Within the Woods (1978)

This is not Evil Dead. It is similar to Evil Dead bu it is not Evil Dead. It is scary. It has a good story line. It also has good acting. If you want see a really scary movie to see. See this one. It is no 6.7. 6.7 overrating it a little. But is a good movie.

Within the Woods starts as Ellen (Ellen Sandweiss) & her boyfriend Bruce (Bruce Campbell) take a walk in the woods near the cottage that they & two of their friends Scott (Scott Speigel) & Shelly (Mary Valenti) have hired for a weekend. They plan on having a picnic & Bruce warns Ellen about the ancient Indian burial ground nearby & not to disturb it, however Bruce takes a sacred knife buried in the ground & ends up possessed by an evil spirit who wants to take revenge on the rest of his friends...Written & directed by Sam Raimi Within the Woods is a curious little film, it was made for the bargain basement sum of $1,600 specifically by Raimi to show to potential investors who might put up some cash so the full length Book of the Dead later renamed The Evil Dead (1982) could be made & I guess it worked. Many scenes in Within the Woods are mirrored & perfected in The Evil Dead, from the spirits point-of-view shots to the general story to the same actor's although here Campbell plays the bad guy where as in The Evil dead he became the hero. It is also different in some respects in particular instead of an ancient Book of the Dead the reason behind the evil spirits is an ancient Indian burial ground being violated. It lasts for a few seconds over 30 minutes & to be honest isn't a bad little horror flick with some understandably rough edges. Even though this is fairly impressive everything considered if Raimi had shown me this I still wouldn't have given him any money but then again I'm a tight git...Director Raimi is already showing a panache for style & visual flair even on a none existent budget, Within the Woods is technically more impressive & stylish than many legally released horror flicks! Within the Woods was never meant to be released anywhere & it never has, legally that is so it's hard to rate it as it was never meant to be seen by the public. To be honest I wouldn't say it's even finished, there are obviously sound effects & music cues missing, some of the editing is choppy & it's a touch dark at times but when all said & done it does look pretty good & is watchable. There's some gore here, a man is stabbed in the stomach, someone is stabbed in the neck, someone is stabbed in the back, someone is dismembered with an axe & have their hand sliced off. The special effects are alright actually & again put some legit horror films to shame!Within the Woods is really only of interest to fans of The Evil Dead & want to see a virtual carbon copy of it, since it was never meant to be released to the public I can't say it was even a finished film but it ain't too bad. Considered to be pretty rare which I doubt taking into account the number of comments on the IMDb, it has more reviews than say Carry On Columbus (1992)!

A short film by director Sam Raimi, he made it in his college days in hopes of raising money to be able to make his masterful horror film The Evil Dead (1981).Two couples staying at a country house are terrorized when one of them becomes murderously possessed by evil spirits.Even with its grainy, home-made quality, Within the Woods is perhaps the greatest horror short ever made! There's plenty of effectively eerie and dark atmosphere, well-timed shocks, and some bloody-good makeup FX. It's a gripping little horror picture! Raimi would later spoof scenes from this short in both The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987).Young Bruce Campbell heads the small cast. Campbell does a good show as a likable teenager turned horrid monster by an evil spirit. Ellen Sandweiss (who would go on to star in The Evil Dead) appears as the films heroine.A bit of a rare find, but a must-see for Raimi's fans!*** 1/2 out of ****

Sypnosis: Two couples go to a farmhouse for the weekend. One couple goes out for a picnic and accidentally wake evil spirits. Will they survive Within the Woods?Within the Woods(1978) was, as mentioned above, a damn good little film. Sam Raimi definitely knew where he was going with this when he directed it. Bruce Campbell, of course, delivers, (he never did make a bad performance, did he? I mean, he's the only reason to watch Herbie the love bug and Congo...) and Ellen Sandweiss is believable as the tormented Ellen. Scott Spiegel and Mary Valenti perform to the extent of their roles. (I.E. cannon fodder...) It was shot with approximatively 1,600$ of budget in a three day weekend in Michigan. It premiered in August 1979 at the Punch and Judy theatre in Detroit double-billed with the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)The good: This movie heralds the birth of the Evil Force, a Raimi horror staple, along with his crazy camera movements. The makeup by Tom Sullivan is great for a first feature and the film has enough gory moments in the latter half. The film was so intense, that even if the super-8 projector filled a 1/4 of the screen, the audience actually reacted to it!The bad: No available copy (excluding of course Raimi's and Campbell's) has high quality or sound and is hard as all hell to find. Let's hope some day Anchor Bay closes the deal to release this little gem.Review: 5/5