I figured why not make my first post about Movies be about the absolute greatest cinematic masterpiece aver put to cellulose:
The Evil Dead.
I didn’t see The Evil Dead until I was probably well into my late 20s or early 30s, right as I was becoming the Horror Hound I am today. I had seen some horror movies prior but they were all the franchises that were poppin back in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s, like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, things like that.
Then I saw The Evil Dead. And things changed.
Made with hardly any budget by a handful of friends from Michigan in a cabin that was pretty much left in shambles by the production of the movie, The Evil Dead quickly earned cult status thanks to the gore, the guerilla tactics and the innovative filming techniques used.
As the film was on such a tight budget, the cabin where the movie was filmed doubled as lodging for the cast and crew. As a result, many of them fell ill during production of the movie to the point where Bruce Campbell, the male lead in the movie, doubled as a grip and even performed many of his own physical stunts.
The group persevered though and against a budget of $375,000, the movie raked in an astonishing $29.4 million in the box office, not counting the expansive franchise the movie launched, including two direct sequel movies, a “requel” (remake/sequel), a three-season sequel series on Starz, a follow up sequel, two more sequels planned, video games, comic books, and even a stage musical.
In October 2025, I was fortunate enough to be able to see Evil Dead in Concert, a production that saw the movie playing on the big screen and a small arrangement of live musicians playing the score of the film on stage in front of the movie. It was a pretty amazing experience and if I had the chance, I would go again.
In March (just a couple weeks ago), I decided I was going to create my own personal boutique label for the express purpose of creating new, unified cover art for all of my physical media. It started innocently enough, just wanting matching covers for some of my movies and all of the sudden, BOOM, it turned into a whole thing where I’m giving my discs catalog numbers, consistent cover art, and I even named the damn thing “Grimm’s Vault.” And since I’m giving each movie in my collection a unique catalog number, I’m sure you can guess where I placed The Evil Dead.
And here, in all its glory, is the before and after of the cover art for my DVD.
Now. For the most horrific vision one could possibly imagine…
As I was putting the new case together, I opened it only to realize, to my horror, that the disc is missing!
I have an idea of where it might be, in an old PlayStation 3 or 4 that’s buried somewhere deep in the bowels of the boxes that have yet to be gone through in our basement. Perhaps one day I will get around to unearthing it, but, in the meantime, I guess I’m just going to have to buy myself another copy.