Top Film for Each Year of My Life – 1983

Evil Dead

"We can't bury Shelley! She's a friend of ours!"

This is a bit of a cheat. Evil Dead had its premiere in Michigan in 1981 (IMDB has this as the release date) and made the festival rounds in 1982, but got an actual release in 1983. Another wrench into the mix is that shooting began in 1979. Since I had no chance of seeing it (at least cognitively) in any of those years, the official release year works just fine for my purposes. Plus, ’83 is another year in which I have little affection for the films.

Evil Dead kind of changed my life (or a portion of it) in a dramatic way. I have my cousin, Aaron, and his family to thank for it because they were all such huge fans of the series before I had heard of it. The first time I watched it was after school one day when I was in tenth or eleventh grade. It was broad daylight and I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. The acting is cheesy in the best possible way, the film has a great sense of humor, and the gore and effects are so over-the-top and crazy that I was in a trance.

One might say that I was obsessed with this film, the sequels, and Bruce Campbell at one point, and that person wouldn’t be wrong. I arranged a number of trilogy screenings, one with commentaries only. I have the Evil Dead Companion book as well as both of Bruce Campbell’s book (everyone should read If Chins Could Kill). I still follow Campbell’s buddy’s, Josh Becker, career via the Q&A on Beckerfilms.com. Continually, I upgraded my DVDs to the latest versions (though I haven’t bought the 3-disc Evil Dead, yet). I even went to the off-Broadway production of Evil Dead: The Musical.
While I had stopped being afraid of the horror aisle in Blockbuster long before this, I now sought out other horror movies instead of being interested in mainly comedies. Today, it’s probably my favorite genre. You can turn your mind off and enjoy the cheese (especially with some friends and alcohol, but don’t drink and watch them alone because that’s just sad) or the movie will crawl under your skin and stay with you for a long time. Evil Dead offers both of these. Unlike its sequels, the humor is kept fairly subtle (unless you watch with the commentary on) and the mayhem is amped way up (two words: tree rape).

There are few other films worth mentioning from 1983. Who doesn’t love A Christmas Story? Well, besides the heartless. And I have affection for all things Monty Python, so Meaning of Life is way up there (especially since it was one of the first movies I owned with any nudity in it). Bob and Doug McKenzie’s, née Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas’ Strange Brew is a wonderfully bizarre twist on Hamlet and introduced me to the ever-so useful word, “hork.” But this spot can only go to “the ultimate experience in grueling terror,” The Evil Dead for shaping so much of who I am (for better and for worse, but mostly better).
PS – Not every film on this list will be a horror film, just most (that’s only partially a joke).