I don’t think I need to write a synopsis here. My shoulder is sore today because yesterday I rode through town in a parade on the back of a convertible waving at everyone and throwing candy for breast cancer awareness (seriously, I did) and I’m not going to type a lot. What can I add to everything already said about this classic? It’s not October until I’ve watched The Evil Dead.

A few years ago a friend who is kind of a horror tourist in October asked me to take him to a horror movie, so I took him to a midnight showing of The Evil Dead. The crowd laughed all the way through the movie like it was Airplane or something and I was confused; then my friend said he could see that Bruce Campbell was cute and all but he didn’t get why I would take him to this as a great example of a horror movie.

So I showed it to my then teenaged nephew when he was first getting into horror movies, and he laughed all the way through it and then made me watch The Midnight Meat Train. And he is 21 now and still brings up the time I showed him that hilarious movie!

I don’t get it! What is so funny? I don’t find The Evil Dead one bit campy! The camera representing demons watching them as they drive to the house, that twisted bridge, the recording of the guy reading that incantation, the bones hanging in the shed, the white eyeballs, the possessed hand drawing, the horrible laughing, the screeching strings, even something as simple as the porch swing thumping…everything about this movie works for me on a horror level. Even the washed out 70s haze color palette is creepy, because everything about the 70s was sort of trippy and menacing…and yes, I know the date says 1981, but this looks like every 70s movie. And oh, the pencil to the ankle scene, talk about your body horror!

Here’s the thing that it comes down to with every supernatural horror movie for me. You can laugh all you want, but if the events of this film actually happened to you, you’d be terrified beyond all rational thought. So have some respect for the Deadites, ya turkeys!