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Basically taking the Night of the Living Dead principle, adding a bit of a haunted house element and tons of dark humour. The Evil Dead made a star out of Bruce Campbell as Ash, the dim witted hero, and was probably the inspiration for Duke Nukem as well.
The film features all the usual 80's horror film routes, but it mocks them at the same time, preferring the mixture of frights and laughs, so you never know when to scream and when to howl.
It worked so well that Sam Rami came up with a sequel which was actually more of a remake. Same cabin, same basic storyline, but this time tons more blood and some even better one liners for Campbell. This film also provided a handy link in to the 3rd film of the trilogy, Army of Darkness.
The 3rd film took a slightly different turn and stuck Ash in Medievel England, this time fighting huge swathes of undead armies and even fighting an 'evil Ash' in one of the funniest horror film scenes ever.
Now all three are being put together for the first time in a box set, with tons of extras and both versions of the 3rd film. The good news is that because of this you'll be able to pick them up cheap in the summer sales individually, Evil Dead 2 is just £5.99 in some shops!
If you want something a bit different in your horror films, or just want see a man wrestle with his own hand, check out the Evil Dead films. They're groovy baby.
> The Evil Dead Book of the dead rubber edition is £12.99 with
> like 20% off in EB, by that I mean GAME. No that I would advise
> shopping there.
I would buy it, but already have the original DVD, and ain't forking out 13 squid for a rubber book of the dead, although it is cool.
maybe if you search ebay long enough you'll find a REAL necronomicon ex mortis :D
The only other zombie style film I've seen with similar humour to Evil Dead is Return of the Living Dead. It's entertaining, though nowhere near as good as Rami's films.
The thing is, there's only limited stuff you can do with zombies. Personally, I'd like to see more films from the zombie's perspective, like I Zombie, perhaps a comedy about a bunch of guys that get turned into Zombies, Monty Python style. Hm....
The Evil Dead Book of the dead rubber edition is £12.99 with like 20% off in EB, by that I mean GAME. No that I would advise shopping there.
> Versus
--------
Yeah, my mate was telling me about that the other week. Ninjas and zombies. Saw it in HMV on DVD for £20, but I'll probably just lend it on video from him.
Well monkey man, get yourself over to Wales in Summer, we're still in need of some recording equipment and many rolls to fill.. :D
Versus, Junk, Bio Zombie and Wild Zero are all excellent films.
> There's a lot of..wrong.."pure gore" kindof films, some I
> find better than others, but I've not found many serious zombie films
> aside from Romero's offerings..Or at least, which are capable of
> holding my attention for the length of them.
I'm an absoloute Zombie film nut, any film with zombies in it and i'll watch it.
May I point you in the direction of Italian director Lucio Fulci, he made some classic Zombie films in the late 70's early 80's. Very Romero inspired films, with some excellent Zombie make-up and gore. One's too look out for are Zombie (or Zombie Flesh Eaters as it's known in the UK), The Beyond and City of the Living Dead.
You'll have to do a bit of searching to find uncut prints as the BBFC don't look fondly on Italian Horror films, they tend to be too extreme for their liking. But believe me, if you like ZOmbie films then they're worth it.
Also worth a mention is the very low budget, shlock horror 'The Dead Next Door'. Tons of Romero and Raimi references and you probably won't find a lower budget film out there. Excellent fun though, cheesy but great entertainment.
Other great Zombie films are Return of the Living Dead 1-3 (especially 1) and Re-Animator. They're not serious films but they're excellent all the same, full of dark humour and gore.
Oh and depending on how much you can stomach cheese in your films, also worth a look are Zombie Creeping Flesh, Zombie 3, Zombie 4, Burial Grounds, Violent Sh-t 1-3, Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence. Don't expect these films to be good though, they fall into the 'so bad it's good' category.
> And for pure gore: Peter Jackson's Bad Tas**te and Braindead films are
> not far off the Evil Dead slant on things.
yes, I also have both of those. bad tas**te was so ridiculous it had me crying with laughter. certainly an evil dead competitor, although not as good.
braindead is jus**t an out and out gore-fes**t. that evil baby scared the sh*t out of me, and the final lawn-mower bit was pure genius.
superb