Evil Dead - new vs. old versions

[JesseMartin]

Since most of you who post are a few years older than me, I'll assume that some have seen the original Sam Raimi Evil Dead trilogy. I've only seen the most well-known "Army of Darkness" third installment, and tonight I watched the reboot.

I'm curious, since the first 2 parts of the original series aren't easy to find, if any of you saw those as well as the new one, and if they're similar (without too many spoilers of course).

Even those who haven't seen Army of Darkness can tell just from the cover art that Bruce Campbell has a chainsaw for an arm, and from the "recap" at the beginning, which I think is also in the trailer, it seems like it was just him and maybe one other person around when he found the book. So before I eventually find the first two to watch, here are my questions:

1) Did they "rewrite" the series as they went along with the first trilogy, i.e. did they change the history to fit the new movies, or were they just actual sequels?

2) Based on the events in the first two, even though there were changes in this one that seem obvious even to someone who didn't see the originals, does it seem as though they consolidated anything from the first two? By this I mean if they intended to rewrite the entire series, would this end as a new version of the first, or would it end where the second apparently ended before you get to the Army of Darkness movie?

I have to say, comparing the style of the 3rd in the original series to this one, they took something fairly corny and fun and changed it to something with more realistic gore. It wasn't very original in the retelling, as it was based on a cult hit that has been copied and revisited so many times, but definitely had a much more "adult" feel than the one part of the original trilogy I've seen. So with that, I'd definitely avoid watching it with young kids, though the other I've seen was cheesy enough that it wouldn't be so bad for pre-teens.

Overall, if you like popcorn films and horror movies, this is fun and well-made but don't expect anything totally new or groundbreaking, just a very solid horror remake a la "Halloween".

[oldguystudent]

The original Evil Dead is on Netflix if you want to check it out. The very first movie was actually meant to be a straight up horror flick, but it was so bad, that people watched it to laugh at it. To Raimi's credit, they just kinda went with it, and the campiness that we all know and love was purposefully written into the script. Army of Darkness was just a straight up comedy that really was a feature of how much better Bruce Campbell is than Jim Carey at slap stick, face manipulating, physical comedy. It had little to do with the first two movies.

All of this is from memory, so pardon me film buffs if I'm incorrect on anything.

[LongJim]

I have not seen the reboot yet, but one thing to keep in mind about the original Evil Dead is that it is very much a product of its time. In that way, it was groundbreaking, because it really pushed the envelope of what a director could get away with as far as gore as depicted onscreen. ED came out in 1981. A couple of years before, Dawn of the Dead was released with an "unrated" designation, and would have been given an X for violence/gore. I remember being amazed at the shotgun-to-the-head zombie scene in that movie, as well as the helicopter blade decap. Totally ridiculous--but cool! "How are they gonna kill this one!?"

Nothing like that had been shown before that was that graphic. The camera didn't "look away", but reveled in the destruction and mayhem.

ED, in my opinion, upped the ante. Before those two movies, most gore depicted onscreen was quick-cut or suggested, and extreme scenes of body mutilation was fairly taboo. Now, we can talk about stuff like the Italian splatter films and Herschell Gordon Lewis stuff in the 60's, but those were definitely either intended for their national audience, or real C-level, cow-heart/chicken blood drive in stuff, and nowhere near as shocking as what Raimi, Romero, (or more accurately--Tom Savini) came up with.

I used to catch Dawn at the twin theatres in Austin at Northcross Mall. They would only show it at midnight, and this was a couple of years after ED came out. That kind of graphic-yet-cartoony mutilation splatter film was still considered fairly taboo stuff. You can gradually trace acceptance/tolerance of this type of realistic depiction of violence with stuff like Mortal Kombat, and then DOOM, and now to Left 4 Dead and that sort of thing. In many ways, the limits have been reached with movies. But for its time, ED was--although cartoonish--pretty shocking.

Edited August 5, 2013 by LongJim

[gksmith]

I didn't get to see either one of them but I really want to see the Bruce Campbell version