James Ball

"Within The Woods" is a super-8 short film directed by Sam Raimi, and stars Bruce Campbell & Ellen Sandweiss. It was made to raise money for Sam Raimi's feature film "The Evil Dead". The story stays relatively similar to "The Evil Dead" Demonic spirits are resurrected, but instead of possessing multiple characters, this time the only person who gets possessed is Bruce (The roles of Bruce & Ellen use their own names for the short) and instead of spirits being resurrected from an incantation from the book of the dead, in the short, the evil spirit is brought back because Bruce disturbed an ancient burial ground. And so the roles are reversed, in "Within The Woods" Bruce becomes possessed and goes on a killing spree. Whereas in "The Evil Dead" it was Cheryl (Ash's sister) who's the first to fall victim to the evil spirits. Now moving onto the most talked-about aspect of "Within The Woods" and that is the picture quality. Unfortunately, it makes the short difficult to watch, because either scenes are too dark or the short is interrupted by a fuzzy line running across the screen. No official restoration of the film has been released. The short was getting a restored release on the first Anchor Bay DVD release of 'The Evil Dead' as a bonus feature. It was going to feature new music as the original has music cues from 'Star Wars' & 'Jaws' So for obvious reasons the original release would have some copyright issues. Unfortunately, the remastered version was never met because Sam Raimi pulled the plug on that project at the last minute. The only thing that remains of this remastered version is on the original Anchor bay release of 'The Evil Dead', there is a still image describing what the remastered and information about the short film. Fans of "The Evil Dead" have tried their best to polish "Within The Woods" and make it look "better" but again, there hasn't yet been a definitive restoration of the short film. I doubt there ever will be. Overall, aside from the crude picture quality, I can wholeheartedly say as a huge fan of "The Evil Dead' 'Within The Woods' is a brilliant prototype for 'The Evil Dead' and the franchise as a whole. With a running time of 30 minutes, it really showed Sam Raimi's talents behind a camera. This was his first film involved in the horror genre, maybe (if you can bare the quality) give 'Within The Woods' a shot. Then afterwards watch 'The Evil Dead' and 'Evil Dead 2' to compare shots and sequences that originated in Sam Raimi's super-8 short film.