Brattle Theater continues off-beat tradition

The Brattle Theater is over 110 years old, a permanent fixture of Harvard Square and a great resource for film buffs. It started as a traditional theater first, and held the stage debuts of such figures as Zero Mostel. It became a movie-house in 1953, and soon branched into a big venue for foreign and independent films. The stage continues to be used for theater, although it went dark for some time during the 1980s.

Today, they mainly show high quality prints of older movies at about $8 per showing (some shows have special prices, and their schedule can be found online at www.brattlefilm.org). They also co-sponsor literary readings with Wordsworth Books on Monday nights.

The Brattle maintains a policy of advocating movies that lose their studio support (or never get in the first place) like last year's Salton Sea or a recently re-cut version of Metropolis. This Halloween, the Brattle is running Evil Dead 2, the 800-pound gorilla of cult horror films. If you haven't seen it, and are in the mood to see something truly bizarre, do yourself a favor and pay the dollar T ride to Harvard Square. Here is a review of the film, as viewed on a recent DVD release.



Evil Dead 2



Before Sam Raimi directed the mega-smash, competion-killing, $400 million-plus grossing hit Spiderman, he made his first impact on the film world with Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn.

No, really.

Although a sequel to the first Evil Dead film (notable mainly for how much gore and clever cinematography is possible on a non-existent budget), Evil Dead 2 was a follow-up only in name, genre and in the re-casting of eternal B-movie star Bruce Campbell. Instead of making another scare/schlockfest, they took the conventions of horror films_blood, bumps in the night, skeletons and books that summon unholy armies of the dead. Put them in a blender and set it on puree. The results were not only awesome and groundbreaking, they were... how to put in a word... groovy.

What would normally take 30-50 minutes of expositioning a lesser movie _ obligatory driving to a remote cabin, summoning the undead, losing a cast member or two, actually seeing what the evil forces look like_takes about nine minutes. And then the violence and horror takes a turn for the surreal.

Ash (Campbell) wanders back to the cabin after burying his girlfriend, and everything in the house begins to laugh at him. Everything: the lamps, the books the deer heads. And he begins to laugh back and dance with them. Is this a horror movie, or a French surrealist movie?

Then his girlfriend (now headless) runs in and chases him with a chainsaw. Then his hand to "goes bad" and attacks him by smashing plates on his own head. Then he cuts his hand off with the chainsaw we saw earlier, only to have it running around like speedy Gonzales. Is this Looney Toons, or the Exorcist? The answer is, both.

There are truly scary movies: Halloween, the first Nightmare on Elm Street, the recent Event Horizon and Scary Movie 2 (you heard me.) Then there are bad horror movies, like The Haunting or Virus, where millions are spent to achieve little effect (the recent Ghost Ship appears to be another one of these.) Then there are the especially bad horror movies, the stuff that great drinking games are made of (see: Jason X)

But Evil Dead 2 fits none of these. Or, rather, it broke the ground that allowed the post-modern horror film to arrive. Yes, the film has blood and gore galore. Yes, it has a hero armed with only a shotgun and a chainsaw that he uses to fight hordes of undead. Yes, he fights a demon that promises to "swallow his soul." But to see only these things is to miss the point.

The film is not only filled to the brim with these things, but is actually about these things. Raimi and company grew up learning slapstick from the Three Stooges and the slasher from splatterflicks. This hybrid is the bastard child of their imagination, a platypus of laughs and screams. It is a film that helped filmmakers realize that special effects can be appreciated as effects, and not just a way to disgust your audience. If you take the film seriously, you won't make it past those first nine minutes. If you laugh with it, and appreciate the creativity and humor that can be found, it's an amazing experience.

Look, I'm not saying that this is a film to think about and take apart piece by piece. That's my curse, as someone obsessed with this stuff. What I am saying is that if you want a film that will make you laugh more than scream, and a Halloween screening you'll never forget, high-tail it to the Brattle at 7:30 p.m. tonight.