ultra low budget but extremely inventive horror film about a group of friends vacationing in a cabin who accidentally awaken an evil force in the woods via the necronomicon , the book of the dead . bruce campbell stars as ash , who eventually becomes the sole survivor and has to battle both the demons from the woods , and his friends who have become demons ( including his own girlfriend ) . the results shown on screen are amazing considering the film's tiny budget , constant location changes , and a filming schedule that was sporadic over two years . followed by two sequels : evil dead ii ( 1987 ) and army of darkness ( 1993 ) . the dvd release of this film from elite entertainment contains the film in it's original aspect ratio of 1 . 33 : 1 . the disc contains two versions of the film's audio : a stereo 2 . 0 track and a newly remastered dolby digital 5 . 1 . included are two separate running commentary tracks : the first features writer/director sam raimi and producer rob tapert and the second track features the film's star , bruce campbell . campbell's commentary is informative and extremely witty , as he has a story to tell for virtually every scene in the film . such informative tidbits include : the original title of the film was going to be book of the dead ( and in fact when the film premiered in 1981 that was it's title ) and when they were asked to change the title to the evil dead , everyone thought it was the worst title they had ever heard . also , there's a scene early on in the film where the group sits around and listens to a tape recorder which they've found that's explaining about the demonic forces in the woods . for that scene , it was written for the characters to be smoking marijuana , so being the wacky kids that they were at the time , they decided to actually smoke marijuana for the scene . almost all of that footage became unusable because many of the actor's had never smoked before , and as a result they became " confused " and were unable to perform the scene . i wish the entertainment factor was as high for the sam raimi/rob tapert audio track . the two people you'd think would be more enthusiastic in talking about this film instead barely have much to say at all . don't get me wrong here , when they do speak it's entertaining to hear , but there are many instances where both are silent for long periods of time . sometimes after one of those long silences rob will ask " have anything to say sam ? " to me , that's not a good sign . also , it seems like sam raimi doesn't remember much about the film and it's production . . . well , compared to rob and bruce anyway . also included on the disc is a photo gallery ( which includes pictures from the film's " gala " premiere ) and about twenty minutes of raw footage from the film . this raw footage really shows you how much a film can be improved upon using simple audio techniques . overall , the evil dead is a good low budget horror film , superior to many films in it's genre . and the collector's edition dvd release is well worth your time if you're either a fan of the film or just a fan of the filmmaking process . all special edition dvds should be this thorough and entertaining . the jacksonville film journal -- film reviews by chuck dowling url : <a href= " http : //users . southeast . net/~chuckd21/ " >http : //users . southeast . net/~chuckd21/</a> <a href= " mailto : email : chuckd21@leading . net " >email : chuckd21@leading . net</a> © 1999 of the jacksonville film journal . no reviews may be reprinted without permission . 
