Director Sam Raimi and good friend Bruce Campbell set out to make a real scary movie…although filmed on 16mm, The Evil Dead is good enough to be your next nightmare and a hell of a lot better than your run of the mill slice and dice. Campbell plays Ash Williams, one of five college friends set out to have a wild weekend in the woods. Two guys…three girls journey to a remote cabin, of course in the middle of the woods. And the woods whisper “Join Us”. The group stumbles upon a book and a tape recorder belonging to the previous inhabitants, warning of evil spirits lurking in the woods. When the dead come out to play, the newest victims turn into horrid ghouls. Ash, who at heart is a cowardly pansy, turns out to be the macho, macho man to the rescue. It takes courage, a shotgun and a chainsaw.

When the flesh-eating demons start their attack, the blood doesn’t just ooze; it splatters, gushes and flows by the bucketful. And there is the scene where one of the girls is beckoned into the woods only to be attacked and raped by a…tree?! Cheap special effects galore decorate this vacation to a little north of Hell. The comedy was unintentional. It is a product of bad acting by actors with little or no experience. But still, Raimi as writer and director has stumbled upon something here. The Evil Dead more than deserves its youth restricted rating.

The second Halloween film by Rob Zombie is set to release in theatres August 28th. If this is anything like the first film, it should never have been made. Assuming Rob Zombie hasn’t changed drastically, the only thing this movie will have is vulgarity, nudity, violence and profanity.

He absolutely butchered a classic film and I’m sure Moustapha is rolling in his grave. There isn’t one character in the film that doesn’t make a sexual reference or swear. I don’t know about you, but who wants to sit through two hours of such sad disgusting characters?

The original film was a simple, straight-ahead suspense film had little blood and intense suspense driven partly by the fact that the Michael Myers wasn’t jumping out of the shadows in every scene. What made the original so scary was the fact that Myers often did not appear at times when the audience was sure he would jump out. In Zombie’s version, Myers popped out at every turn, and always in the same way, the victim in front, crawling or running away, with him behind ready for an attack. It was boring and predictable.

To be honest, I’m not expecting much more of the new film. Sure the trailers are enticing; but, they were the first time around and that wasn’t anything more than a huge waste of time and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Take my advice; don’t waste your money on seeing this in theatres.

Here’s a synopsis of the new film pulled from IMDB:

“Picking up right where the first film left off, Laurie is taken to the hospital after supposedly killing the man who was responsible for the deaths of several people in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

However, her stay at Haddonfield General becomes very brief when a very much alive Michael appears once more, brutally murdering everyone in the hospital to find his sister. Michael disappears, and Laurie survives the infamous Halloween massacre, but is still haunted by it years later.

Laurie struggles to come to terms with her dark past, or at least forget it. But the supposedly dead Michael Myers has other plans, and as the anniversary of his massacre approaches, he returns to Haddonfield once more, with a family reunion planned that Laurie will never forget.”