans of the Evil Dead sequels note that the first film is just as, or even more, cult than the second two films, they seem to be drawing implicitly on the distinction employed in Telotte, Kawin and Eco’s writings on cult film. This, broadly, is a distinction between the more accidental, unplanned ‘organically imperfect’ cult film (Eco 2008: 68), and the more programmatic cult film that purposefully and ‘deliberately set[s] out to engage, address, and patronise a cult audience’ (Kawin 1991: 20).
The fact that The Evil Dead emerged at a transitional moment in horror film production, and (in terms of the commencement of home video) a transitional moment in the reception of cult films, clearly informs this distinction, as do the textual qualities of the two films themselves and the way this is informed by the growth of Raimi and company from, as Bill Warren notes, ‘college students’ to experienced, ‘hardened’ filmmaking ‘veterans’ (1998: 23). However, the existence of The Evil Dead’s two sequels, and the continued appeal and proliferation of the film’s DVD-friendly making of story, has served to amplify this distinction, helping to make The Evil Dead ‘a great example’ to its fans ‘of what young determined filmmakers can do’ (dave_andres, Michigan, 6 August 2004)44 and giving the film a distinct place within the wider Evil Dead universe of sequels and spin-offs. Consequently, and at the very least, the case of The Evil Dead illustrates one way in which not only video but also DVD is coming to play a significant role in the shifting processes through which particular films maintain and augment their cult reputations.