SPEAKER_00 0:04

I've killed him so many times. Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, why have you disturbed our sleep? Awakened us from our ancient slumber? If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack, a total joke, wasted time, or a slash.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Totally killer, pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

We believe horror is for everyone, and as such, we're rating these movies with a perspective we've gained from our varying walks of life and the flavors of fear we fancy most. My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the Superfly Space Guy Mac.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

Groovy.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

The Gore Lover Alexis. Hey everyone, and the Scream Queen Paris.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

I will rip your soul out, Daddy.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

This week we're breaking down an iconic early 80s film and comparing it to its darker 2013 remake. Before we crack open this ancient book, though, we have some follow-up.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

Speaking of the 80s, we recently reviewed Student Bodies from 1981, and it was a surprising hit amongst the team, I must say.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

It was very surprising. I thought you guys would drag it. I'm so glad you're on my side.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Sometimes we have taste.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

But we also wanted to hear what our listeners thought. And actually, 13%, lucky 13%, gave it a hack, and 87% sided with us and gave it a slash. So this movie was actually very well regarded.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

It's kind of surprising to me. I honestly thought more people were going to give it a hack simply because of the time and the effects and all that kind of stuff. The stuff that, like, if you don't get into it, you just it'll it'll ruin the experience for you. But I'm glad that so many people were able to appreciate the humor and the silliness and the meta of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I agree. I didn't think people would understand this meta. And especially since this is like the first time it's been seen, you think you'd have a mixed bag of opinions.

SPEAKER_04 1:56

I think the general vibe and the general takeaway here is that this movie has aged really well. We have a bunch of different comments from Instagram. One of them says, I hated this movie when I saw it in '84. I truly appreciate it now for the classic it is. Somebody else also said, Student bodies is fine. It's certainly better than all the scary movie movies.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

I know I think Mac agrees.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

I do. You know, I think the comedy is a step up from the silliness that you get in scary movie. I think that's fair.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

We have another comment from one of our patrons, Anthony, who said, do not bring a date to babysitting, to a funeral, to a parade, to a football game, to prom, or to go see student bodies. If you do, you'll get hacked. A silly movie indeed. I can say I won't be watching this movie again. This is a hack for me. In fact, it took me three tries just to finish it.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Wow, Anthony, usually we are so aligned in our opinions.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

Well, get this, there was a plot twist. There's an addendum. He says, actually, I apologize. This is a very first for me. I listened to the second half of the podcast and laughed with all of you. And I kept thinking, wow, it was a campy horror comedy that I will watch again. It is definitely a watch for a cool November 22nd night, Jamie Lee Curtis's birthday, lol. And obviously any references or homages to Black Christmas will be bonus points. So I'm rewriting in, changing my vote for a slash.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

That's respectable. Also, I didn't realize that there's no more perfect time to watch this than November 22nd. Absolutely brilliant move.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Thank you, Anthony, because I believe he was trashing us before for giving some slashes that he thought were hacks. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_04 3:28

Also, as a side note, I now know that Jamie Lee Curtis is a Sagittarius and that tracks. And that concludes our follow-up.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Well, long before Sam Raimi helmed the early 2000 Spider-Man movies, he introduced himself to the world in 1981, like Student Bodies, with his directorial feature debut. The low budget film was plagued by production injuries, financial issues, and freezing winter conditions. Ultimately, though, they persevered, and the Campy film went on to be one of the highest rated video rentals of '81, endured international bans, and spawned two sequels, a reboot with another on the way, a television series, and even a musical. More than 30 years later, director Fede Alvarez showed us what it would be like to play the original story completely straight, with no comedic influence. While technically a reboot, this reimagined story actually takes place 30 years after the events of the original film, something made possible by the influence of a particular item from the first film. This week, we're talking about The Evil Dead and its 2013 successor, Evil Dead.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Who's seen either of these before? I have obviously seen both of these movies. I am a fan of Bruce Campbell, 100%.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

I have not seen either of these movies. This should come as no surprise. I think I've definitely heard of these before, and I was like, oh, okay, so something I don't want to watch. Got it. Thanks. Moving on. And then I joined this podcast, and now I've watched both of them.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Shocking you didn't see the 2013 version. I feel like that was a great time in horror, especially like movie theater where you can go with your friends and everything.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

I'm also shocked, honestly, because that was definitely out at the time that I was seeing every horror movie in theaters. So I don't know how I missed that one.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

Paris, I'm I'm not surprised that you never really bought in to the franchise. Alexis, give me some sugar baby. That is a reference to the uh to the sequel. But I have seen Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness and Ash vs. Evil Dead. I've never seen the musical though, so I have to say that. I had not seen the 2013 reboot until now, though. I actually deliberately kept away from it because I didn't want it to spoil my love of the franchise. This is a franchise that was introduced to me in high school by one of my friends. I got really into it. I had no idea at the time that one of the punk bands in my area that I was following was also called Army of Darkness. I didn't know why. And then they were like, oh, have you not seen Army of Darkness? No, I haven't. So then, of course, I have to go watch Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness. And Bruce Campbell's the man. Just gotta say it. If you've seen Bird Notice, you've seen Bruce Campbell. If you've seen Hercules or Xena Warrior Princess, you've seen Bruce Campbell and so many other things as well. So yes, like you, Alexis. I'm a fan, love Bruce Campbell, love Ash, love the shotgun, love the chainsaw, love everything about it, the deadites, it's just it's my jam.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Oh, him for sure with the chainsaw is my favorite, Ash.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Okay. Well, we'll see if it's still your jam, I suppose. I actually had never seen these movies ever. And I intentionally avoided them. And something you should be aware of, listener, is that there is a particular scene in both of these films that can be very triggering and involves assault. And that is the specific reason why I avoided these movies. I had zero interest in watching it because, you know, if you remember, you know, the The Hills Have Eyes episode, I went in in 2006 to see that movie, and there was a contrudous rape scene. I absolutely hated it, and it put me off of watching the original. So walking into this one tonight, I knew we'd eventually have to get to it, and I did not expect to have a good time at all. I also have a weird thing with basements in my life, not a fan of that. Expected to be in a sour mood through the whole thing, expected it to be campy, but not something I'd probably laugh at. And I honestly just expected it to be like a really dark, gory reimagining in the reboot. But what were you folks expecting?

SPEAKER_04 7:22

So everything I had heard about this movie had me thinking that it was gonna be specifically this character Ash, whose name I somehow knew, I think because of the title Ash vs. Evil Dead. I thought he had a chainsaw for a hand, and I thought there was like dancing skeletons at some point, and I was like, this is gonna be like stupid. It feels it like it was giving me very like dude movie energy in my like perception of what this would be. Um and I also thought it was a zombie movie. I absolutely could have paid money to tell you that this is like, oh yeah, that's a zombie movie.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

You might have known the name from Dead by Daylight. Ash is present in Dead by Daylight.

SPEAKER_04 7:56

Oh my god, that's him with all of like the crass lines.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, the guy who actually speaks in the lobby, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:02

Oh, oh my god. I literally watched this entire movie, had no idea that was him. I've killed him so many times.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

And let me add an addendum here, because obviously in in popular culture, Ash is a very prominent figure in horror, and I've never had anything against Bruce Campbell. I actually thought going into it, if for any reason I like this movie or this franchise, it's gonna be because of Bruce Campbell. The guy's just so damn charming. So I was hoping he'd be a bright spot. I was excited.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

I remember the 81 version pretty clearly. I don't remember a lot of the one-liners, but 2013, I feel like I only watched it once, so I was wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't sure if it was a scene for scene, shot for shot, whether it was something that took place later on that was very similar, or just the same exact movie, kind of like Psycho. So I was fairly surprised that it wasn't um exactly what I thought it'd be.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Going into the rewatch of the 81, it's something if you've seen these movies before, if you've seen Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness, Evil Dead from 81 has a very different feeling. It feels more like a horror movie than Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. They really embrace the camp. So if you've seen those before, you might remember them. You remember more about the character and the and the crazy one-liners and some of the silly antics, but when you watch the original, it's not as campy, and that and that can be kind of jarring. I I did remember that clearly though. So I went into it thinking like this is like watching the pilot to a TV show that you love, like the characters look slightly off, maybe they haven't figured out their hairstyles yet or you know how they interact. And I I knew that, so I knew what to expect, but I knew the you know the baseline story and everything, so I wasn't going to I didn't think I was gonna be surprised by anything going into it. Going into 2013, I I wasn't sure what to expect. I stayed away from it for so long because I thought it was gonna ruin. I thought it was gonna be the Halloween for me, Chris's Halloween experience. I thought that's what was going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

The 2007 Halloween specifically, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:04

And that's so I was expecting 2007 Halloween experience for me, where it was going to ruin something that I had like basically grown up with. And I wasn't looking forward to that at all. I thought it was gonna be deliberately grittier, deliberately bloodier, and gorier, and leave behind a lot of the feelings that you get from the sequels and and from the later series as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So what you're saying is the evil dead from 1981 is your and John Carpenter's Halloween for me?

SPEAKER_03 10:31

It's it's pretty much that.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

You know, it's it's not that strong of a feeling. I actually prefer the the sequels more than I do the original, but it it is kind of that level of importance in cinematic history in my life.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

And unconditional love, I'm sure. I love that.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

There are some conditions, as you mentioned. There is a scene that having watched it however many years ago, I honestly forgot about that scene. And then going into re-watching it, I'm I've been made aware of it and looked out for it, and it's not something I was looking forward to from the original movie that I, you know, thought was so great for so long. It's something where now I went into it with kind of a pre-made distaste.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Hmm. It's interesting to hear how that's evolved in your life, right? Because you saw this when you were a young kid, you know what I mean? Maybe doesn't maybe you don't have the greatest cognizance of what's actually happening on the screen, but I also presume that you've seen it several times in your life, yes?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Evil Dead, the original, the 1981, I've seen fewer times than I have seen the sequels because Army of Darkness was my favorite. Evil Dead 2, you kind of can just get by with just watching that and never watching the 1981. So Evil Dead 1981, I've seen it, yes, more than once, yes, but not enough to have a firm memory of everything that happens, like I did the sequels.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Interesting. Okay. I I will admit things took a direction for me when I was watching this movie. I settled into bed one night after getting off of work and was immediately struck by the awful title graphics. That I don't know, I don't know what I was expecting this to be, but I didn't expect that. Even knowing this is low budget, even knowing that like this is Sam Raimi's first feature film, obviously it's not gonna be God's gift to graphics, right? But I I expected it to be worse looking for being low budget. I haven't seen a single thing from this movie, mind you. I've only seen stills or images from later movies in the franchise, and I found myself, as expected, completely put off and soured by that one scene. But outside of that, I was actually really entertained. I had I struggled and had to like restart a couple times just to get through some of the dialogue. Uh, just that was like an on me, no, no shade at the film. I was super tired. But I found myself maybe not so swayed by the performances, but entertained by how interesting the movie was to look at. And then once shit escalates, and once you start getting some gore in there, it just almost doesn't stop and it's intense.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

It's funny, Mac, you mentioned that the other two are a little bit better than this one. I would agree. Somehow, when I watched this, I was kind of bored. I think what it was was I for some reason thought the plot was a little bit more intricate than it was. So I'm like, oh wow, I'm just watching a whole bunch of people die in a cabin. Like, and it just seemed very like the story you knew what was gonna happen, so there were no surprises. Like you knew what happened after a certain character died, you and it was just like a very trickling, like domino effect for me. So I was like, oh, okay, we know it's gonna happen. Oh, we know it's okay. So I feel like maybe because it was filled with a bunch of tropes, I don't know, it just felt a little flat for me from watching it before and seeing the sequels.

SPEAKER_04 13:48

Yeah, for the original, I gotta say, Alexis, I too at sometimes was also bored, but I was also confused. And you said that the plot was like less intricate than you remember, and the plot's like definitely very straightforward, but that thing that happens to me and Ryan sometimes happened where a lot of these white people from the 70s and 80s look the same, but then some of the characters undergo these transformations where suddenly they're wearing a different wig or like a different outfit and they look different, and I have no idea who anybody is, and I'm just like, uh what's going on? What are the stakes here? Who is that? At one point I was like, Oh, that's Shelly. Wait, who's Shelly?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

It probably doesn't help that they're also in varying states of decay throughout the film.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Agree.

SPEAKER_04 14:29

So it was hard for me to keep tabs on like what actually was going on. So I was just like, you know what, fuck it. I'll just watch all this mayhem ensue. Um, but most of my feelings were just like, I don't really get it, until the very, very end. And I was like, okay, I can get it. I get it. I got it.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

I I'm glad you got it. I going into 81, I had my expectations of knowing what I know and having seen it multiple times before, and my experience watching it, I think was pretty good. I was also entertained. I was watching it this time with obviously a more critical eye. I'm not looking at it as if it's some form of art and I need to, you know, pick apart every detail of it. I knew that it was low budget, I knew that it was from 81, I knew that it was a first feature film and all that kind of stuff. But I'm looking at the story thinking, like, what did I forget? What did what's not in my memory from my previous viewings where I just watched it for entertainment value alone? And I still found it entertaining. I was actually pleasantly surprised by a few things visually, which was kind of fun because it is, you know, it's full of practical effects, and you kind of expect that that's my jam as well. Gotta love those things. But, you know, I think that overall I found it to be a pretty good experience, but my distaste for that one scene was much higher than it had ever been. Thank you, Chris, for pointing it out to me. Because, you know, having watched it in high school and probably once or twice in my 20s, it's not something that I paid attention to. I just kind of glossed over it. And then watching it now in my 30s, it was one of those things where it was like watching somebody do something you know they're gonna regret. And it's it's not fun. But I think once you make it past that and you get into the story, it does have that nice escalation effect, which is great. Conversely, going into 2013, I found myself wincing a lot.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Really?

SPEAKER_03 16:14

A lot of wincing. This is so much gorier than the first film. And that was something that had to be expected. It's however many years later, we have better technology, we have more fake blood available to us with bigger budgets and everything. But it was just so much gorier. And that wasn't the evil dead that I grew to love. I grew to love the campy, the crazy, the silly stuff from the sequels. And so now watching this, I knew that wasn't what I was gonna get, but I was kind of hoping there was some, but instead it was just darker, grittier, and grislier. And while I found it entertaining, I think if you didn't have anything and like any kind of attachment to Evil Dead whatsoever, and you went into this in 2013 and saw this in a theater, you would just think, man, that was a really crazy, gory horror movie. Wow. But I had those attachments, and so for me, it was just causing a lot of wincing, it felt very unnecessary, it felt like too much.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

I would say totally necessary, but you're talking to the gore lover over here. I feel very similar to you, only in the fact that to me, after seeing the newest saw that came out from the book of Saw, now I can, I'm like, okay, this isn't the saw I knew, but it's a different saw, so I appreciate it. But I love the gore. I was wincing in a good way. But I mean, this movie is so action-packed, like I can't get away from any of it. And I was thoroughly entertained throughout this whole movie, very entertained.

SPEAKER_04 17:45

Mac, when you said that you were wincing during the remake, I thought for sure you were referring to the acting because that's something that I had some trouble with. There was definitely one character where I was like, you are absolutely like the daughter of the director or something, because why are you here? Because you're not giving anything. Dude cast for the main character. I was like, this casting was all wrong, and that was something I had to really set aside. But it became much easier to set that aside when the gore got so good, and I maybe winced a couple times. I was definitely like a gape, just jaw on the floor for a couple scenes, and I loved that. The gore in this movie was like the thing that kept me tethered to it.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I think for sure the 2013 is such a cool experience to have having watched the original first, because it feels like not that we have Sam Raimi directing this, but he certainly gave his blessing and thought, okay, yeah, I did this in 1981. I think it can be updated and reimagined and be even better. And that's what this is, right? Like this is a good let's make it darker, let's make it more gritty, let's make it more intense. Now, Paris, I completely agree with you. The acting left much to be desired. It absolutely did. I found myself feeling really underwhelmed. Not that there could be another Ash, but that we didn't have a better actor for the main character in this movie. He was painful to watch, to listen to, to feel anything for. I just wanted him to not exist anymore. Really, that's all I wanted. But let me tell you, I was so surprised to see that Jane Levy is in this. I, for some reason, have never acknowledged who she is. I've seen Don't Breathe when that came out, and I've seen Zoe's extraordinary playlist. So in my head, she's Zoe. And so when I started watching this movie, I'm like, whoa, what the fuck? She's in she's in Evil Dead. This is weird. I can't like I'm waiting for her to just make one of her awkward Zoe faces, and then I look up her IMDB, I'm like, oh shit, she was the girl in Don't Breathe. I feel like I just rediscovered who Jane Levy is in my mind, and I'm here for it a hundred percent. She was a bright spot for me.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

I can say I was surprised by stuff in the 2013. I mean, aside from the gore, which to me felt obviously excessive, you know, compared to what I had hoped would happen, but I was surprised by the differences between the two. I think when they updated it, I'm expecting it's gonna be a play-for-play kind of situation. It's gonna be the same story, the same characters, they're just gonna do it grittier. But I think we got a very different story with a very different group of friends from the original movie. And I think that was a good thing. I think that added something to it that it's not the same exact story. I mean, if you watch Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, you're kind of getting the same story once, and then you get it twice, and you're like, okay, I get it, that's cool, let's move on to our you know, Army of Darkness, because it's so different. But Evil Dead 2013, we have the same type of setup for what could happen and what should happen, but each of the characters was so surprisingly different from what we got in the first movies. Now, that that can be a bad thing, obviously, if if they're weak characters, but I think it helped the movie that it's not the same stuff we've already seen. It's gonna be slightly different, people's motivations are different. The entire reason for them to be at the cabin was so different that I actually I really appreciated the fact that they added a little bit into that.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Oh, absolutely. I think going to a cabin with a purpose that's not just hot teens getting drunk. You know what I mean? Like I was here for it, and the changes we make, obviously, we don't get Ash completely recast, these are different characters altogether, but I think the changes that they make in each character's journey highly preferred over its original.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Yeah, I do like the circumstances of why they're in the cabin. And I think that as soon as I found that out, my mind started spinning because I knew where this was gonna go, and then I just felt so bad for Mia. I was like, you know what's gonna happen? A, B, C, and D, and I feel bad because this is how they set up the movie, but I was still excited to keep watching it, which surprised me that I still had that expectation and still wanted to keep watching it.

SPEAKER_04 21:54

Something that was a disappointment for me in the original is I was expecting uh this campy Comedy vibe that I feel like the franchise is known for. And I guess, Mac, what you're saying makes sense because I didn't really get very much of it here. In the beginning, it starts out like kind of punchy, kind of like very animated with like their adventure to the cabin. And I was like, okay, this is like a very specific style. I can I can get into this. But it felt like tonally the rest of the movie was kind of ambiguous. Like I was like, is this trying to be over the top and funny? Like is this trying to do is this trying to do Dead Alive, or is it trying to be something else? Or is it more serious? I didn't really know how to take it. Uh, but hearing Chris say that this was like the most rented like VHS of all time at the time kind of makes sense because I could definitely see this being a movie that you tell your friends about in the 80s, like before the internet is out, and you're like, whoa, we just saw this crazy movie. You have to go rent it. I could see this being like a word-of-mouth sensation, but that comedy was definitely missing for me in that one.

SPEAKER_03 22:59

It it kind of goes back to why they made the movie in the first place, why they ended up making horrors, because at the time that was the genre to get into. So if you're looking at making your first movie, you're like, well, what are we gonna do? Everyone seems to be loving horror right now, let's make a horror movie. And that's kind of how the decision was reached. So it does make sense. I mean, it was huge in the late 70s and early 80s, so it's it's kind of interesting to plot the course because, like we've mentioned, if you if you have seen the sequels, you know, you understand it. But if you haven't, that you know, Sam Raimi finds his voice later. He really finds his style. And if you go into this one expecting that, you are going to be disappointed. Uh, but you see a little bit of it here and there. There's a couple of moments that we'll talk about in the spoiler section where uh you know you you see some of what's to come, but overall you have to kind of go into it expecting just a straight-up horror movie. And that could be disappointing. You know, if this was my my first time watching it and I had had those expectations, like you paras, I would have been like, what it what is this? Like I thought this is not what I was promised by my friends and family. But I think watching the 81, what surprised me the most was the fact that it was a horror movie. Not that it wasn't as campy as I remember, but this has a horror movie plot, and it's it is simple, right? And it is something that feels like other horror movies could have done or would have done, but it doesn't feel like we're gonna make our first movie and we're just gonna kind of see what we can get away with. And here it is on the screen. Go for it. It feels like somebody sat down and said, What would make a really basic but understandable horror movie plot? Who should the characters be? What kind of blood and gore and guts can we get away with? And let's actually make a horror movie. It felt like someone made a serious real attempt at making a horror movie. Yes, there's some camp, there's some silliness, you know, they had to get a little bit of that in there. But I was I was honestly surprised by the fact that, like, if there were no sequels, this would have still held up for me as a horror movie on its own.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

So true, so true. I was really surprised at all the little homages they had to other horror movies when they're in the basement situation. You know, I you get very Texas chainsaw vibes, which I loved. And you see a Hills Have Eyes poster, and I just love when other horror movies bring other horror movies in. It's just it's amazing, especially during that time as well. Like you were talking about Mac.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

And speaking of other horror movies bringing in other horror movies, I've always known that The Cabin in the Woods is obviously like references and is based heavily on the evil dead, but I feel like I just went through a rite of passage to now fully appreciate that in the angry molesting tree reference when they have like the bets going about what would what would win.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

Oh. I definitely picked up on the the Cabin in the Woods of it all when they're in the basement, like exploring spooky shit. And I was like, oh, okay, got that. But the angry molesting tree, mmm, very, very specific reference there. In the remake, I gotta say, I was surprised how they managed to really bring the gore to the nth degree. It was gore on top of gore, and it was very more is more with the gore. And just when I thought, I was like, oh wow, that was that was a lot of blood. They like triple it in one scene, and I'm like, oh wow, even more. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah, it's wild because obviously the ending of the Susperia remake has a lot of blood, and I know that geographically looking at that scene, there's more blood. But this felt like there was more blood. And I think maybe because it's coming from a limited source, it just feels like so much.

SPEAKER_04 26:34

I think by volume, this remake has to have more blood than the Susperia remake.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, the Susperi remake was spread out a bit over several people in a very large cavernous area.

SPEAKER_04 26:45

But also, like spoilers, it rained from the sky in this one. But do you think that level of gore added anything to the fear factor?

SPEAKER_00 26:52

It for sure made me cringe. And and again, not the same way that I think you were cringing, Mac, but it was uncomfortable. It didn't scare me. I don't think any of this like particularly scared me in either movie. I think it's disgusting what happens to a central female character in both films. But none of this is particularly frightening to me. I think if you're a seasoned horror fan, it's not gonna scare you. It is gonna be fucking gross though. It could also be terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Um can we reference a scene where it's a mirror scene and someone's in the room and she's telling them and freaking then you I hate when you see reflections of demons in freaking mirrors. They're the worst thing ever. That was frightening to me. I thought that was, but I see the vibe you're going for. In general, it's pretty gross, but I thought it was also kind of scary too. Until some penises get brought up and all that sort of in sex jokes. I was like, I don't think this is too scary.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

I'm right there with you, Alexis. Some of this movie was scary, and I'm talking about the remake. The original, no fear at all.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 27:59

But some of the things that happened in the remake were scary. I am somebody that is very afraid of pain. I'm really afraid of discomfort in any capacity, but there's so much pain that you see in this movie that I was like, no, I don't want that to happen to me, and what if it does? So there were moments where I was like very tense and very scared, despite being a seasoned horror fan.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

I didn't feel that tension in in terms of a fear type of tension at all. You know, I there was wincing going on in the remake. In the original, I didn't feel scared, of course, because one, it's me, and then two, it's an 81 horror movie. Like, I'm not gonna be scared. But in in the in the remake, you know, it wasn't really fear. It was just fear of what they might show me next. It was like, please don't get even more graphic than that last scene. And that's not fear of the movie, that's just me not wanting to get too gory. I guess I'm not the biggest fan of gore, I'm not an Alexis here. You know, I'm I'm I'm okay with the bloodless horror movie or like a little bit of blood, but when we get to some of the gore in this film, it's it's pretty extreme. And I don't think it added anything to the fear factor, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Well, neither of these movies were frightening by any stretch of the imagination to me. I was A, pleasantly surprised by how different the original feels. Granted, like we've seen kids go to a location get picked off one by one. Yeah, no, we we've seen it. But the execution of this feels like a great hit for a directorial debut, and to see what he pulled off and to see the early vision of what his eye sees when he's directing, I think it stands out as a pretty singular film. And then I'm really pleased with the direction they went for the remake, and not trying to just completely redo what was already done, but to take it totally in a different direction, modernize it a bit, and give us a new hero along the way.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Totally agree. I think these both have an originality that I wasn't expecting. The first one, obviously, OG cabin movies. I couldn't say it wasn't original, even though I've seen stuff like it because all of this stuff came after it. But yeah, I do love the interesting spin on how they get to the cabin in the 2013 one, which I mentioned before. So totally original on both of them.

SPEAKER_04 30:15

Okay, I'm here to be the voice of reason. These movies were super generic, very basic, not very original. I didn't expect to be alone on this island, but I feel maybe if Ryan was here, she would be with me. Who's to say?

SPEAKER_03 30:30

I I'm gonna jump in a little bit with you there, though, Paris, because I don't think they're original. Obviously, the remake's not original. It has to borrow a lot from everything that came before it, including the original movie. But I think when you look at the original, it's it does feel kind of generic. It feels like horror movie insert name here a little bit, but the vibe is what makes it original. Some of the camera techniques they use are what makes it original. The camp that you get a little bit of is fully like expanded in in the later films, and it's just such a Sam Raimi thing that I really appreciate. I loved the Spider-Man movies, by the way. I not the third one, like there's parts of it that are good, but but the first the first two were were fantastic, and that just vibe that Sam Raimi brings to things where you're okay with camp being part of it, like you want it to happen. It's just it's so interesting. And we get a little bit of that movie, we get the camera, the camera movements are so insane and so interesting and so unique that I think you have to give it some originality points. Like Ash as a character, I mean, very original in a way that's like, yes, it's generic, like big, strong man trying to survive, do whatever, but it's so unique, just stands alone as this island.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

To be clear, Ash in this movie or Ash in future movies? Because in this movie, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

Ash in future movies. This is again, this is like the pilot episode here, and you don't get enough of it. I think you should keep watching if you really want to see all the references we're making to future like versions of this, but um, in this movie itself, you just get it, you get a little hint, you get a little essential oil in the air that I think gives it it's still its own unique feeling, even though it obviously borrows from the horror genre all over.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

I totally understand that Ash becomes his own entity at at some point, right? Like every time I go to my local stores to look for some more horror figures, there are some there are some Ash ones present. I feel like I've had to pass off on buying any of them until I've actually seen the movies because I feel like a poser if I if I do beforehand.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

That's fair. I support that.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

I don't think he's overrated by any means, but I do think that seeing him in this movie, for the most part, he doesn't align with what I expected from him. I expected him to play a much more prominent, aggressive role, but he did get better as the movie went on, and I found that I really enjoyed the ending as weird as it was, as intense as it was. Yeah, there's a point where I had been kind of drifting in and out out of pure exhaustion, and I obviously went back, rewatched it in its entirety, but in those moments, I was just getting like sh flashes of Bruce Campbell's face with lots of blood, and like, what am I experiencing right now? Would not recommend. It's a terrible sight to see as you're falling asleep and you've seen this movie. But I think his performance made the ending for me. I don't know that I'm 100% sold on the mechanics of it, but I think he carried it.

SPEAKER_03 33:30

Well, I think that the fact that there are sequels should let you know that you can't be sold on the mechanics of the ending. Like it's it's funny to see how things you know progress. But I I love the ending, of course. I think as the movie get you know gets further into itself, it it does get better. Like the characters become more interesting, the demons become more interesting, the blood gets better, the gore gets better, and even if it's you know 81 tech on a low budget, it's still more interesting to look at than it first starts out. But I think the way that the movie ends, it definitely ramps up the action, which is super enjoyable.

SPEAKER_04 34:05

I can say with confidence that the ending was the best part of both of these films. For the original, it's where I was kind of like, okay, I can get why this movie is so popular now. And in the remake, it was something I really didn't expect and was like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Totally. To me, it seems a very typical ending for some movies, but I wasn't all that shocked, and I wasn't disappointed, surprisingly, but I knew it was a very typical ending.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Well, that that remake ending though is is quite interesting. It really flipped things on its head, and I was not expecting it to go that the way, you know, the way that it did. And I think it's to its benefit that they changed things up a little bit. I think it was it made things interesting, it surprises you. Um, it makes things visually insane. Gotta say that. Visually insane to look at the ending of the 2013. Like it's so much.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Yeah, I was shocked by how surprised I could be watching the ending of a 2013 movie that's also a remake.

SPEAKER_04 35:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

That was unexpected in such a great way. Because I think sometimes you can make a move like that that's so bold, and you're like, oh, okay, well, fucking you screwed the pooch, right? Like you just totally whiffed. But this one felt like it wrapped up in a way that was way more satisfying, even though you know Bruce Campbell as Ash carried the ending of the original. I feel like the events of this, the resolution to this, the beauty of this ending visually, all of it wrapped up in a nice bow.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

I really enjoyed it. I think the whole ending scene was phenomenal, especially from a gore lover perspective. It wasn't, like you said, Chris, what I expected. I it kind of turned what I had thought was gonna happen in all the characters that I thought were going to be the ones that come out on the end. So it definitely flipped me around.

SPEAKER_05 36:00

Oh my.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

In a good way. But um, I'm happy to see like a final death for me that is just like very freaking shocking and very entertaining and very reminiscent of one of my favorite kills on this entire show.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

Ooh, uh, I look forward to finding out which one that is. Oh, maybe okay, I have an idea.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

We'll see. Before we find out what her favorite kill was, we have to score the movie, and before we score the movie, we have to shake out a few other things. Now, Alexis, how many people died in these movies?

SPEAKER_01 36:34

We had a total of 19 deaths, which to me seems pretty low, but wait till you get later on the franchise and you will not be complaining about death being low. And what about the animal report? Unfortunately, there is a lot of animals seen in some sort of decay. And you know, the second one, the one from 2013, there is a death that of a poor boy.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

So there's a major trigger warning here because if you're a fan of the good boys, it's gonna be kind of hard.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Well, thanks for the heads up. Let's go ahead and get into our ratings. The Evil Dead from 1981. Is it a hacker or slash?

SPEAKER_03 37:10

I'll go first because it's just obvious, so I should get out of the way. This is obviously a f a favorite of mine, right? This whole sequence of events here. There's even another movie called My Name is Bruce, where Bruce Campbell stars as himself. And the premise is people think that he's Ash from these movies, and he needs to like respond in an Ash way to a supernatural thing. So it's just ridiculous, and I love all of it. And I still respect the original for for what it did here. You know, this was the first one. We knew what I know what's to come, I know what to expect, but even on its own, I think it still stands as a good movie. I think it's a fun horror watch. I think if you don't watch the sequels, you're not really missing out on horror, but you are missing out on great entertainment. But uh I think a lot of people should watch Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, Ash vs. Evil Dead, and even my name is Bruce, it's a slash.

SPEAKER_04 38:03

Can I offer a counterpoint? This movie for me was a hack. It was a long hour and a half, it felt like. The gore kept me in it, but wasn't quite enough for me to slash this. The characters are very blah, very forgettable. The storyline is pretty much nothing. Kids go to a cabin, things happen. But for me, this movie was like so repetitive. Like you watch the same characters get killed over and over and over again, and you're like, when does it end? And I can't even tell which one you are at this point, nor do I care. But the thing for me that I think may have been affected by my expectations is there wasn't that level of comedy or like over-the-top campiness that I wanted. And the whole time I just kept thinking, like, does this movie know it's stupid and it's trying to do this? Or is it just kind of happens to be stupid and isn't really deliberate about it? It felt like there's nothing that was in this movie that wasn't done in Dead Alive with more commitment. So this movie to me, and maybe it's because I saw Dead Alive first, I was like, this is just like a diluted Dead Alive. It's not as funny, not as gory, not as good. And it's a hack.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Very different premises, these movies.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

And this was a major inspiration for Dead Alive. That's what's so interesting every time you mention this. This was like, you know, Peter Jackson sees this movie and he goes, Oh my god, I have an entire career now. He did a lot with what he was inspired by.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Paris, I too felt like I was watching the same people being killed over and over again, and I was trying to figure out who it was, and there were a lot of laughing and screaming and synthesizers that just made this like auditory experience not very pleasant for me. But I have to admit, I know the rest of the franchise, but I do have to base it on this movie alone, and I'm still gonna give it a slash because I love the gore in this. The practical effects are freaking amazing. I can't wait to talk about it in the second half. And I know what to expect in this. I knew to expect a cabin with people dying and coming back to life and then being killed again. I knew that there wasn't going to be much more than that. So my expectations, not that they were low, but they were where they needed to be for this film. And I love Ash as a character. I love his transformation throughout. I love Ash versus Evil, favorite TV show. Um, so yeah, it gets a slash for me for sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

So as I mentioned before, I've avoided both of these movies, like The Plague, and I wasn't looking forward to this episode. Obviously, this movie is iconic, it has a huge following. There are so many people out there who love it, and I'm not gonna sit here and and yuck your yum, right? I think what was surprising to me was that there's so much that I enjoyed in it. I really enjoyed getting a glimpse of of what was to come from Sam Raimi. There are some shots in this that are absolutely stunning. There is a shot as the car is approaching the cabin, and the sound is starting to pick up just a bit, and we hear this this wooden swinging bench just knocking against the wall. And the way he uses that sound to set the tension and suspense of this of this moment, right? Ascending upon this location is absolutely brilliant. The plot is a good one. I'm not mad at it at all. I think where this movie falls apart for me is a the scene that we've been referencing this entire time that I absolutely hate and see no reason for. That scene could have gone so many different directions without having to go that direction. There are a lot of other options there, and beyond that, the acting is so good in some spots because there's some jokes, right? Like there's a there's a card trick that some of them are doing. You can tell that they're playing into it and it's a little bit funny and charming. For the most part, though, it's pretty rough. And while this movie is still gonna get a slash from me, a very surprising slash, it's honestly a very light slash. There's a lot to like. I I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad I have context. I think it's really important, but it's not one that I'm interested in in revisiting at all. I think the original E The Evil Dead is just not for me, but I respect its place in history. But the 2013 remake is an entirely different story, and there are some things missing from this remake, from this reboot, that were present in the original, like a semi-more charming leading man. I'll just say that. What I most love is that it feels like a bit of a love letter, but with modernizations and updates. There are things that were pulled from the original and made to have some kind of relevance or at least some kind of meaning in the second one. And as we've already discussed, Fliny, the gore is something to behold. And I don't even like gore. I absolutely loved Jane Levy as Mia, and she plays a tragic character really well, in my opinion. And while it too falls prey to having that horrific scene, I'm glad it didn't feel quite as long as the original one did. I still think they could have left it out though. But for me, the 2013 Evil Dead is just getting a straight up slash. No qualification on it being as light as possible.

SPEAKER_04 43:34

So after watching the original Evil Dead, I was like, oh god, I have to watch another one of these movies. What have I done to deserve this? And I went into this movie with pretty low expectations. I kind of was worried because the opening scene, you have like that dad character who's a very bad actor, and I was like, oh god, here we go. It's gonna be a cast full of nobodies given B list performances. But as the movie picked up and I realized that they weren't going to Try to be like funny or campy in any capacity, and they were like, okay, we're just gonna play this straight. I started to kind of get a little bit more into it, and where they really got me was just the gore. The gore in this movie is so incredible, and I love it so much. It made me realize, like, you know, we need to watch more movies with this level of gore. We don't get enough of them. And I think Alexis will agree with that. It sometimes feels like a horror movie isn't quite a horror movie unless I'm absolutely revolted with the level of gore that I'm seeing. At least that's where I'm at in my horror journey. I feel like the storyline was also better, and that may only be because I have the original to compare it to, because I think if I had just seen this movie on its own, I would have thought what a basic story that they didn't really do anything with that. But I think comparing it to the original, seeing what they did and how they added a little bit of depth, especially for the Mia character and the motivations for everyone in the situation, it helped me to feel more invested in these characters and what happened to them, even though I knew what would happen to them. I also loved how they switched it up in the ending. And I was at a point where I was like, okay, this is a slash. This is like a soft slash just because of the gore alone. But then what they did in the ending made me realize, like, oh no, this is a hard slash because they appealed to the things that I love in a way that I had never thought they would do. I didn't think they could do logistically based on what had happened in the movie. And I was like, okay, they took a big swing and it was a hit for me. So this movie's actually a very hard slash. If you love gore the way Alexis and I do, and you haven't seen this, do yourself a favor and watch it. ASAP.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

It's very tasteful gore because you can have a lot of gore, like terrifier, and it'd just be a little too much. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Yes, exactly. So I think this is done where you're looking at it, somehow weirdly intrigued and want to keep staring at it. I'm not sure about Chris, but I definitely wanted to keep staring at some of it.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

I could have done without staring at a lot of it, but I did enjoy the experience of it. This was probably the one instance of like extreme gore that I was okay with.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Yeah, they did it in a good way. Somehow mixing that, and I know the characters weren't that appealing, but to me, those were the characters you saw in the 2000s. This is exactly what you saw in all of these remakes and reboots for the time. But I do like the visuals in this. I just like the way this movie made me feel. I had all the lights off. It was just a freaking awesome experience, and I really want to watch this movie again already. So it's definitely getting a slash for me.

SPEAKER_03 46:30

And here I am at the end with a difficult choice to make because I'm torn. This is a favorite series of mine, right? Ash as a character, Evil Dead as a premise, as a whole world, with I mean, it's something where it goes back to how you were in high school, right? Where you just like latched on to things. I watched Army of Darkness probably 20 times. I think I have the DVD still in a book somewhere, but it's tough because it's not the movies that I grew up with, right? And I think anytime you get into that, it can be really tricky. So so when I look at it, I have to look at some of the the other aspects of the film to really rate it fairly. So the gore was a bit too much for me. And I don't know that it really added what I needed it to add, but it is a marvel to look at. It is really well done gore, like insane level gore. It made me wince a lot because it was just so much. But the story I thought was interesting. It added that backstory to the characters, it added something to just the motivation to even be in this cabin in the woods, aside from just being hot teenagers, like Chris mentioned. Like that's that's good. They were able to throw that out there. Good for them. Like major props. The twist that they're able to add in was so unexpected for me. Like, I wanted to high-five somebody for being like, Thank you for doing something different. Thank you for for surprising me that this isn't just going to be a carbon copy kind of situation. So major props there. So my most of my complaints, I think, are just about the fact that it's so insanely gory, and it's not the evil dead that I grew up with. And those aren't really fair complaints to have because it's not the same movie, right? This is a movie thinking about the whole idea in a different way, and I have to appreciate that. So I think I'm gonna give it a slash. It was a lot to look at, it's really intense, it builds up really well as you're as you're continuing to watch. The ending is batshit. So I gotta give them major credit for that because they they really caught me off guard. And I think it's worth a watch. I think it's one of those things where it's not what you're expecting, and that can be a good thing every now and then. You gotta break out of your shell, you gotta see something a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Well, I'm gonna be honest, Mac. I really thought you were gonna hack the reboot on principle alone, but I'm impressed.

SPEAKER_03 48:42

I did too. I have to I have to look at it a bit differently because initially while watching it, I honestly felt I'm going to hack this movie, right? This is not what I expected out of Evil Dead. But it's not Evil Dead 1981, it's not Evil Dead 2, it's not Army of Darkness, it's not Ash vs. Evil Dead, it's its own movie. The one scene that we hated is still around though, and you would have thought by then they could have learned and removed that. The scene is quicker, like you mentioned, but I think it's more intense, and I I thought it was worse than the first one. I thought it was worse to watch because it just seemed more visceral to me. But they're both bad. They both shouldn't have it. And that's you know, that's something they share, I guess. But I I think I had to look at it in a different light and think about it. Like, if you're just a fan of horror, can you appreciate this film? And that answer is absolutely. It's a very different film from everything that came before it.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

Well, there you have it, folks. The 1981, The Evil Dead, has earned four slashes and one hack. But its 2013 counterpart has earned a universal slash and is therefore headed to the Hall of Fame. You can find both of these movies available for rent or streaming online, but go ahead and check them out, then join us in the second half so we can fit them head to head together. We'll see you in a bit.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Every ticket holder is entered into a raffle to win a luxurious weekend stay in a possession host of your choice. Necronomicon 2022, Claatu Barata Nicktail your way to the biggest evil bash of this millennium.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Welcome back, folks. You're now entering the spoiler zone for the evil dead. Now, the 1981 original has earned four slashes and one hack, whereas the 2013 reboot has earned a universal slash. We have a lot to get to here, but before we get into the specifics of our ratings, we do have some gore to attend to.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

I think that once you get the special effects in, and it's just, I feel like when you actually see someone cutting their arm off and you know it's not like 80s version of that, you're like, wow, I know this isn't real, but it feels real. So yeah, that's definitely it.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

You're so right. Right? We get so much self-mutilation in 2013, and that was unexpected, first of all. But when they show it, they just show it full on. They don't cut away, they let you watch someone get their arm crushed and have them rip it away from the car as we watch the skin like peeling away from it until we see their their nub afterwards. And horrifying. The cutting of one's own face. That's too much. I couldn't do it. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 51:58

And then also like to cut your own face, and then somebody walks in on it and slips on the piece of the face that you cut off.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

Yeah. Oops, didn't wear my shower shoes.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

So you've seen the movie 127 hours about the hiker. Well, he was like going bouldering and he was alone and he fell and his his hand or his arm got crushed beneath a rock and he couldn't pry it free. So he had to like he was stranded for days on his own. He had to take a dull pocket knife and amputate his own hand. But he was describes about how he had to use torque to break his own bones, cut into his arm, cut through all these layers, and then had to cut through the nerve, which would be the most painful part. My girlfriend sent me a clip of an interview that he did, and it just made me fucking cringe so much. So seeing that action in the 2013 version, ooh, gave me chills. Was that your favorite death for the 2013 version? No, no, no, not by any stretch of the imagination. What was your favorite death? Favorite death. I'm gonna be real. It's David. I know it's not the fanciest death, right? I know that there's a lot other there are a lot of other deaths that look way better in this movie, but I was just so fucking happy that he was finally gone from this movie. Honestly. Purge him, expel him, exercise that fucking demon from this movie. He didn't need to be there.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

The least goryest of them all was Chris's favorite, quite fitting. Honestly.

SPEAKER_04 53:39

But I think that overlooks the intense deep throat factor that occurred with that chainsaw.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

It's like terrifier meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, meets Paris Hilton's death in House of Wax.

SPEAKER_04 53:52

But also meets the death in Mandy, where the whatever that demon was deep throated that whole axe.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

Honestly, those demons do love deep throat.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

This is oddly enough, went from deep throating some sort of chainsaw, some sh sort of thing, to honestly just being cut hot dog style. I like how this has graduated from hot dog style to deep throating now.

SPEAKER_00 54:16

That's genuinely what happened. It's as if Mia with her chainsaw took her power back and just, you know, got vengeance for the disrespect the women in both of these movies faced.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

It really felt that way.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 54:31

I'm gonna go for the first death we get in the movie, the Deadite. So the first Dead we see, who gets like tied up and then burnt and then head blown off by her own father. And that really sets the tone for the movie, I think.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

It really does. Seeing a man shoot his daughter in the face within the first five minutes of a movie really does set the tone.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

My favorite death in the 2013 version definitely has to be demon Natalie. She's just cutting her hand off with a meat slicer. That's how it starts off. I think that's the first time you really see someone being inhabited by this evil, and it's just going through her arm her arm, and then she's like, Don't you do it, don't you do it? And there was like some comedy between the two, and it was funny to me.

SPEAKER_00 55:19

That that was a little bit funny. I do have an honorable mention, if I may, and that is the possession that we get of Olivia, because you know that she's probably next, right? We see her going off on her own. If you watch the first movie, you know there's a girl right after the sister who gets possessed, but it was how abruptly she stopped, dropped everything, and it just looked like she hit a fucking wall. That was an amazing execution of that. And then to just stop and and piss her pants, it was just the most unsettling thing in this movie.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

That is something that caught me off guard, the whole pissing of one's pants. That was not expected at all. And I thought it was a little bit too much. I didn't know if we if we really needed that, but it definitely adds something to it. It it gets your attention.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

The piss respect in this household honestly.

SPEAKER_04 56:09

It reminded me honestly of a scene in one of the scary movie sequels where Brenda fakes a seizure and then Anna Farris says, She's like, Oh my god, you even peed. And she's like, I really sold that shit, didn't I? Olivia really sold that with the pee.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

So my favorite death for the 1981 Evil Dead would definitely have to be Demon Scott and Demon Cheryl when they were disintegrated after the book, because I can't even pronounce what it is, but this book is thrown into the fire and it's just them dissolving, and just the practical effects look so good and don't look as bad as they did in Basket Case. I can tell you that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Oh yeah. 10 out of 10, more most improved stop animation for sure. I think for me it's gonna be Demon Shelley. And I think because it just fucking escalated so much, and then we just get a shot of all these scattered body parts on the floor still twitching, still alive. It's kind of like when you hit a hit a roach and then it isn't fully squished, but it is just kicking its leg everywhere, just keep trying to move. It seems that pesky. These demons, they be pesky.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

I gotta go for Demon Linda because you know, any shovel decapitation you see is always gonna be either hilarious or intense, and this is just kind of on the hilarious side.

SPEAKER_04 57:28

In all of the muck and mayhem of the original, I'm not sure who I was watching die when. And actually, this is something I thought Ryan might agree with. There were a lot of things happening to like limbs, but I didn't know who those limbs were attached to because they were always out of the frame. Do you know what I'm talking about? Did anybody else feel this?

SPEAKER_01 57:46

I did feel like there was just a lot of body parts, yes.

SPEAKER_04 57:49

Yeah, it was a lot of limb stuff, but there's something towards the end that happens where one of these demon zombies gets their like thumbs, like or they get their eyes gouged out by Ash's thumbs, and then like all of this blood like oozes from their wounds, like more blood than I'd ever anticipated seeing in that moment. Um, but then like right after that is like a really gross level of gore where there's like this like chunky risotto coming out of like somebody's severed wrist. And there were a lot of moments of the gore where things weren't bloody, but they were more like oozy or like pussy, and that's when it kind of lost me because that's the one thing where I'm just like ugh.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Honestly, the milk puke, very gross, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:31

Or the puking into Ash's face, all that blood.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

Yeah, a lot of puking in these fucking movies, it's a little intense, or the pencil going into the Achilles tendon and just coming from someone who has foot problems right now, that just looks like the most painful right now.

SPEAKER_03 58:45

I do have a response to you, Paris, as to why it's hard to tell in the 1981, kind of who's who once they become a deadite. And that's because some of the actors, you know, left the set when they were done with uh some of their work, and they just had like, you know, people involved with the shooting, a Raimi brother to like help out. And they would get them in the makeup and get them in a wig, and there was so much makeup because they're deadites now that uh it's like whatever, you know, they're they're demons now. It doesn't matter who's playing them at this point. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

It makes sense because Cheryl looked immediately different from when she first got possessed to the moment she falls into the cellar, becomes a cellar demon.

SPEAKER_04 59:24

So they transformed in more ways than one.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

God transformers more than meets the eyes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

Pretty cool skill for a low-budget film, I can say. But I'm so excited to talk about the gore you know in this section because there is so much gore. There's a ton of it. So, Paris, that gutsy stuff you're talking about, especially during the scene at in the finale where the demons are melting, that's actually made out of cream corn.

SPEAKER_04 59:51

Ew.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

I don't know about y'all. Cream corn is disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

All corn is disgusting, all cream is disgusting. So cream corn sounds filthy.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:00

I thought for sure it was like risotto or oatmeal, or maybe grits.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

About the same consistency. So I I'd agree. So also the sounds you hear from this movie, not the laughing from Linda, just just the body parts. So those are dead chickens. I am saying dead, they were not alive. Dead chickens being stabbed, and that was obviously to replicate the sound of mutilated flesh.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:29

I mean, that's one practical way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

I mean, super practical. I think it was a great, I think it was just an awesome way to put this movie together using all that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

I could just imagine someone on this low budget set thinking, all right, cool. All right, I'm gonna be the sound guy, I'm gonna do a real good job. I just need to go find somebody to stab. They have to like really talk them out of the corner and talk them off the ledge, right? Just be like, dude, there are other things that you can use. Let's use some chicken.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:54

Yeah, had this movie been made 10 years earlier, the actors themselves would have been stabbed.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:58

You gotta wonder though, after they stabbed these previously deceased chickens, did they cook them up? You know, get some wings?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

Maybe, maybe not. Seemed low budget. I feel like they had to make every scrap count. Even even if they weren't stabbed, I do feel like it was just as reckless of a set because there were a ton of injuries, including to Bruce Campbell himself.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:17

You can really just tell that by watching this movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:20

So I've talked about the guts and the sound. So I can't wait to talk about the blood, the plethora of blood that there is in this movie. It was in fact a combination of Kara syrup, non-dairy creamer, not sure if it was almond milk, not sure if cashew milk, no offense, and red food coloring. At one point, Bruce Campbell's shirt that he was wearing in the film was so saturated with this fake blood that after drying it by the fire, the shirt became solidified and broke when he tried to put it on. It was kind of one of those like ice shirts, you know, you put in the freezer. It's like a contest you do somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:56

Caramelized. But wait, that actually kind of explains something because at one point Ash decapitates somebody and takes like a face full of blood and like motor oil out of their neck hole and then walks away a second later with a shirt completely clean. And I was like, oh, okay. They had that new anti-stain technology in their fabric. Yeah, it just rolled right off.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

Okay, look. Honestly, continuity is a sign of privilege and wealth and budget. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

And I think I could totally see this ickiness when you see Demon Shelley being dismembered and just chunks of her body parts everywhere. It was very oozy and thick. It definitely was not fluid, I could tell you that for sure. Well, speaking of blood, we're gonna continue on to the remake of 2013. According to reports in the press, the remake used 70,000 gallons of fake blood. In an interview, Fede Alvarez said that they use 50 gallons just for this final scene alone. So I'm assuming their rain part. This is compared to the 200 to 300 gallons that were used in 1981.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

Yeah, can you imagine that conversation where like, hey, they used so much fake blood, right? You know, they use a little bit. Let's do nearly 200 times the amount of fake blood.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

Exactly. Now with more blood. Is that hacker math right there?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:22

That's hacker math right there. Who knows what the actual percentage is? They had to bloody it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:27

So as much as I loved all of the gore and seeing all the practical effects, my favorite thing visually was this first person perspective that you get when you're going through this fog and you're traveling, and I really felt like I was this evil in this forest, and you're going throughout and the lake. It was just very interesting. And you start off in this perspective, which I thought was great.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

I I love that though. It's so good, honestly. The the sweeping and the swooping, it's magical. But I think for me, it's the lighting. And it's weird because it's not always great. There's definitely a lot visually to appreciate in this movie. I really like you know when Cheryl goes out before she has what happens to her happen when she goes out into the woods and there's like some foggy mist and you have the moon matted into the background. Really enjoy how stunning that looks, but what I really love is Ash and Cheryl with the headlights and the cameras pulling back out, and you just see them lit just barely with the headlights of that old car. Fucking beautiful. I'm telling you, a glimpse into Sam Raimi's brilliance.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:40

My favorite visual in the original is pretty similar, Chris. It has to do with the different techniques they used to give the film like a fantasy quality, specifically the way they composited the moon in a lot of different shots to kind of just heighten everything, and then also their generous use of like a hair light or like a rim light to separate their subjects from the background. It really helped things to feel more graphic, more animated, and definitely more fantastical. But wait, I do have a question, and this relates to the visuals. I feel like the contacts that the demons were all wearing were like very good for the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

They're also very painful.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:21

Yeah, I think it's it's different. You know, now we just imagine these like thin, flexible pieces of plastic or whatever they are, just like gliding across your eyeballs, and back then they were like, put this hard, thick thing into your eye and hold it there for extended periods of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

At one point, one of the actresses was blind, fighting with these two dudes.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

So what you do see is an actual zombie, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

Honestly, yeah. We're lucky she's even alive now.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

I think my favorite part visually, you've already stolen some of the best parts. For the lighting is amazing, the camera work is so great. Like those shots you get zooming in and stuff are so cool. They had multiple rigs set up so they could make those things happen, or they could bring. break into a window or break through the door and then have the camera follow behind it. So really cool stuff going on. But I think what I like is how what they did visually with the action. We get some of the action earlier on where it's just kind of like we're looking, we're seeing things happen. But later on as we start to build that feeling of like speed and intensity where we have these quicker cuts where we're like you know getting the chains and like strapping strapping Linda down to the table and it's got to be that quicker cut so you get this like feeling of action going on. Or you know seeing Ash's face up close when we get the blood spewed all over it. Like you get this feeling of momentum that they build up and like we've mentioned Sam Raimi gets way better with the use of these kind of shots in subsequent films where it's almost like some some films we get nowadays where anytime you want to make something seem really cool and really fast and really intense you just do like a lot of cuts like you know in Shawn of the Dead we saw those similar types of cuts. Anytime you like focus it on someone's hands while they're doing something cut to the next thing they're doing it's it's pretty effective and I think it works really well. We just get like a little little bit of that going on here. But those shots you know with the blood just spewing all over Ash's face and we just get that nice like framing it kind of stands out from other shots in the film. It almost makes it seem like hey we're trying a couple things here and there just to kind of see what works really well. But I think it was really effective and it and it helped that progression as the film gets faster and crazier and more intense. If we go into the 2013 this remake the gore is of course something you can immediately throw out there. I'm going to ignore it because it's very impressive but gore is not my thing so I'm just going to skip over that. I think the use of color in the remake was really impressive to me though, especially when we get to the ending like that that red that blood that we get is so intense it makes it look more fantastical than you know than you would have imagined a I don't know what they call that a a blood cloud would be like I don't know where the rain is coming from. Is it coming from clouds or from the trees or something? But it kind of reminds me of legend the movie with Tom Cruise in it where the colors are just so vibrant and so saturated.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:08

So the trees are my favorite visual I like when you're coming in and you're scanning viewers are seeing the scene for the first time in the cabin for some reason the trees already felt alive when I was looking at them. They just looked like this gray fingers and it was so creepy to me. But I that stood out as soon as I started watching this movie. And I could not remember I know this is bad if that scene in particular was in this or not so that's why I was kind of like okay they look like hands. I'm not sure what's going to be going be going on but clearly I knew why they looked like hands later on.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:47

It is very difficult to talk about favorite visual elements from the remake and not choose something that's related to the gore. But I will do my best. There were a few shots and I took a picture of one of them specifically where the composition was just so thoughtful and you really didn't get enough like I think they could have lingered on some of these shots longer. I would have liked it. One of those shots is of the Necronomicon and a shotgun that's sort of like doing that thing that shotguns do when they're like being loaded and they're kind of like bent in half and the way that cuts the frame is really cool. There's a shot where he's holding Mia and you can see on the floor is the chained up basement door and just the composition of that is a really dynamic shot because it's kind of like from a ceiling view almost and you kind of see these antlers that are sticking out off the wall and it's a very like menacing but very like quiet and ominous shot that I think would make like a really good work of art to hang on a wall.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:44

I love that and I think it's interesting that you point out like the aerial perspective of that because even this movie starts out with like an inverted frame but it's an aerial shot before it goes on to the jeep driving up to the cabin. This movie makes exceptional use of its perspective and kind of while not totally recreating shots from the original in some cases doing little things stylistically to pay homage to and give honor to I think my favorite visual though is the cabin itself in that whole setting right because look at how much Ash's car has aged in that time and Mia's just chilling on it like it's some fond thing from her memories although this is one small gripe I have with this movie. It seems like her and her family the friends have been coming here for years and this is the first time something spooky has happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:33

I think not yeah those cats been dead Chris was that the one thing that you were talking about that tied the two and that's how you knew it was 30 years later?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

Yes so we do see Ash's car there. So the setting is very worn. It's very aged but the theory behind it is that the Necronomicon can alter events and influence things in ways to kind of make history repeat itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:57

Interesting yeah because I was kind of confused when I saw the blood when they lifted up the rug going into the cellar door or the basement door at this cellar.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:07

It's all evidence definitely I think when you go into Ash versus Evil Dead you find out a lot more about the Necronomicon and you find out that it really does have this evil presence of its own separate from the deadites and demons and everything and it it it is its own villain really.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:23

So I do love when Ash goes down to the basement cellar aka I'm not sure what it is you get this avant-garde feeling of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and you get you know hells have eyes posters you know there's a red dragon in the book that they're looking through but also it's just this thing that you see in movies don't go in the basement don't start reading what's going on so I just love that because that was the first time I'm like yep why the hell are you going in the fucking basement? But this is OG shouldn't go in the basement. So I'm like alright we haven't seen this quite extensively yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

Yeah I I hear that honestly people go into the basements dumb fucks a lot of them stay out of there nothing there belongs to you. I did find it interesting the way they use a tape recorder to give all the exposition necessary for this movie. It's a little bit of a cop out but also I'll allow it it's totally fine and and kind of interesting to actually hear my favorite scene though is when shit pops off and we see that Cheryl's possessed because they're playing that card game and it's kind of funny she's guessing wrong and one of the guys is like honestly amazing she's like I know and then all of a sudden Cheryl's getting the cards correctly from her window perch and when things pop off in the way that they do and you get that pencil stabbing into the ankle that's just a point where it escalates and the movie doesn't let up after that.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:56

It's so rapid fire which I think is what makes it really intense because it's not like Ace of Spades King of Hearts it's like back to back to back to back and then boom I'm a demon I'm possessed.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:07

Chris you're totally right that the film does not let up at any point until it gets to my favorite scene which is the ending where Ash finally flings the Necronamicon into the fireplace and this is because that's the point in the movie where I was like okay I get why this is like a cult classic type of thing because you're at a point where you've seen so much gore especially for a movie of this time and just when you think it's like enough they just up the ante by having all those like giant demon hands sprout out of everyone's corpse and then there's just like more explosions of blood and they just like put gore on top of gore on top of gore when I thought that they were done and I was like alright okay I see it. I see I see why people love this.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:51

Truly this movie is but wait there's more but wait there's gore I don't know that I could pick a favorite scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:58

I'm gonna be really honest. I don't know that like one stands out to me that I'm like oh this is the best part of this movie. This is the my favorite scene to watch it's just the progression is just so interesting that I think it's as an as an entirety you know as a whole thing I really enjoy the way that it goes. I really wish that we were doing number two because number two to me is so much more interesting. But for favorite scene out of this one, I'm gonna go ahead and pick one it's just when the house is clearly possessed as well when the cabin starts showing the signs of the possession everywhere when things are shaking and rattling and moving and it seems like it's alive because that gets so more amped up in subsequent movies. And it's just really interesting because when you think of possession you think of you know like this person's possessed or maybe there's like a ghost in the house or something. You don't imagine the house itself coming to life and like wanting to attack you and stuff. And that's just super fun to watch. My favorite scene of 2013 though it's kind of a two-parter. So first of all Doofus reads the Necronomicon after he reads things saying don't read it out loud don't record it don't don't do anything like throw this thing into a fire right he's like I'm gonna like I'm gonna take a piece of paper and transfer it so I can read exactly what it says under there because I'm smart like that. He did the most right super Doofus. So that happens and then they go through this whole thing where he plays like I don't know why this is happening. This is crazy everything's horrible and then eventually he has to admit that like hey yeah by the way like I read this book and it said not to read it and that evil stuff would happen. But yeah that was my fault. It's like oh maybe it's a little bit late to mention that to everybody but that was my favorite scene because he finally had to own up to the fact that he's the idiot that caused this.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:45

Yeah he's being a little bitch honestly accountability is important but also fuck that guy. I think my favorite scene is the moment we get what I found to be the most shocking part of the movie when Mia actually comes back because not only does she come back she comes back her regular ass self which was really exciting.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:07

I thought for sure she'd come back as a deadeye and it'd just be you know a throwaway right it's just one last gotcha for her brother but when she made it out totally herself and her brother died I was like oh this movie's giving me literally everything I want it was really interesting because while we're watching this my wife at that point where we're getting like the you know effectively jumper cables she's like oh like when she dies does the demon then leave her because she's already dead and doesn't want to like possess her anymore and he's gonna bring her back and I was like thinking to myself no that's not how evil dead works of course not and then it literally happened I was like dang you're brilliant you knew exactly what was going to happen but also what a twist.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:49

Yeah I mean to be fair they did go great lengths to mention the fact that she was dead before and she OD'd and they brought her back with a defibrillator but whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:59

Yeah I was not expecting the plan to Frankenstein her back to life to actually work.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:03

So my favorite scene is definitely the most frightening scene of the movie when they're talking to her and I already knew it was going to happen. So they're talking to her and they're like hey you know you cannot leave like you've done this before and it's set up in the beginning so perfectly that she is recovering she's already done this so you know that people aren't going to believe her when she wants to leave so she's just saying there's someone that's not me and I don't know specifically what she says but eventually alludes to someone being in the room and I was like bet you they close the door and he's there. She's there. The evil is there nope close the door everything's fine she looks in the mirror and I swear to god I've never been so scared my freaking entire life jumped up the freaking eyes the way the body was moving oh gosh it was just perfect. The execution on that was perfect. Y'all probably wouldn't have fallen for it but I definitely did.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:02

We need to keep you away from mirrors oh I freaking hate them.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:05

Ever since I went to Haunt a house they were like don't look at mirrors don't do this my friends told me if you put two mirrors across from each other near each other you're gonna open up a portal so I stay away from that too.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:16

Honestly Alexis how the fuck are you gonna summon Tony Todd if you don't have a mirror to which to say Candyman five times oh gosh I'm not obviously I think that's just bad feng shui if you put them across from each other but I mean I'm just thinking design of the 90s so that was for other reasons.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:34

My favorite scene from the remake is not unlike one of my favorite scenes from another movie we reviewed recently Jennifer's Body and it's like a little bit of like a lesbian moment between Demon Mia and Natalie where she's like trying to kiss on her and she's like get the fuck off me you're a fucking zombie bitch. I hate this but then also like pulls out a box cutter and then licks it and at first I was like oh no she's gonna like slice the tongue a little bit with the box cutter but then like fully tongues it so hard as to split the tongue in half and just watching that full like not no cuts anything just seeing that brutality and that violence was so that's the part where I was like the most cringy and like ooh like squeamish because it just looked so painful and so real.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:20

Ooh you know what I'm glad you point that out because there were a couple other face moments in this movie that got me one Olivia having carved up her face pretty nasty in the bathroom and then the other when we realized that Mia had been boiling herself in hot water and we get that little like bubbling of her skin yeah so bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:45

Especially since I keep the shower so hot can you imagine if you just kept going with it the bones.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:51

You gotta lotion up after that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:53

Honestly yes you do have to lotion up after that you gotta moisturize. However I think that moment in the immediate aftermath it took that to happen for her brother to listen to her and get her out of there which granted I get it you're trying to do this for her own good so she can stay sober. However some weird shit had been happening before that and I think you could have for sure gotten her to a hospital you didn't have to let her take her out into town and then just let her free right I hated the brother in this movie absolutely hated him he disappears on her you make it think like you know he just has all this tremendous guilt and he just wants to be there for his sister now but fuck that he's a turd Ash sure was probably annoyed at having to take Cheryl out but he agreed to pretty quickly right he's like okay well if you don't want to be here I'll take you into town at least there was an effort made before she had to boil herself with water.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:51

Yeah he was pretty trash for sure there was just so many context clues in the beginning that you could tell it was obvious that he wasn't a part of her life and then now he's showing up one with his girlfriend which I would think is kind of inappropriate. I wouldn't be like hey to my boyfriend my sister's going through withdrawals you want to go and support me like no it's just like a family thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:16

Hey babe do you want to meet my family? Awesome my sister's a heroin addict we want to just force her into rehab but we want to get her clean first cold turkey oh my god we want to take her to a shack we want to throw her heroin down the well pretty sketch but it's gonna be a good time you down we do it every couple years or so yeah it's just like very tragic like just so freaking weird like all of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:41

Yeah he was just he was cringy to me for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:45

Okay but shifting perspective here how do you respond if you're Natalie in this situation? Does she know exactly what she's walking into?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:52

Um if you have a healthy relationship I think you should be able to say babe not feeling like it I rather stay back.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:01

I also would have been like this sounds like a horrible idea take her to a hospital she needs medical supervision of some sort or do we think it was more like the fiance and ready or not who just didn't tell her anything about what was happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:12

Right. Most likely that honestly is Natalie the real victim she's doesn't really have much presence at all. She's just kind of in the background of everything watching she's the outsider in this situation and she loses her fucking arm and then her life for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:25

You want to talk about character development oh man I mean let's talk about some bad characters though because Eric is a huge douche and I did feel bad for him when he had to pull the needle from his eye socket. Oh that was fairly horrible and then of course that whole side of his face went numb and everything. But oh super pessimistic just so pessimistic and I'm not saying you should have been the most positive human being during this crisis because obviously bad stuff is happening but just kept shooting everybody down constantly and honestly I think he's kind of the major driving force behind keeping her there and not letting Mia go and get some help. Although Olivia was was also a huge part of that as well like major part of being like no whatever this is all her fault let her suffer. I'm doing everything they would do in the hospital I'm like are you though? Are you you're also peeing yourself and getting possessed so feel like you're not oh come on give her a break okay so she's doing everything they do in the hospital where's the IV bag where's the methadone where's the coming off slowly and easily and making sense out of it. Nope it was just like let her suffer and get through it. That girl could have died.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:35

Maybe she couldn't bring all that she's doing everything they do in a hospital except with more bitterness.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:40

With a little bit of vendetta in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:41

She's just over having to explain what happened to her to her brother. She's like I've already explained this to you let us deal with this and just sit back and relax and watch what's about to go down but just not what you think is about to go down.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:55

I can kind of get it a little bit though. Like Olivia feels like the character that was dealing the most like firsthand with Mia's addiction and I'm somebody who has like very little patience and sometimes not a lot of empathy and I can understand like getting really frustrated seeing somebody you care about make the same mistakes over and over again but like you can't care enough for them. They have to do it. But I thought it was really interesting how they use that addiction perspective to kind of be the reason they didn't believe her when she came back from outside and was like we have to get the fuck out of here. Crazy shit is happening because in the original it was like okay well you're just like not listening to your friend who was definitely just attacked by some trees for real. But they didn't believe her this time because they were viewing her through the eyes of her addiction and I like the way that that kind of made it make more sense and added an extra layer of color. But specifically for me, Mia's character I think had such a great journey that I did not expect at all. And I don't know if anybody else thought this or picked up on this but I felt like the abomination that crawled out of the ground at the end was very much like her mom coming out of the grave to like haunt her one last time because that's kind of what sent her on this like spiral of addiction and then like her facing her demons once and for all like killing the mom figure and then like kind of like moving forward. I thought that was really compelling but I have one question how could you not return to using the hardest drugs of all drugs after an experience like this?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

Valid question to your first question I just thought she was facing her addiction. I didn't like put the put the thing together for it to be like her facing the representation and the reincarnation of her mother specifically I thought it was going to be like a little bit of like a let's go through the nose of fighting your demons literally and figuratively on this weekend getaway.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:43

But throw your mommy issues in there while we're at it.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:45

Really just working out all the demons.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:47

Now let's flip back in time though and look at 1981 because those these are some interesting people here, right? I mean in both situations we have a main character and their sister and their significant other. So I do like the parallels there but it is really it's kind of made unclear as to who is who so Ash obviously our main character his sister is Cheryl who is assaulted by the trees and then his girlfriend is Linda who's like the the perky cheerleader type with the thick turtleneck. With the thick turtleneck that's right and then Scotty and Shelly you know they're just cool they're friends or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:23

Although Scotty is more than useless. I think he actually caused most of the issues from 1981.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:28

They were all pretty shallow to me except for Ash and Ash you know he gets progressively better. So this is just you know this is his debut.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:37

That's right and he's wearing moccasins so major credit because I love moccasins.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:41

Major credit. But how is Linda sleeping through all this she's just like chilling in the room until she becomes possessed I'm like what the hell she was she must be a heavy sleeper for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:53

Yeah possession takes a heavy toll on the body yeah I mean look at Linda Blair and The Exorcist little Regan was uh just bed rest the whole time.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:00

I didn't realize that Linda Blair obviously in the exorcist and now we have Linda playing the possessed girlfriend interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:08

Yeah you know if you're if you're not levitating you're hibernating.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:12

The characters honestly in the original blurred together so much for me in just an amalgamation of like limbs and wounds and pus and ooze but Ash definitely made an impact. For some reason I don't know why but I thought for sure David Tennant was Ash and when I saw this Ash I was like oh maybe I'm thinking of a different movie and then they were like oh Ash and I was like oh no it's definitely this guy and as I was watching it I was like at first you don't look at him and think like oh wow super hot but after a while you're kind of like he's hot he's hot in the same way that like Kirsten Dunn's love interest from Bring It On was hot.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:45

Yes just that one proud exclamation of yes he was hot like a very real in person hot like not some V star hot like an everyday hot which I appreciate an everyday hot.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:58

Tangible attainable hot

SPEAKER_00 1:28:00

I'll be honest. One of the things that I've known of the Evil Dead franchise is just how handsome Bruce Campbell is.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:05

Yeah, I've been Googling him all night, and he is very handsome. And now that he's aged, I think he's aged really well. And that's like aging goals right there, is Bruce Campbell.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:13

Are you gonna ask him what cream he uses, Mac?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:15

I would probably more call it like lotion or something than cream, but sure. Sure. We'll go with what's your what's your skincare regimen?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:24

It's dead. Deadite cream corn.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:27

Keeps the skin young.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:28

Now, after comparing the characters between the two movies, even though one is fairly two-dimensional, I'm curious, Chris, how the two are going to stack up for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:36

I'm curious too, Mac, but look, I think I've made it very, very, very clear that the worst part of both of these movies is the assault by the trees. Again, could have just wrapped the limbs, could have smacked her around a little bit, you know, could have restrained her and had some like creepy uh figure off in the distance, maybe carving at her or something. Did not need to take it to a primitive, like barbaric sexual angle, entirely unnecessary. If I ever watch this movie again, we'll see. But I don't want to fucking see those scenes. I really don't. They added absolutely fucking nothing to this.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:19

So you're not alone there? Sam Raimi also agrees with you and has said it was unnecessarily gratuitous and a little too brutal. He's also said, my goal was not to offend people, my judgment was a little wrong at the time. So there's there's regret for that scene being made.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:35

I think it's also interesting though, right? He's in his very early 20s, so he's like on the cusp of being an adult at this point in his life. And I think it's even interesting, right, going back back to what you were saying about you know, it doesn't hit you when you watch this as a kid. It didn't really hit you as a young man. But now that you've grown up and you've experienced more of the world, you see the filters through which this movie is viewed through the experience of the women in your life and the women around you. And it's frustrating that it takes, not in your case, right? It's frustrating that it takes that perspective, right? Just like age and exposure because Sam Raimi didn't even occur to him, right? I remember hearing this quote, and he's like, I didn't mean to offend anyone. Okay, but I mean, if you tell a bad joke, that may be offensive, right? But what you did was completely subject this woman to sexual assault by possessed weeds in a movie, right? It's just it's just weird. It's weird, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:31

I think it would have been so much more effective had the entirety of the scene been cut out. See the woods, see their possessed, be really scared, run away being attacked by them, and then cut, you're back at the cabin. That's all we need.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:44

Do you know that actress didn't even know what that wasn't gonna happen in that scene?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:48

That's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:49

That's horrible. She knew that the vines were wrapping around, she knew that her legs would be spread, right? And that she'd be that kind of like held, but the other stick going in was completely done in post-production, and she was shocked when she saw it.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:02

Wow, that's nuts. That was also one of the worst parts for the 1981 Evil Dead, but also an honorable mention after that is some of the makeup after they become evil, uh dead per se, and especially Scott, he ends up looking somehow like the dog from the shining, the guy dog, the guy who dressed up as a dog in the shining. Somehow his face looked like that. And I was very confused. I'm like, why does he look like a dog? Mostly the face of the guy in the shining.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:40

So, Paris, I don't know if you're with me here. Um, I know there are some parts that are weaker, but I I don't think you can get past tree rape. I think that is just inherently the worst part of each film. And should be cut. Honestly, I I think they should make a new cut without the scene in it.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:57

So it's interesting that you mentioned that this was done in post, Chris, the last part, because as I was watching it, I was like, ooh, this is like a little like kind of going like a little too far. And then when that final, like almost like log came and just like hit her right in the pelvis, I was like, oh my god, my jaw was on the floor. I literally gagged. I was like, Are you really? We're just gonna the one time you want to be over the top and campy in your face is this. I have terrible choice, poor taste. I'm glad he regrets it. I did think that it was handled a little bit better in the remake because it felt more like it was um like a ritual demon insemination kind of moment, and you have the other like demon like watching her do it as it happens, and she's like, You're in this now with me, um, but still could have done that in a hundred different ways that didn't involve penetration.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:49

Agreed. The exploitation involved with Cheryl's clothes being ripped off, the weeds caressing her nipples, right? Yeah, it's all fucking very male gazy and sexual, and it's just you can't chalk it up as anything but that.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:03

Yeah, I think the correct way to approach this if you're going to penetrate a human body is through the nose. That is the only way penetration with twigs is gonna be okay because it's like, okay, we're going into your brain, and that I think would have been fine, but any other combination, maybe ears, maybe ears, but that's about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:18

Mouth, I would agree with mouth.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:20

Mouth, though, is still too sexual.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:22

Yeah, Paris, I totally agree with you. 2013 did it slightly better, but still I feel like they could have been left out. I feel like at this point in 2013 you knew not to do that, but even then I don't think it mattered.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:39

I think it's something that wouldn't come in now. I don't think you'd make this movie this exact way down. I really don't. But I will say that while I don't care to watch the 1981 version, I checked that box, right of passage, it's done. I may watch the 2013 if I have a way to just skip over that scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:01

I would re-watch the 1981. I don't think I would rewatch the 2013 remake. I think I prefer the original canon.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:08

Well, I said in my little scoring synopsis that I definitely would watch the 2013 version again, and I can't wait to, and I still hold true to that. I'd also say the same thing for the OG version. I think it's worth watching. I wish uh and probably will skip over that portion, especially if I'm watching it this Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, which I feel like I'll do pretty soon now that's fresh in my head, where I don't have to go back and watch the first one.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:36

I will never watch the original, and I will definitely re-watch the remake.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:41

Well, delightful. Let's go ahead and do our last sort of business here where we compare these movies officially head to head and see which one wins out. The 1981 original or the 2013 reboot, which has the better visuals?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:54

2013.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:55

1981.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:56

2013.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:57

2013 by a wide margin, because there were glimpses of brilliance in 1981, but 2013 just had it all figured out. But what about the better approach to its story?

SPEAKER_04 1:35:08

2013.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:09

2013.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:11

Absolutely 2013.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:12

Unanimous here. And what about our performances? I'm gonna go with 2013. I'm gonna go with OG.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:18

I'm also gonna go with 1981.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:20

Oh, none of them were great. For Mia and Mia alone, 2013.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:24

While we may be split down the middle on which movie had the better performances, it sounds like we generally preferred the 2013 and most elements, but let's see what Mac has in store for us for fact or fiction.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:35

Number one, the shotgun used in Evil Dead 1981 used real live ammunition. Fact.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:42

I want to say fact because it was the wild, wild west back then.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:45

But also low budget, so maybe no fiction. This one's a fact, and it probably has to do with the budget. Most everything was real on screen that you saw, but Bruce Campbell said, We are going to rural Tennessee, 1979, where there's moonshine, squatters, and it was the real deal. The South was the South in 1979. There was no franchise this or franchise that. It was a completely different world and mentality. We used real ammunition in the shotgun, and we shot it at a real cabin in the woods, with hunters and howling dogs in the background. Pretty unsafe, if you ask me. But number two, while we didn't enjoy the infamous tree scene, Bruce Campbell turned things around by smoking some trees during filming. Oh, yeah, probably. Fiction. Nope. The word is fact. Fact.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:25

Probably is a pothead. Not sure if he smoked it on set, so saying that's a fiction.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:32

This one's a fact, and I have a quote as well. We did in fact smoke marijuana because we had heard in the famous Jack Nicholson movie, Five Easy Pieces, no easy writer, that he smoked like 47 joints before he shot that scene. And I thought if he can go on to become a very famous, notable actor, we can do the same thing. And I had never smoked before I was 21, and we also found out that the weed in Tennessee was pretty good, apparently. And so we did not really film the scene successfully.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:56

That's why Jack Nicholson is always a freaking crazy looking and acting in every freaking movie. Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:06

Right. Number three. One of the titles considered for the movie was Book of the Dead, which would have been a fitting title, but another option was these bitches are witches.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:14

Fiction.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:14

I don't want that to be true. Fiction. No, but this one's a fact. Oh my god. I think they made the correct choice, obviously. They went through a bunch of different titles over the course of time, but they landed in the right place.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:26

These bitches or witches felt like a fiction especially curated for Paris.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:31

Yeah. Just for you. Number four. Sam Raimi worked so hard filming The Evil Dead that he deprived himself of sleep to the point of vomiting during a shoot.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:40

Fact.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:40

Honestly, I don't think you need to be sleep deprived to vomit at the sight of some of this stuff. So fact. This one's a fiction, but he did pass out. They filmed all night and he wrote during the day, working effectively every hour of the day. The others splashed him with a bucket of ice water just to wake him up. That's dedication right there. And finally, number five, the forest where the 2013 remake was shot was also used for TV shows that heavily featured Bruce Campbell, Hercules, and Xena Warrior Princess.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:06

Fact.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:07

Honestly, I love Xena Warrior Princess, so I just want this to be true. Let's say fact. We're gonna go fact. I will say this is one of those things that's like supposedly I haven't looked too far into it, so if you know that it's fact, let us know. If you know that it's fiction, let us know. But according to the internet, this is what happened. Yay. And that's been fact or fiction.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:26

What an educational experience, Mac. I'm glad you found some other books to read that Horn made of human flesh. Well, there you have it, folks. The 1981 original, The Evil Dead, has earned three slashes and one hack, whereas its 2013 modernized reboot has earned a universal slash. Now, we've had a lot to talk about here. Obviously, this movie is iconic and there are a lot of feelings that go either way, so we want to know what you think. Keep in mind there are a number of ways you can reach out to us, starting with our website, hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:55

Or on our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And if you have ever been possessed, you can also reach out to our Hackerslash Hotline. You can leave us a voicemail at 757-606-0128 or visit hackerslash.com slash contact to send us an audio message.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:13

Or if you are such a huge Bruce Campbell fan that you too have seen, my name is Bruce, you can send us an email to feedback at hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:20

If you've enjoyed listening to this episode, consider becoming one of our patrons. You can visit patreon.com slash hacker slash to earn cool perks for as low as $1 a month.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:28

We'll see you next time, folks. And remember, don't read books found in basements. Bye.