"WE’RE STILL HERE WITH IN-YOUR-FACE TRANSGRESSIVE HORROR!"
Join Joe Bob Briggs, Darcy the Mail Girl and special guest Felissa Rose tonight Friday JULY 10 9PM ET on Shudder and AMC+ for JOE BOB’S SAVAGE SUMMER in a Ferocious Femme Fatale Firestorm Double Feature of films! It's going to be Bat-Shit Crazy!
I'll update the post later tonight with the two savage sinister sisters movies shown! This is the first of 3 remaining specials of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Brigs before a new show will be announced on January 1st, 2027. Art by @slasherdesign π€ π€π€
To celebrate the release of Evil Dead Burn in theaters on July 10, 2026, here are The Evil Dead (1981) Newspaper, Beta, VHS, DVD and Blu-ray cover art + Lobby Cards! Most cover art is from www.bookofthedead.ws.
The Evil Dead is a 1981 American independent supernatural horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi (in his feature directorial debut). The film stars Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker, and Theresa Tilly as five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in the woods, where they find an audio tape that, when played, releases a legion of demons and spirits. Four members of the group suffer from demonic possession, forcing the fifth member, Ash Williams (Campbell), to survive an onslaught of increasingly gory mayhem.
Raimi, Campbell, producer Robert G. Tapert, and their friends produced the 1978 short film Within the Woods as a proof of concept to build the interest of potential investors, which secured US$90,000 to begin work on The Evil Dead. Principal photography took place on location in a remote cabin in Morristown, Tennessee, in a filming process that proved extremely uncomfortable for the cast and crew. The film's extensive prosthetic makeup and stop-motion effects were created by artist Tom Sullivan. The completed film had its first, private screening for friends and family at the Redford Theatre in Detroit on October 15, 1981, which attracted the interest of producer Irvin Shapiro, who helped screen the film at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Horror author Stephen King gave a rave review of the film, which resulted in New Line Cinema acquiring its distribution rights and giving it a wide theatrical release on April 15, 1983.
The Evil Dead grossed $2.4 million in the United States and $27 million overseas, for a worldwide gross of $29.4 million. Both early and later critical receptions were universally positive; in the years since its release, the film has developed a reputation as one of the most significant cult classics, having been cited among the greatest horror films of all time, and one of the most successful independent films. It launched the careers of Raimi, Tapert, and Campbell, who have continued to collaborate on several films together, such as Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.
The Evil Dead spawned a media franchise, beginning with two successors written and directed by Raimi, Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992), a fourth film, Evil Dead (2013), which serves as a soft reboot, a fifth film, Evil Dead Rise (2023), and an upcoming sixth film, Evil Dead Burn (2026), and a follow-up television series, Ash vs Evil Dead, which aired from 2015 to 2018; the franchise also includes video games and comic books. The film's protagonist Ash Williams is considered to be a cultural icon.
THEATRICAL RELEASE: Because of its large promotional campaign, the film performed above expectations at the box office. However, the initial domestic gross was described as "disappointing." The movie opened in 15 theaters and grossed $108,000 in its opening weekend. Word of mouth later spread, and the film became a "sleeper hit". It grossed $2,400,000 domestically, nearly eight times its production budget. Sources differ as to whether it grossed $261,944 overseas, for a worldwide gross of $2,661,944, or $27 million overseas, for a worldwide gross of $29.4 million. Raimi said in 1990 that the film "did very well overseas and did very poorly domestically" and that its investors earned a return of "about five times their initial investment."
HOME MEDIA RELEASE: The first VHS release of The Evil Dead was released by Thorn EMI in 1983, and Thorn's successor company HBO/Cannon Video later repackaged the film. Former HBO Video's partner Congress Video, a company notable for public domain films, issued its version in 1989.
In its first week of video release, the film made £100,000 in the UK. It quickly became that week's bestselling video release, and later became the year's bestselling video in the UK, out-grossing large-budget horror releases such as The Shining. Its impressive European performance was chalked up to its heavy promotion there and the more open-minded nature of European audiences.
The resurgence of The Evil Dead in the home-video market came through two companies that restored the film from its negatives and issued special editions in 1998: Anchor Bay Entertainment on VHS, and Elite Entertainment on LaserDisc. Anchor Bay was responsible for the film's first DVD release on January 19, 1999, along with Elite releasing the special collector's edition DVD on March 30, 1999, and between them, Elite and Anchor Bay have released six different DVD versions of The Evil Dead, most notably the 2002 "Book Of The Dead" edition, packaged in a latex replica of the Necronomicon sculpted by Tom Sullivan and the 2007 three disc "Ultimate Edition" which contained the widescreen and original full frame versions of the movie. The film's high-definition debut was in a 2010 Blu-ray.
Lionsgate Films released a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray edition of The Evil Dead on October 9, 2018. In lieu of the film's 45th anniversary and coinciding with the release of the standalone installment Evil Dead Burn, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will be reissuing a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray steelbook of The Evil Dead on July 7, 2026...read more at wikipedia.org
