Speaking to Digital Spy about Fede Alvarez’ controversial remake of Sam Raimi’s cult horror flick The Evil Dead, original star and genre icon Bruce Campbell acknowledged, “We’re really excited and really behind it, [but] it’s going to take a bit to get the Evil Dead fans behind it.
“We know we’ve pissed a lot of them off. We appreciate that and we appreciate their anger and their zeal, but the only thing we want to impress upon them is that we didn’t screw it up. This is going to be just as memorable as [the original] Evil Dead without being the same movie.
“You don’t want to remake something shot-for-shot. I can’t believe they remade Psycho – what the hell kind of a waste of celluloid is that? It’s a creative medium.The nice thing is the film looks beautiful. The effects are 10 times better than we ever had access to and the actors are all better than we were in 1979. Though granted Sam Raimi is a mad genius, so we got a crazy result like Evil Dead out of this amateur enthusiasm sort of thing.”
Expanding on the differences between the the 1979 video nasty and the current version, Campbell added, “There’s none of the original characters. We didn’t want to compare apples with apples. It’s a contemporary movie – just like Evil Dead was contemporary in 1979, this is contemporary for young adults now. It’s basically five new kids who are going to have a really bad night with a brand new director – Fede Alvarez, who was hand-picked by Sam Raimi. I’ve seen it already; I think it’s definitely fabulous.”
The star is also coquettish about whether this all-new Evil Dead will feature one of his now legendary cameos, saying, “I’m not at liberty to discuss that. But the thing is we want it to be a standalone movie. You’re going to have some references [to the original] in there and there’s going to be things the fans will enjoy as far as familiar aspects, but it’s a whole new ball game.”
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know if I could – the last one [Army Of Darkness] was 1991,” he added on whether he could even return to the role of Ash. “I was a virile young man; I’m 54 years old now so I’m not sure 54-year-old guys need to be doing that shit anymore. But if Sam wants to lace the boots back on and do something that makes sense, that’s fine. We may need to do the movie one day, if our careers fly off the tracks and we crash and burn, we might look at each other and go ‘Let’s make an Evil Dead movie’!
The Evil Dead is due for release 12 April 2013. A region-free Blu-ray steelbook of the original film is available from 5 November 2012 – pre-order it now from Amazon.co.uk for only £10.
