6) The Evil Dead (1981)
Sam Raimi’s debut full-length horror film is an imaginative, low-budget showpiece that centres around demonic possession within the isolated forests of rural Tennessee.
Five university students make an unplanned stopover at a remote, abandoned cabin and discover an ancient tome dubbed the “Book of the Dead.” Inadvertently, our gang of adventurers (led by the wonderfully over-the-top Bruce Campbell) release a fiendish demon that is hellbent on possessing the living and spilling as much blood as humanly demonly possible.
Though the movie was shot on a shoestring budget, the film would go on to become a multi-sequel media franchise, similar to Friday The 13th. Its writer-director would also move on to direct the Spider-Man trilogy with Tobey Maguire in 2002, and craft the spectacularly brilliant Drag Me To Hell in 2009.
Back in the ’80s, The Evil Dead didn’t so much as push the gore envelope, but instead ripped the darned thing up, covered it in crimson corn syrup and blasted it through a 12-gauge boomstick. It’s a deliciously nasty horror cult-classic that’ll give any teen horror-junkie a dose of jumpy jolts, creepy look-away-from-the-screen scares, and a few laughs to boot.
