I was choosing what Halloween film to review when other people were picking their Sarah Palin costumes for the Carlotta Street block party. I finally settled on director Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult film “The Evil Dead.”According to Guardian newspaper columnist Ronald Bergan, a cult film “denotes any film that, for a reason unallied to its intrinsic artistic quality, has attracted obsessive devotion from a group of fundamentalist fans.” As James Morrison notes in his book “Passport to Hollywood,” a cult film divides its audiences into two groups — those who get it and those who don’t. “The target audience of the cult film is one who delights in such punishment, surrenders the typical cinematic pleasures in a kind of ecstatic, knowing unpleasure … or identifies with the film’s sadistic relation to the mass audience,” Morrison said. “The Evil Dead” begins with five college students on vacation in an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere. They unleash the souls of the undead by accident when they play a cassette tape of a former occupant. These diabolical spirits — the titular evil dead — possess several of the students, transforming them into raving zombies hellbent on devouring human flesh. Will they make it through the night to see daylight? Raimi’s debut is an alternately intense and caricaturish take on the horror genre.The film was shot for about $120,000 in 1979, and it took about two years to make. The cast was made of the five students, though a couple of extras were shown in the beginning. None of the cast could act to save themselves. All the characters were noentities except for Ash, who retains a certain depth. Instead of taking the lead in finishing off his fiendish friends, Ash waits until he has no escape before reveling in the horror fest. It seems whatever cinematic device was necessary to allow pools of blood to flow unhindered was considered by the director to be worth the effort.Anyway, the grotesque faces, fanciful mood music, wizened screenplay, textbook camera editing and amateurish special effects were not much help either. Raimi knew his film was made cheaply; it definitely looked threadbare and I guess he was proud of it.The film is full of yucky gore and cartoonish monsters — the possessed resemble a grandmarmish Barbie dolls. Everything is presented at face-value, all subtlety is thrown out of the window as sophomoric campiness takes charge. The film starts slowly and takes a while before the whiff of terror appears. Everyone is happy to settle in the cabin, but when the dark sense of foreboding comes, “The Evil Dead” kicks into high gear. After the lean start, the film jumps into demon possessions, decapitation, dismemberment and blood-drenching. Raimi flings everything at his actors and the camera; only a few manage to stick. Who needs atmosphere when excess can clearly do the job?Yet despite the tackiness of the entire venture, Raimi displays flashes of brilliance. Several swift tracking shots in the woods — a steadicam balanced on a plank of wood did the trick, other overhead camera shots and several Dutch-angle tilts show Raimi to be a filmmaker with an above average appreciation of the medium. There is a scene where Bruce Campbell looks into a mirror that changes to a pool of water when he dips his hand into it — a possible homage to Jean Cocteau’s “Orpheus.”In addition, there are also several superbly lit scenes, especially one where two girls are bathed in the light from an open doorway, while the boy between them is underlit by a shade. Raimi also makes excellent use of wide angle and fisheye lenses which bend the images of the cabin and the forest creating an ambience of chilling terror.I am not a horror fan — I try to stay away from them as much as possible — but “The Evil Dead” is definitely less scary than Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” or even Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later.” Personally, some scenes disgusted me to the extent I almost switched off the film. There was one featuring the rape of a woman by a tree — how the branch didn’t have enough sense to peel off the underwear is beyond me.  Two other scenes involved the display of furious faucets of blood:  Ash heads into the basement and is drenched with red syrup from a leaking pipe and then the other shows a girl’s ankle being ripped apart by a pencil — it looked clearly like a prosthetic. Both of them left me completely grossed out.Morrison notes that cult films punish viewers whose aesthetic responses are limited to typical cinematic pleasures. After watching “The Evil Dead” I think I’ve taken my beatings like a man — I’d rather stick with “Legally Blonde” now.—-Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]