Cheryl, There's Nothing Out There, Trees do Not Attack People

Today's movie is:



1981's The Evil Dead (I'm gonna go overboard, I just know it.)

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly. Directed by Sam Raimi

Plot: Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.

Type of horror: Supernatural/Splatter

Didja like it?: "Like" is a gross understatement of how I feel about this movie. I want to marry and have little growly, foggy demon offspring with The Evil Dead. They'd be a bitch to clean up after, though. Seriously, I do love this movie, but in all fairness, it's not perfect. Some of it is really amatuerish, some of the dialogue is painfully corny, and the acting (not that I would EVER speak ill of Bruce, you understand) is perhaps not so good. I love it despite all that.

Or maybe it's BECAUSE of all that. This movie was made for practically no money, by a bunch of kids (Sam Raimi was around 20 years old during filming) who did it just because they liked making movies and they ended up crafting a horror classic. Some of the inexperience was bound to show up in the finished product, but you also see a lot of creativity and an arseload of innovation that money can't buy (but it can EARN it after years of hard work-hello, Spider-Man movies.) You can watch it and focus on the faults I suppose, but you'll be missing out if you do. It's a fun, violent, occasionally disgusting movie about demon possession-take the stick out of your butt and enjoy it.


I'm scared, hold me: This movie had a reputation when I was a youngster of being hella scary. So much so, that I couldn't even bring myself to watch it until I was 17. After I watched it, it hit me that I had been surrounded by weak-stomached weenies during my entire childhood. Alright, alright-some of it is pretty nasty: you've got blood spurting out of orifices that were not made to spurt blood; body parts alternately imploding and EXploding; PUS; putrified innards-it's a very...WET movie I guess you could say.

And then there's the tree rape. For those that are unaware, there's a scene in the movie where one of the female characters gets violently molested by a bunch of roots and branches. It was called misogynistic by some when the movie first came out, and Sam Raimi later said that he regretted including it in the film. I don't know. There's no way to make light of rape in any instance (unless someone is raping a clown, maybe), but I never got the fuss over it. It's a very creepy scene (shortly after I saw it for the first time, I flipped my shit during a walk in the woods when I snagged my foot on a tree root) and while I'm very much against rape (doy) in any form-real or fictional-I didn't think it was anything to get pissed over. It's foliage-what, a bunch of trees are gonna sit around watching E.D. and get it into their tree-heads to go out and rape someone? And now that I've put that thought in my mind, I'm never going to be able to look at Treebeard the same way ever again...

Highlights: Shit, I think I covered everything already. I guess I can show some love for Bruce Campbell's unibrow:




Where it's at: Here

Spooky Saturday

Y'all are getting two movies today in honor of Halloween. Isn't that cool? Yeah, jack. (you will also get one tomorrow in honor of Harper's birthday-she doesn't know what I'm gonna post. Shhh)

Your first flick is called Within the Woods. Now, it's only about 30 minutes long, so technically I'm not posting 2 whole movies, more like a movie and a short. WtW holds a special place in my heart, as it was the prototype for the Evil Dead movies. I might have said this before, but I LOVE the Evil Dead movies, and I also love Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi. You want to bring out my raving inner geek, bring up Bruce and Sam around me-I'll go into the nerdiest, longest-winded shpiel you've ever heard. (I'm trying to contain myself right now, and let me tell ya, it's hard)

The quality of this clip isn't too clear, because it's ripped from one of the few remaining VHS copies of the original super-8 film, hence why it looks like a snuff film, so you've been warned. The copy I have here at home looks the same way (Mine's a LITTLE bit clearer, not much). Yes, I have a copy of this-did I not make myself clear earlier about worshipping E.D., Bruce and Sam??

Your second film was specially requested by Mrs. Mellberg: Carnival of Souls, as directed by Herk Harvey (I like saying 'Herk Harvey'. HERRRRRRKKKK!). I really need to watch this movie again, because I haven't seen it but once, and that was a long time ago, so therefore I can't say much about it. In fact, I'm done with this post now. What? You want me to bring down a curtain? LEAVE ME ALONE!