1.85:1 Widescreen

“Someone's in my fruit cellar! Someone with a fresh soooul!”

Sam Raimi wasn’t really interested in making a horror movie. Weaned on The Three Stooges, comedy was really more his style, but he could only find interested investors if he made a horror movie. So he and his filmmaking partner, Bruce Campbell, made the short film Within the Woods and with it secured funding for their first feature length movie, The Book of the Dead. When it was pointed out kids might not see a movie with book in the title, the name was changed to Evil Dead. With help from Stephen King proclaiming the movie as “the most ferociously original film of the year,” it became a moderate box office success (in short it made money even if the cast and crew didn’t). The uncut version which then circulated the video market elevated it quickly into cult status.

“People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.”

OK, let me get this out of the way. The Crow was a vehicle for Brandon Lee, son of martial arts legend and movie star Bruce Lee. The elder Lee trained Brandon in martial arts from the day he could take his first steps. When Brandon was only eight years old, his father tragically died just before finishing production on Enter the Dragon, a movie which would go on to become an international blockbuster making Bruce Lee the greatest icon of martial arts cinema. Brandon followed in his father’s footsteps studying martial arts and drama.

"Now children, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin..."

A good ghost story is actually pretty hard to pull off. Unlike a typical slasher or monster movie, ghost stories can't really depend on visual elements to carry the burden. Certainly, there have been those films where apparitions take on some pretty creepy forms, and that can go a long way. The Asian horror market has explored that world often enough. Still, some of the best ghost stories make their impact on what you can't really see. It's the tale and the telling that makes a film like The Others come to life. It's a film that hasn't really gotten the attention or credit it has deserved over the years. Perhaps with Lionsgate's new Blu-ray release of the 2001 film some of that can be corrected.