The Screengrab : evil dead

Trailer Review: Drag Me to Hell

Paul Clark — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Can the director of one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing trilogies of all time return to his roots? This is the question that faces longtime fans of Sam Raimi, who began his career with gonzo horror-comedies before becoming one of Hollywood’s big-ticket filmmakers with the Spider-Man franchise. And while Drag Me to Hell looks to be slicker than his classic Evil Dead movies, it’s nonetheless a heartening development in Raimi’s career, a sign that despite the mainstream fare he’s made in the ensuring years, he’s not ashamed of his beginnings. As for the trailer itself, I think it looks pretty promising. The movie appears to have the same moral underpinnings as much of the best horror films- in this case, punishing the heroine (played by Alison Lohman) for trying to further her career at the expense of others. It’s a little hard to get a read on the horror stuff due to the jackhammer editing, but based on what I could make out, Raimi hasn’t lost his ability to go for broke in the interest of scaring the audience. In other words, I’m there. Only one question remains: where’s Bruce Campbell?

He's Burned, You'll Notice: Bruce Campbell Says He's All Evil Deaded Out

Phil Nugent — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Speaking to Damon Wise of the Guardian, Bruce Campbell has some advice for fans of the Evil Dead trilogy that made him a household name, at least in houses with a heavy geek peopulation: don't hold your breath. "I just finished a 22-city tour of the States and that question would come up all the time. I'd say, 'OK, who wanted Indiana Jones 4?' I did this at 10 different cities and maybe two hands would go up. I'd go, 'There's your answer, right there.'" Campbell, who can currently seen giving disspipation a good name on the cable TV series Burn Notice, warmed to his theme: "Harrison Ford can't even hold the whip any more! Look, if you think it through, those Evil Dead movies were very difficult to make. Every single one was a nightmare. Physically, mentally, financially - just difficult, troubled shoots. So what would make us want to go back into that world again, go through all that pain and agony as middle-aged men? The last time we made one was 18 years ago. Army Of Darkness was made 18 years ago! No one seems to do that math. Am I going to be in a wheelchair by the time we do it? My greatest fear is that we go through all that time and effort, make this part four, and people will go, 'Oh, it's OK. But it's not as good as Army Of Darkness.' Which is what will happen! It's a guarantee!"

Campbell, who seems like the kind of guy who's more likely to shrug than to trash his hotel room when he sees that Wise described him as "strangely handsome", began production on the first Evil Dead movie thirty years ago, when Campbell was twenty years old and director Sam Raimi was nineteen. Shooting would drag on for more than a year, which is a long time to spend hanging out in the woods getting drenched in karo syrup. (It wouldn't be until 1982 before the finished product starting creeping into theaters.) The two had been making little amateur movies together while in high school; from the start, their preferred specialty was slapstick comedy. When they "actually decided to make a movie for real, and we were actually taking people's money out of their pockets to do it, we knew it had to be something they could get their money back on. So we chose horror, which was a completely different genre for us. And I'm still trying to get back to where I was. I'm making horror movies that are not horror movies." The more Raimi and Campbell went back to the well with the Evil Dead sequels, the more they indulged their Three Stooges side, and the head-splitting mixture of gore and whiplash physical comedy left fans happily freaked out. That road eventually took Raimi to the promised land of the Spider-man franchise, but somewhere along the line, Campbell turned into one of those guys who plays supporting roles in big movies and starring roles in small pictures, such as the bizarre horror comedy Bubba Ho-Tep, in which he gave a remarkable performance as a geriatric Elvis Presley turned monster hunter. "I've had my years of getting annoyed with Evil Dead questions," Campbell says, "but now I really do realize, in retrospect, that people only ask about what they're interested in. And if they only see horror movies, they're only gonna see me in the eight or so horror movies I've done. I haven't actually done that many, less than 50%. But Evil Dead was pretty notorious and it was very popular, so it's guilt by association: I'm the horror guy. But there are people who've watched TV shows that I've done who don't even know I've been in the Evil Dead movies. If you stick around long enough you can just move on."

Campbell is in England promoting My Name Is Bruce, the comedy in which he plays a libelous version of himself who is obliged to do real-life battle with a Chinese war god. (The movie was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the U.S. last week.) A BBC interviewer actually compared the film to JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme's recent visit to a metatextual reality, and while the connection may strike Campbell fans as a little off the wall--Campbell has been parodying himself so enthusiastically and for so long that he's practically the pre-AARP version of Leslie Nielson--it is fun just to see these two guys mentioned in the same sentence. Although the project didn't originate wirth Campbell, he embraced it with sufficient enthusiasm that he poured his own money into it and even opened up his own property to serve as a back lot. "Any time you make a movie that's under $200 million, you're going to put some of your own money into it. It got to a point where the composer would say, 'Y'know Bruce, let's get some real strings here because it'll sound great'. And I'd be like, 'Really, do we really need them... well [mimes signing a check]...okay'."

When Good Directors Go Bad: For Love of the Game (1999, Sam Raimi)

Paul Clark — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Since the beginning of his career, Sam Raimi has been a hero to genre lovers everywhere. It was his debut feature The Evil Dead that first brought Raimi to the attention of gorehounds, and his subsequent films further endeared him to his fans. With their outrageous camera movements, “splat-stick” comic violence, and the larger-than-life presence of Bruce Campbell, the Evil Dead trilogy gained Raimi a rabid cult following. However, he soon found himself confined in the horror genre. At first, he attempted to transfer his trademark style to other genres- crime story, comic book movie, Western- with varying degrees of success.

Finally, with 1998’s A Simple Plan, Raimi decided to keep his more gonzo impulses in check, and in doing so created his first “mature” work, and his most critically-acclaimed film to date. Having finally tasted mainstream acceptance, Raimi craved more, and decided to make a real stab at Hollywood respectability with his next project, an adaptation of Michael Shaara’s For Love of the Game. After all, what’s more mainstream than a baseball movie starring Kevin Costner? Unfortunately for Raimi, For Love of the Game turned out to be his worst- and not coincidentally, his least Raimi-esque- film to date.

For about half its running time, the film is a decent, fairly entertaining baseball movie. Its hero, Billy Chapel (played by Costner), is a veteran Detroit Tigers pitcher who suddenly finds himself throwing a perfect game in what may be the last start of his career. It’s been said that a perfect game is both the rarest and the most boring achievement in baseball, but Raimi keeps us involved by concentrating on Chapel- not only his actions and dialogue but also the thoughts that occur to him while he’s on the mound. It’s a neat touch whenever Chapel tunes out the hostile Yankee Stadium crowd with the mantra, “clear the mechanism.” By the time the game reaches its last few innings, we can more or less predict what the outcome will be, but Raimi has nonetheless done a pretty good job getting us to root for Chapel to finish the perfect game.

However, For Love of the Game isn’t content simply to be a baseball movie, and almost none of the scenes that take place off the baseball field are any good. Faring worst is the movie’s principal non-baseball storyline, which traces the trajectory of a relationship between Chapel and New York single mother Jane, played by Kelly Preston. Despite taking up nearly half the movie, the relationship between the two is ill-defined. As a result, there’s a highlight-reel to the storyline, amounting to little more than a series of flirtations, breakups, reconciliations, as well as a whole lot of grief from Jane.

A big part of the problem in these scenes is Preston’s performance. Preston, never a particularly good actress, is out of her element as a leading lady. Clearly overmatched and nervous opposite Costner (who’s pretty good here), she gives an overly fussy performance that seesaws constantly between the two notes she knows how to play- beaming and neurotic. Consequently, Jane comes off more as a pill than as the complicated, conflicted adult she’s meant to be.

It would be one thing if the film realized or even acknowledged what a prickly character Jane is, but instead it paints her as the foundation in Billy’s emotional life. Throughout his perfect game, Billy flashes back to his life with Jane- who just left him that morning- and it’s clear that we’re meant to care about whether these two lovers end up together in the end. Instead, all I wanted to do was to keep watching the game. After all, everyone falls in love sooner or later, but only seventeen major league pitchers have ever pitched a perfect game. Talk about burying the lead.

After For Love of the Game met with a critical drubbing and large-scale audience indifference, Raimi decided it was time to re-examine his career path again. First he rebounded with the flawed but interesting Southern Gothic thriller The Gift, after which he made his most popular films to date, the Spider-Man trilogy. With the Spider-Man films, Raimi finally found mainstream success without sacrificing any of his inimitable style, which helped all three of the Spidey films become the highest-grossing superhero movies ever made. And all of them- yes, even the third one- were better than For Love of the Game.