Open Wide - THE GATE

I’m a parent, and as a parent, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the most essential task every parent must face.  Obviously, I’m talking about introducing my offspring to horror movies.  It’s a challenging endeavor.  Start off too lightweight and they can’t get invested.  Go too strong, they have nightmares, and your wife has another reason to kill you (your significant other's reactions may vary).  

Picking the right decade is key.  PG horror from the ‘70s—GRIZZLY, for example—is a poor choice as entry level horror.  “See Timmy, the big bad bear didn’t eat the little boy, it just tore his leg off.  As long as he gets quick medical care, there’s a good chance he won’t die of massive blood loss.” 

Go for the sweet spot, the ‘80s.  For my money, the '80s had the best balance of chills and adventure, nail-biting moments without the permanent psychological scars.  GREMLINS is the gold standard, of course, but along similar lines is the tale of innocent, preteen demon summoning gone wrong, 1987's THE GATE.

The Capsule:

Glen (Stephen Dorff) is going through a rough patch.  His older sister, Al (Christa Denton) wants to spend more time with her lame teen friends than with him.  His parents confiscated all his model rockets after a miscalculated launch almost sets the roof on fire.  His treehouse got demolished in a storm.  And now a gate to hell is opening in his backyard.  Luckily, his best friend, Terry (Louis Tripp), has the answer to closing the gate, thanks to his substantial understanding of heavy metal music.  Unluckily, Terry isn’t very good at incantations, and soon freaky little demons are prowling Glen’s house, looking for a couple of sacrifices to finish the ritual.  When the big boss demon wakes up, the only thing standing in the way of hell on Earth is one grounded 11 year old.

Man, I love THE GATE.  At the time it came out, it was just what I was looking for.  Though I had a taste for horror by then, it hadn’t grown into a full obsession.  I wasn’t too jaded to be insulted by the notion of PG-13 kid’s horror movie.  There’s nothing explicit about it, no gore or nudity, very little swearing.  You could call it wholesome, even.  Glen (lil’ Stephen Dorff, long before he tried to ice skate uphill as Deacon Frost in BLADE) is just a regular kid with a bowl cut.  Terry (lil’ Louis Tripp, back when his teeth were way too large for his tiny mouth) tries to be all metal and dark, but he’s still 100% a suburban dweeb.  Big sis Al initially seems to be gravitating towards the teen tropes of boys and booze, but her close relationship with Glen steers her back to Team Dork. All the wholesomeness works in the movie’s favor, because you don’t want to see these kids get hurt. 

Between all the demons, zombies, and beasties under the bed, there is no shortage of things to hurt them.  In addition to the standard monster movie scares,though, THE GATE also mines more relatable childhood fears, like abandonment, and not being able to protect those you care about.  Sometimes the anxieties are obvious, like the scene when Glen’s parents show up at a stressful moment.  The dad is all smiles when Glen runs up and hugs him, but then yells “You’ve been baaaad!” and starts to strangle the kid.  That is your first clue that it might not really be Glen’s real dad.  The next clue is when Glen pushes his fingers through his dad’s face and goo ruptures out like it was a month old jack-o-lantern.  I think we've all had this dream before.

Other times it can be subtle, like when the family picture Glen passes several times eventually changes to show the rest of his family as bloody corpses.  Glen notices, but chooses to keep it to himself.  Not a great morale booster.

The whole premise relies on some startling coincidences. Terry just so happens to own the super rare Sacrafyx double LP fold-out album with a booklet that describes the exact events that are about to happen, along with instructions to prevent the demon apocalypse.  It is also worth noting that on Terry’s wall covered in heavy metal posters and pentagrams is a lone Duran Duran poster.  I’m not certain this has anything to do with demonic visitations, though.

A lot of the plot conveniences could be chalked up to the mystical influences seeping out of the gate.  There is a higher—or lower—power at work, and each step of the rather lengthy and detailed gate opening ritual falls into place like a Rube Goldberg machine.  The kids first crack open the gate by digging out a geode.  When they take it back to Glen's room and crack it open (it’s filled with smoke and pink neon, as all things in the ‘80s were), it rolls over one of those old magic slate toys, etching an ancient incantation into the surface.  Glen dumbly reads it aloud, just like a kid's version of EVIL DEAD.  (There is also a nod to the Room 237 scene from THE SHINING, when Terry thinks he´s hugging his thought-to-be-dead mom, but it turns out to be Glen’s very dead sheepdog, Angus.)  

Eventually the visions and illusions give way to more physical threats, as a hoard of one foot tall demon minions crawl out of the gate.  I don’t want to be one of those guys who goes on and on about the virtues of practical effects, but this shit is pure magic.  The effects team used a combination of stop motion, guys in suits, and perfectly blended forced perspective to pull off some stunning creature work.  I challenge anyone who even remotely digs monsters not to fall in love with these ugly imp bastards.  

These nether realm half-pints aren’t much of a threat individually (their mouths are even smaller than Terry’s), but when they work as a group, they are full of surprises.  When Al knocks over a zombie workman, the body bursts into a half dozen minions when it hits the floor, like the monster version of kids stacked up under a trench coat pretending to be an adult.  It goes the other way too.  When one minion gets its arm stuck in a door, the arm falls off and breaks into a bunch of maggots that wiggle under the door.  To this day, these are some of the most inventive effects gags I've ever seen.  

Using such an ordinary kid like Glen as the main character really emphasizes the feeling of helplessness and insecurity.  Al is the brave one, taking the danger head on (she even shotguns a zombie).  Terry is the smart one, or at least the one with the ideas.  Glen is powerless to save them, and you can feel his desperation when he’s left all alone.  It’s almost like the demons purposefully ignored him because he’s not worth the effort.  And just when he gets a spark of hope of how he can stop the demons…oh, shit, time to meet the big guy.

I have loved a lot of monsters in my day (metaphorically), and THE GATE’s Demon Lord holds a special spot in my heart.  It is gorgeously modeled, the most impressive stop motion creature this side of Harryhausen.  The design is original and beautifully detailed.  Just as the minions seem believably tiny, the Demon Lord feels massive.  Glen has to be on the second level balcony to even come eye to eye with it.  Four eyes, in fact, six arms, two tentacles, and that’s just the part jutting out of the living room sized hole it rose from.  Who knows how much farther down its serpentine body goes?  

Its interaction with Glen always fascinated me.  The big guy is terrifying and awe inspiring, but it isn’t vicious.  More than anything, it seems to simply be curious when it noticed the petrified boy quaking before it.  It grabs Glen’s hand and dangles him in front of its face, studying him like it never saw a human before.  Then it gently places its hand on Glen’s head for a moment, lets go of him, and withdraws back into its pit. 

I was puzzled.  Had I misjudged this creature?  Did its fearsome appearance belie a deeper intelligence, simply wanting to communicate with humans?  Was there something—HOLY FUCK, IT STUCK AN EYE IN GLEN’S PALM!!!  Okay, so it’s not misunderstood, it’s just an asshole.  Sparing the weakest person just to be its supernatural snitch bitch in the human world  is a serious dick move.   

Glen has no intention of being a seeing eye-hand dog, though, and after an appropriate amount of screaming, he politely declines the Demon Lord’s offer by way of stabbing a shard of glass into his brand new palm peeper.  The big guy doesn't think much of this decision, and soon a very pissed off demon is on his way back up.

Like Terry’s handy demon guidebook, Glen’s plan to close the gate is a bit contrived, but it’s so well executed that I don´t care.  In this case, it’s a reverse Rube Goldberg.  Every time the kid thinks he’s ready, he has to fix another problem, with an enormous, angry-ass demon getting closer every second.  Director Tibor Takács ruthlessly teases out the climax for all it’s worth.  Sure, the solution makes zero sense when you think about it, but it fits the movie's fairy tale logic.

It all wraps up with a [Spoiler] happy ending.  Al and Terry return unharmed.  Glen even gets his dead dog back, but no longer dead.  This isn’t one of those “was it all a dream” cop outs where everything returns to normal, though.  Their house is still totally fucked up.  I don’t know how Glen and Al are going to explain the giant hole in their living room to their parents.  Guaranteed, it’s the last time they let Al babysit.   

So instead of starting your kiddo off with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or THE BABADOOK, ease them into bloody waters with something like THE GATE.  It's creepy, innovative fun that will teach them an important lesson: in an emergency, a Barbie doll leg makes an excellent eye gouger.  And also something about bravery or whatnot.  

C Chaka

You Succubus - JENNIFER’S BODY

As Black History Month leads into Women’s History Month, Schizocinema revs up a March full of female directors!  We start off the month, slightly late, with Karyn Kusama.  The director shines in smaller, intimate movies like THE INITIATION, and her debut, GIRLFIGHT, but her big budget studio work is always a bit of a catastrophe.  Despite the studio interference, second guessing, and poor marketing there is still something about them that pulls me in.  Take her sci-fi epic, Æon Flux.  That movie is all over the place, but so uniquely bonkers that I kind of love it.  One woman has hands for feet.  People send liquid email.  A flower grows out of Frances McDormand’s mouth.  It’s great.  With that in mind, I braved a look at her next, unfavorably received feature, the 2009 high school horror, JENNIFER’S BODY.  Would the Kusama magic hold?  

The Capsule:

Needy’s (Amanda Seyfried) BFF is the worst.  She is vapid, rude, and obnoxious.  She constantly takes advantage of Needy, and tries to sabotage her relationship with her boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons).  She has all the boys in town wrapped around her little finger.  And she occasionally eats them.  This latest development has Needy suspecting that her lifelong pal, Jennifer (Megan Fox), has become a Succubus. Demonically, not symbolically .  It all started the night Jennifer rode off with that terrible emo band, Low Shoulder, and came back drenched in blood.  Turns out they were a bunch of Satanists and their virgin sacrifice had unexpected results.  Jennifer’s transformation from high school bitch to hell bitch makes Needy seriously reappraise their friendship. When Jennifer sets her hungry eyes on Chip, Needy knows it's time for a permanent break up with her beastie bestie.  The only question is, who gets broken?

Between writer Diablo Cody’s post-JUNO backlash (which I didn’t understand) and Megan Fox’s post-TRANSFORMERS backlash (totally understood), JENNIFER’S BODY was heavily dumped on when it came out.  Not that I put much stock in word of mouth, but the trailer didn’t grab me, so I let the movie slip by.  I was a little leery even after realizing Kusama directed it, so this was my first watch.  And while it was not on the glorious mindfuck level of Æon Flux, I'm happy to say it has the Kusama magic touch. 

That goes for the Director’s Cut, at least, which is the only version I’ve seen.  Starting with the Director’s Cut or extended cut is not always a smart move, since theatrical cuts tend to be leaner and better paced.  In this case, though, I believe it was the right call.  From what I’ve heard, Kusama’s cut fleshes out Seyfried’s character a little more.  It starts with Needy in a mental institution, seemingly with good justification (she’s a K-I-C-K-E-R, just ask that poor nutritionist).  After she is thrown into solitary confinement, the movie flashes back to how she came to such an antisocial state.  Well, first there is a flashback to her peering in Jennifer’s window like a stalker (the beginning of the Theatrical cut), then we fully flashback to the beginning of her tale.   A little strange structurally, but effective.  The Kusama way.

Under all the blood and carnage, the heart of the story is about how abusive girls can be to each other under the veil of friendship.  Jennifer is clearly a horrible person even before becoming demonified.  She uses Needy as her non-threatening wingman (wingwoman? winglady?), a smaller gem to make the big one more impressive.  Needy lets Jennifer dictate how she dresses and where they go, insuring just the right level of shadow for her to remain in.  

Despite her name, Needy isn’t a complete doormat, though.  Kusama makes the relationship believable.  They casually trade insults and seem to enjoy each other’s company, as long as Jennifer is in the spotlight.  Needy puts up with Jennifer’s bullshit because she idolizes her friend, and vicariously enjoys the attention she isn’t confident enough to attract on her own.  She’s also got a secret crush on her, which Jennifer subtly (and later, not so subtly) uses as leverage.  Needy’s depth makes her easy to connect with, and gives her arc from pushover to ass kicker a sense of honesty as she realizes that Jennifer’s self-esteem hinged on her as much as, if not more than, the other way around.  

This isn’t directly related, but I came to a weird conclusion when watching this just now.   The accelerated pace of technology dates modern movies 1000x more than clothes or music, so much so that it messes with your perception of time.  A movie from the ‘90s doesn’t seem that old to me, but a movie from 2009 seems fucking ancient.  Jennifer talks about someone’s My Space page.  They use words like “texting” and “Wikipedia” like they are exotic.  One kid is listening to an iPod in the car, I swear, it looks like he has a defibrillator hooked up to the stereo.  No satellite radio? Was this made in the Stone Age?  

Not knowing much about the movie gave me a few good “oh, shit” moments with the cast.  It took me a few beats before realizing the square-chested blockhead Jennifer was leading on at the bar was pre-Parks and Recreations Chris Pratt!  The big dumb guy from Coach (Bill Fagerbakke, also the voice of Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants) shows up as a grieving father.  The best surprise is J.K. Simmons, playing a fuzzy haired, cry-out-your-feelings kind of teacher, Mr. Wroblewski.  These days, I think of Simmons as the sadistic music teacher from WHIPLASH, or the sadistic Nazi leader in Oz, or as the not sadistic but still very angry J. Jonah Jameson in Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN films, so it was hilarious to see him playing such a sensitive milquetoast.  My favorite thing about Wroblewski, though, is that he has a giant scar on his neck and a prosthetic hand.  I figured that meant he had survived an encounter with a Succubus years ago, and that he would provide Needy a clue as to how to defeat Jennifer.  Nope, they never mention it.  He’s just a dude with a hook hand.  I love that shit.

Another great, bizarre touch is that along with her powers of fast healing, levitating, and erupting a mouthful of shark teeth, Jennifer has an unsettling effect on animals.  While she is seducing a football jock deep in the woods, an adorable menagerie of raccoons, beavers, and other woodland creatures gather round, eager to watch the bloodletting.  She’s like an evil Snow White.  When the cops discover they jock’s body, a deer is munching on his intestines.  Not typical deer behavior, in my opinion.  Never comes up, though.

There are flaws.  Diablo Cody’s dialog can be hard to take at times, and this comes from someone who loves HEATHERS and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  On the other hand, the cringiest lines are all Jennifer’s, so perhaps it’s intentional.  Needy’s lines are better, and Jennifer gets off a few good ones when she goes full evil.  “Nice hardware, ace” made me smile.  

The bland emo soundtrack is terrible, but again, this might be intentional.  The most intolerable songs come from Low Shoulder, the band who starts the whole mess.  The bandmembers spontaneously break into a Tommy Tutones song before butchering Jennifer as an offering to Satan, so clearly you are supposed to hate these assholes.  It makes sense that their shitty music could only catch on with the help of supernatural intervention (I also like the insinuation that the guy from Maroon 5 did the same thing).  

Even without the consciously stylized dialogue, the movie owes a lot to HEATHERS and Buffy.  It’s humor and tone are very reminiscent of their “darkness lurking beneath a pretty suburban face” vibe.  Needy researching how to kill Succubi in the school library’s unusually well stocked Occult section was an especially Buffy moment.  That’s not a bad thing, by any means.  In fact, it makes a better Buffy movie than the real Buffy movie.  Can’t beat the TV series, though, sorry Karyn.  

Predictably then, my favorite part is the film’s bookend, back at the mental institution.  I guess it’s a [Spoiler] to reveal Needy is there for killing Jennifer, although I made that assumption from the very beginning (the “my best friend was a succubus” defense rarely pans out in court).  The bigger surprise is that Needy learns from experience that those bitten by a demon and survive gain some of the demon’s power.  This explains, but does not excuse, why she was such a dick to that nutritionist (poor demonic impulse control).  More importantly, it gives her the strength to escape and, in the best in-credit sequence since the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, bring much deserved vengeance to those Low Shoulder douchebags.

Oh, I should also mention that the person who gives her a ride after her escape is an uncredited LANCE HENRIKSEN!  He seemed a little pervy, so Needy probably killed him, but I’d like to think that they teamed up to hunt demons, occultists, and talentless boy bands across the country.  They could ride around in a bus with Mr. Wroblewski, who turns out to be a werewolf.  Come on Diablo, let’s start cranking out those sequel scripts!

C Chaka

Special Bonus:  throwing in a few extra screenshots because this movie is gorgeous (Cinematographer: M. David Mullen)

 

Hail to the King: EVIL DEAD

It’s the end of October and the final installment in this year’s DIY Halloween Horror theme.  So far I’ve written about H.G. Lewis’ slapdash birth of gore film BLOOD FEAST, Leif Jonker pouring his heart and soul and a thousand gallons of fake blood into DARKNESS, and Peter Jackson’s goofy and goo-filled alien massacre comedy, BAD TASTE.  All of these movies hold an important place in the history of cinema, but now, I come to what is arguably the most successful, influential, and defining DIY horror movie ever, Sam Raimi’s phantasmagorical, ram-o-cam masterpiece, EVIL DEAD.

The Capsule:

A group of college aged (though not necessarily college attending) friends load up into a ’73 Oldsmobile and head off for a relaxing weekend in the woods.  Ash (Bruce Campbell), girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), pal Scotty (Richard DeManincor), Scotty’s gal Shelly (Theresa Tilly), and sensitive, artistic fifth wheel Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) make their way to a dilapidated cabin deep in an isolated forest.  Unfortunately for them, the previous owner of the cabin left a few things behind, like the ancient Ka’n Darian Book of the Dead and a tape recording of him reciting passages on demon resurrection.  The passage unleashes the evil within the woods, and soon Ash’s friends are being possessed in very horrifying ways.  Can Ash survive the ordeal, or will the woods swallow his soul as well?

These days, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson are on roughly the same level of mainstream acceptance.  Jackson has a few Oscars under his belt, but Raimi gave the world a jazz dancing Peter Parker, so it’s pretty much even.  The big difference is in their first features.  BAD TASTE holds little resemblance to any of Jackson’s films past DEAD ALIVE.  EVIL DEAD, on the other hand, has Raimi’s directing DNA all over it.  This is not just because Raimi occasionally returns to his horror roots.  Many of the inventive camera techniques and the off-kilter atmosphere he developed for EVIL DEAD still show up in his movies today.  Additionally, he has repurposed certain props over and over throughout the years, like the Oldsmobile Delta 88, and Bruce Campbell. 

Not only was EVIL DEAD distinctly a Sam Raimi movie, it was also a technically far superior film.  I don’t want to knock BAD TASTE, which is an amazing accomplishment considering the tiny amount of resources Jackson and his crew had access to, but it still feels like a bunch of (talented) friends clowning around and having fun.  As rough around the edges as it is, EVIL DEAD is a full-fledged, creative, and incredibly effective horror movie.  Raimi shows a mastery of visual and auditory storytelling right from the start.  We never need to know what the “evil in the woods” is or looks like, Raimi’s incredible swooping POV shot and the terror on everyone’s faces tells it all.  His use of pronounced, repetitive sound effects (the thumping of the swing, the clock pendulum, the sound passing over the rafters) accentuates the creepiness of the cabin.  Raimi makes the claustrophobic environment within the woods completely immersive.

The pacing is another of the movie’s strengths.  A lot of horror movies spend the beginning establishing the characters and spelling out their relationships to each other.  Raimi doesn’t waste time with that.  Everything you need to know evolves naturally as the story unfolds.  The real action doesn’t start until about half way through, but Raimi keeps an atmosphere of pervasive dread right from the start.  Even before they play the demon-raising tape recording, the cabin and surrounding woods are shown as a haunted, malicious place.  The recited passages only serve to get the evil fully stirred up.  The possessions start when the woods itself literally invades poor Cheryl’s body.  As soon as she is fully transformed, the others begin to drop like flies.  It becomes a classic siege movie, the survivors trying desperately to keep the demons out of (or stuck under) the cabin.  The security of the ramshackle walls is just an illusion, however.  The evil is capable of smashing through the window to instantly possess Shelly.  In the end [SPOILER?], it abandons all pretense and rams straight through the cabin, in full daylight, to go after a supposedly victorious Ash.  It has just been playing with them the entire time.

Incidentally, if there was any piece of Cheryl remaining in her demonified body, I can only imagine that she looked at Shelly and thought “What the fuck, dude?  I get assaulted by roots and she gets possessed through the friggin’ window?!?  She didn’t even have to go outside.  How is that fair?  This possession business is rigged!”

These days Bruce Campbell is synonymous with the EVIL DEAD films, but in the beginning there is no indication Ash will be the standout character.  This isn’t groovy Ash, it’s just Ashley.  Campbell plays him straight, with only a hint of comedy and no swagger.  Much like Ripley in ALIEN, he’s just part of the group, as vulnerable as anyone.  Even when he becomes the focus of the movie halfway in, it’s because of attrition, not heroism.  In fact, Ash comes off pretty cowardly compared to DeManincor’s more assertive (and douche baggy) Scotty.  Ash is wishy-washy, he freezes when shit goes down, and he can’t follow thorough.  He’s the last person you would think would one day have a sweet chainsaw hand.

By the way, if this had been a modern movie, the scene where he gives his girlfriend the necklace would have guaranteed his death.  Guys giving gifts, especially jewelry, has replaced people having sex as the number one indicator they are goners in horror movies.

 

While we’re on the subject, Betsy Baker does a great job as Linda pretending to be pleased with the magnifying glass necklace.  The film goes the extra step to establish what a dumbass Ash is to think, “You know what would really impress my girl, a little magnifying glass on a silver chain.”  It might have some unspoken significance with them, but I prefer the idea that Ash buys shit gifts and Linda is too nice to tell him.  It comes in handy later, though, so his poor judgment worked out for him in the end.

The movie might not be the “Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror” as it claims, but it legitimately comes close for the time.  I always forget how rough it is because I’m more familiar with EVIL DEAD 2. I watched that one first and have seen it more often. It has a much lighter (if stranger) tone.  The first EVIL DEAD was strong enough to be labeled a “Video Nasty” in UK.  Now, a lot of films where undeservedly put on the list, but in this case, it’s understandable.  This film has a nasty edge.  As weird as it is, Cheryl’s tree rape scene is no joke.  I can’t keep from wincing every time.  The blood runs black, white, and green, but it is primarily red and there is an awful lot of it.  Demons are stabbed, burnt, hacked up into still wiggling pieces.  There is even a bit of self-cannibalism.  When Ash pulls a stick out of Scotty’s stomach, blood pours out like he’s just uncorked a wine bottle lying on its side.  The famous stop motion scenes of the decaying demons at the end are stand alone effective, but the film goes the extra step of having monster arms literally explode out of the corpses in a final gory transmutation,  While giving Raimi a reason to splash a bucket of blood in Campbell’s face again.

 

The movie establishes several traditions that continue throughout the series, including the currently airing TV show.  The Bruce Campbell abuse goes without saying, though Ash makes out better in this one than any other installment.  There is a reality bending haunted house freak-out, complete with bleeding walls, similar to scenes in the next two movies, but with its own unique tone.   Perhaps my favorite reoccurring gag is Ash taking time out to not only bury his dead(ish) friends, but build wooden crosses to mark their graves.  The Book of the Dead is present, of course, but it is not called the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, as it is in EVIL DEAD 2 and beyond.  Here it’s called Naturan Demanto, and it looks a little grosser.  This book seems like it could really have been made out of skin.  There is a chainsaw, which Ash never uses, and also a shotgun, single barreled and not cut down like the more famous boomstick.  It’s still fun to see the humble beginnings of Ash’s Deadite killing arsenal.    

Richard DeManincor only had a couple of small roles after this film.  The ladies of EVIL DEAD have had more robust acting careers, though there is a huge gap between 1981 and 2007 when they reunited for a short doc about being the ladies of EVIL DEAD.  Bruce Campbell went on to become a legend, and is perhaps the most reliable and charismatic B-movie actor alive.  Sam Raimi went on to be an insane cult leader in THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT and to be horribly mutilated in INTRUDER.  He has also evolved from shooting $350, 000 movies to $350,000,000 movies and has become one of the most famous directors in the world.  He keeps close to the source, though, producing the Ash Vs Evil Dead TV series and directing the first episode.  Under all the fame and success, he’s still just a man who wants to abuse Bruce Campbell. 

EVIL DEAD became a hugely influential film for decades to come.  Raimi tapped into the primal fear of being trapped in a place we know we shouldn’t be in, isolated and vulnerable, surrounded by forces we can’t understand.  It’s no surprise that cabin-in-the-woods movies are so prevalent in horror, leading up to and beyond the movie CABIN IN THE WOODS.  It’s more than just the setting, though.  Raimi and his crew managed to overcome their budgetary and physical limitations to make the most of every second of screen time, and they did it with nothing but determination, innovation, and lots of Karo syrup blood.  While I think Toby Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE matches EVIL DEAD for professionalism, pacing, and atmosphere, and delivers more sheer terror, Raimi's creativity makes EVIL DEAD the benchmark for DIY horror filmmaking.  Give it some sugar, baby.

C Chaka