My Review of The Evil Dead and how I first experianced it

So yesterday I posted a link to my YouTube video on the film White Zombie, so I am back today talking once again about Zombies but a diffrent kind of Zombie and a diffrent kind of film. Anyways back when I was a kid in the United Kingdom there were quiet a few films that were banned. These were called the Video nasties and were films which were criticised for their violent content by the press, social commentators and various religious organisations.

Following a moral campaign led by Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association films began to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. A list of 72 films was released films that the police would cease from video rental shops and which it would essentially be illegal to sell or rent. The Evil Dead didnt stay on the list long but when it was released it had content cut out of it, infact you couldnt get the whole film complete free of cuts until the year 2000. The DPP72 is something I have talked about many times before in the past on both this blog and on my previous blog before the site which hosted it closed down, I guess this is because censorship is something that I have always been quiet passionate about but it wasnt until now that I decided that I wanted to make a YouTube Video on one of the DPP72 films. The reason I wanted to make a video about The Evil Dead is because I felt like I had something slightly novel to say about the film and about my experiance originally watching it, you know that with the internet and YouTube there are so many users that pretty much every single film, song and book in existance must have been talked about a million diffrent times, by a whole bunch of diffrent people and because of this sometimes you feel like why should I talk about it? What do I have to offer on the subject that no one else does, and this is why I often feel happier talking about what a game or film means to me, about how I came upon it and how it affected my life instead of just reviewing it because after all anyone can review an item but not everyone will have experianced it in the same way.

Ok so if you have watched my YouTube video then you will have noticed that the footage I am talking over in it is all over the place, for a start the picture is of an incredably low quality but beyond that it jumps from color to black and white, the picture suddenly brakes into moments of static , there are foreign sub titles on the screen at points, well there is a reason for this and that is because the first time I saw the Evil Dead it was on a VHS cassette which had all of these issues a poor quality picture , foreign subtitles the whole shebang so I figured that I would mess with this footage to try and recreate for you the sort of feeling I had while originally wathing this film. Sure it wont be exactly what I watched as a youngster but I have tried to recreate the experiance at least in a short form to try and give people an idea of what watching this film back in that point of time would have been like for me.

The film was brought to my house one night by a childhood friend of mine who had borrowed it from his Sister.. It was a pirate VHS tape with the name of the film written on it in pen and it felt sort of both special and naughty to be wathing it , hey I was only like 14 at the time and the shoddy quality gave the film a sort of even more scary vibe it felt like this little bit of ghoulish horror which had been dug up from somewere and passed from hand to hand, it was scratchy and rough around the edges and somehow this actually added to the whole experience. You would think all of the issues put me off but no actually they kind of drew me into the film and made watching it feel like an event.

At the time I appreciated the film on one level but on watching it again and again I have noticed more things about it for one I think the film is full of fantastic camera work, the evil in the film is given this amazing sense of presence via the movement of the camera. I could talk about this film all day but I would rather people watch my Video after all I put a lot of work into it, so consider this me saying pretty please.... Oh and by the way have a happy New Year.

Ash Versus Evil Dead Episode 7 reviewed

So this has taken me a lot longer than I intended, thank goodness I didnt decide to review the other 2 shows I have been watching (Dr Who and The Muppets) or I would really have a backlog on my hands here. So I already gave the game away when I reviewed episode 5 and 6 stating that I had watched episode 7 and it was awesome so I might as well get down to business and start talking about why it is awesome. I suppose one more thing needs to be added and that is that these reviews will be very spoiler heavy so if you want to watch the episode without knowing what is going to happen go do that first then come back to this.


Episode 7 Fire In The Hole


Now I have seen Bruce Campbell engage in a little bit of friendly ribbing when it comes to that other very popular horror show ''The Walking Dead''. This episode had a bit of a walking dead feel to it, I saw it sort of as The Evil Dead's answer to The Walking Dead. Now dont get me wrong I enjoy the walking dead, I know I know the graphic novels/comics are better, but the show and the Tell Tale series both are as far as I am concerned both very good on there own merits (just not as a replacement for the graphic novels).Walking Dead at times can be almost as bloody as Evil Dead but its not quiet in the same way, Walking Dead tries to be a little realistic where as the Evil Dead has the whole buckets of blood gushing down the camera to the point its both disgusting and funny.

Now you might think that with Ash Versus Evil Dead being full of both carnage and quips,that this might be all it has going for it and while on the surface it might not feel especially deep there has I believe been a very good effort put into the character development of all the characters on the show. Ash is a brilliant character who Bruce Campbell has always been able to breathe so much life into in a way that many much more higher paid actors could only dream of doing and yet one of the most memorable scenes in this episode comes near the end when Kelly, Pablo and Amanda, have there guns raised, after taking out a Deadite that was threatening the redneck militia. It was on its own merits a pretty darn cool moment but it was also notable for the fact that it did not include Ash, and the fact it let other people take centre stage.

The episode is basically about the Militia not trusting Ash and his team, so they throw a handcuffed Ash and Amanda in to an underground bunker with a dedite on the loose in it, and we end up with a situation where by Ash and Amanda have to think there way out of trouble, while Pablo and Kelly try to both escape from the Militia and try to come back and save Ash. Its cool in how it shows both how Pablo and Kelly cope without Ash present but it also allows for some romantic tension between Ash and Amanda which almost results in a kiss.

At the end of the episode Ash abandons everyone to try and go to the cabin on his own, it is very clearly shown that despite always try to show himself as a loner he has become very attached to those who have been around him, he seems to see Amanda in a romantic light while caring for Pablo and Kelly as friends. I enjoyed this episode a great deal but it also really had me itching to see the cabin again, to return to the start of everything. Every week seems to be getting more exciting than the last and I just cant wait to see where it all leads.

Ash Versus Evil Dead Episode 1 and 2 Review

I have been meaning to do this ever since the night I watched it. That night was the 1st of November. The first episode of the TV series Ash Versus Evil Dead aired on Starz a TV channel which as far as I know is exclusive to America, we certainly don't get it in England. It aired on Halloween but I had to wait till the following day to scratch around online to find a copy. The ridiculous thing was that if it had been available on a British channel I would have looked at getting that channel, or if it had been put on British Netflix Id have subscribed for a few months long enough to watch the whole first season as it went up, heck I would have even spent like £1 an episode renting it if the option was available to me, but as it stands I basically had to pirate it, which is not good when I want to support the series as I am a big big fan of Bruce Campbell, on the off chance he ever see's this.... Bruce I will buy the series on Blue Ray as soon as someone see's fit to release it on this side of the ocean and hey I already have pretty much all of the things staring you that can be got here on DVD.

OK so basically the story is this after spending thirty years hiding out as in a trailer park working in a sort of  Target/Wallmart kind of shop  Ash gets high with a hippy chick and unleashes the Deadites (for those new to this who havent seen the film think sort of Demon Zombie creatures) by reading from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis (the book of the dead, a book full of spells and passages made from human flesh and inked in blood). So do you need to have seen the film for this all to make sense? Not really its enough to know that Ash was a sort of hero, a killer of these creatures who has beaten them in the past but basically decided he wanted a quiet life. If you enjoy this though and haven't seen the films then trust me its going to make you want to see them..

I think most of the people watching this though are going to be the die hard fans like me, who saw these films, have watched them again and again, studied more or less every moment of them and then have begged and begged for more. The thing is that everyone has been asking about an Evil Dead 4 for so long that we had pretty much given up hope that we would ever get it especially with the fact that Sam Raimi is now a multi-billion-dollar grossing director, we all had kind of figured that he would be doing big budget A list movies and wouldn't want to return to a series of films that was started at the beginning of his journey, but return he has to direct the first episode and to get the ball rolling. People wanted more Evil Dead because they wanted more Ash and if you want more Ash then this is exactly what you get here. Ash is the same blow hard try hard screw up but yet somehow overcome the odds guy he has always been.

El Jefe The First Episode certainly has the right mix of horror and silly. It also manages to give you a big old dose of Bruce Campbell at his finest while still introducing a host of new characters and getting you intrested in them. I am really looking forward to seeing how the series progresses and I am very happy to hear that it has already had the green light for a second series. If you enjoy either a mix of horror and laughs or just think Bruce Campbell is an awesome actor then I strongly advise you to watch out for this show and give it a whirl as I personally think it is awesome.

Some people were worried that the show might fall on its ass after the first episode with the fact that the first one was the only one being directed by Sam Raimi but having watched episode two, “Bait” I am not only pleasently suprised at its quality I am also very positive about the fate of the show. It has its advanateges over the pilot. For one , all the exposition is done with, everything has been set up, all of the characters are in place so it has more freedom just to go for the laughs and for the gore.

Originally when I heard Starz was producing Ash Versus Evil Dead as a half-hour show I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't an hour long thing however the pacing on this episode seemed to be great not to spoil to much but it opens with Ash and Pablo having to deal with a deadite and then goes on to a dinner with there friend and her mother who may or may not be another deadite. There are some awesome one liners just as quotable as anything from the movies.

I wont say anymore just seriouly check out this show