• Books of the Dead

    Horror fans might assume that director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies wrote the book on cursed bibles of the damned. But years earlier, in 1967, The Equinox . . . A Journey into the Supernatural, one of the films in this week’s monster mash Hulu festival, featured a remarkably similar leather-bound tome that opened up a portal to another world (in a scene that was drastically cut down when the film was finally released in 1970). Raimi has said that he didn't see this landmark special-effects treat—whose stop-motion animation was designed by a group of young monster lovers that included future multiple-Oscar-winning effects artist Dennis Muren (Jurassic Park)—before embarking on the Evil Dead films. Nevertheless, the similarities between the movies are delightfully unmistakable in this regard (swirling smoke, spinning books, ominous voice-over, the use of the color red), as you can see in the clips below from The Equinox . . . A Journey into the Supernatural and Evil Dead II.

    Video

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9 comments

  • By MattC
    September 14, 2012
    03:43 PM

    Evil Dead II needs to be added to the Collection. I'd think it'd fit right in.
    Reply

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  • By Dan K
    September 14, 2012
    03:45 PM

    Evil Dead II on Criterion Blu? A man can dream...
    Reply

  • By Geoff Woodbridge
    September 14, 2012
    03:54 PM

    Equinox looks amazing! I was never a fan of Evil Dead 2... Within the Woods and Evil Dead do the story justice enough without the second outing... As for 3, least we mention the better...
    Reply

  • By patricia
    September 14, 2012
    04:10 PM

    equinox is airing on TCM tonite!
    Reply

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    • By Craig J. Clark
      September 14, 2012
      04:18 PM

      Gotta love TCM Underground.

  • By DQ Slotkins
    September 14, 2012
    04:26 PM

    Seriously? Equinox is a painfully bad movie. I do enjoy a really bad movie for giggles, but this is more dull than gleeful. Sorry.
    Reply

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    • By Fillups44
      September 14, 2012
      04:54 PM

      While Equinox is not as charmingly bad as some bad movies it has genuine ingenuity behind the effects and a sort of hey gang let's put on a movie aspect (as done by a group of technically talented newbies) shown through the wide variety of the effects.. For me, at least there is a payoff in that several monsters actually show up and they are pretty impressive (many low budget efforts keep the monsters off screen or it's just obviously a guy in a suit). The film is brief enough and the extras on the disc are awesome! I like that Equinox is in the collection, It is not a triumph of the medium as many of the films in the collection are. It shows the painful genesis of film making with some of the nuts and bolts exposed.

  • By HoraDecubitus
    September 14, 2012
    05:21 PM

    Evil Dead trilogy as next year's big box set
    Reply

  • By NAME
    September 14, 2012
    09:52 PM

    http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon
    Reply

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