2.14 - THE EVIL DEAD (1981) & The Unknown

We kick off this year’s Hallowe’en festivities — a week to go! — with a classic horror franchise, starting with Sam Raimi’s 1981 classic THE EVIL DEAD. Rob and Sam discuss innovative cinematography and narrative, take a rather long diversion on gender politics in film, and talk about hubris and the ‘rules' of horror cinema.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE HORROR GOODNESS, LATER TODAY.

As you can tell from the apostrophe, Sam wrote this.

Except don’t, because this isn’t twentieth-century radio.

This Week’s Watching
DESIGNATED SURVIVOR (2016—): David Guggenheim, Kiefer Sutherland, Natascha McElhone
PADDINGTON (2014): Paul King, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins

Recommendations
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999): Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, Heather Donahue
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968): George A. Romero, Judith O’Dea, Duane Jones
DELIVERANCE (1972): John Boorman, Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds
DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978): George A. Romero, David Emge, Ken Foree HELLRAISER (1987): Clive Barker, Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins

Footnotes Sam mentions one of our favourite dramatic touchstones, Chekov’s gun. This article provides an interesting overview of gender in cinema in the 1970s and 80s; although Molly Haskell’s book first came out in 1974, the second edition covers the period in question here. This is a good list of horror ‘rules’, and Rob mentions H.P. Lovecraft in the course of his discussion of these.