As Sam Raimi has long hence entered the big-studio realm and we brace ourselves for Fede Alvarez’s upcoming revamp of “The Evil Dead,” a rarely seen early-80s short film by Sam Raimi has resurrected online.
A bonus feature on many of the endless DVD iterations of Raimi’s gory anthology, “Within the Woods” is a kind of short film treatment of “The Evil Dead.” Here, you can see Raimi, shooting on Super 8 with budget of less than $2,000, and the famously chainsaw-wielding Bruce Campbell in their early heydey before “Dead” became a three-part franchise.
Before Alvarez’s “Evil Dead,” which hits theaters today, there was Raimi’s 1981 seminal B-horror classic, a film that laid the groundwork for all schlocky low-budget scarefests that followed. Though Raimi’s latest film, Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful,” couldn’t be farther from the horror movie geek-land the cult American director often inhabits, “Dead”-heads will get a kick out of “Within the Woods.”
Adapted by Alvarez, Diablo Cody and Rodo Sayagues from Raimi’s original screenplay, the new “Evil Dead” has suffered mixed reviews (check out Indiewire’s review from the SXSW premiere here) but also a lot of hype. At the very least, Alvarez’s film — like “Within the Woods” — should offer a flesh-possessing jolt of nostalgia. Watch Raimi’s short below.
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