Evil Dead and the Cabin in the Woods

Cafe Society
1

Entertainment Weekly says: “. . . The Evil Dead is just your basic ‘kids at a remote cabin in the woods foolishly read forbidden book and unleash demons’ movie.”

Is this true. . .I really can’t think of a movie prior to The Evil Dead that revolves around “kids at a remote cabin in the woods foolishly read forbidden book and unleash demons”. . .

Can anyone name these other movies? I’d love to see them. Or that just wrong.

2

Within the Woods, allowing for some pre-discovering Lovecraft deviations? They might have meant it combines tried-and-true tropes. It’s not like Raimi is known being inventive, He combines things he likes in a novel manner, which is why we have Deadite Stooges.

Rotten Tomatoes “similar films” link. There might be some answers but you’ll have to sort through a lot of chaff, like it seems it lists many “inspired by” movies, and no way to sort by date.

3

I suspect this is one of those cases where the first movie to do something well has been aped so often that it’s hard to remember how innovative it was at the time.

4

Equinox

5

There was Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things which came out in 1972.

6

I always thought Evil Dead started the teenagers killed in a wooded cabin story. It was based on a high school project Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell filmed. Sam and Bruce did a lot of amateur high school film projects. The bootleg high school film is out on the net and Ebay. (or it was a few years ago) It’s very clear that its an early version of Evil Dead. This is all covered in the Evil Dead documentary that is included with the DVD.

Evil Dead spawned a bunch of 80’s horror flicks. Friday the 13 was a teenager slasher film at a wooded summer camp. Several sequels were in that same location.

7

I think the Godfather has a similar problem.

8

Within the Woods has its own imdb listing. Not bad for a amateur high school project.

9

Apparently you can watch Equinox on Hulu Plus
http://www.hulu.com/watch/215887

10

Believe it or not, Friday the 13th and The Evil Dead began filming around the same time and Friday the 13th was released almost two years before The Evil Dead.

11

Interesting. I didn’t realize they were filmed about the same time. Sam’s investor money ran out and it took years to finally finish Evil Dead.

12

I presume this was a review of the original and not the recent remake?