Evil Dead: 10 Grooviest Franchise Moments So Far

The very first death in The Evil Dead perfectly establishes how utterly insane this franchise is going to be. When Scotty's girlfriend Shelly becomes possessed and lunges at him, he puts the axe he's been holding to good use, hitting her right in the head and then dismembering her one limb at a time. He ends up swinging the axe at her a total of fifteen times, and it's absolutely brutal.

A couple of factors help make this scene so memorable. For one, it's an early example of the visually appealing special effects, as when Scott hits Shelly, blood shoots out everywhere like a Tarantino flick.

Considering Sam Raimi was working with just $350,000 here, it's incredibly impressive. Raimi always love to do interesting things with the camera, and so during this sequence there's also a shot in which blood slowly fills up the frame, as if what's happening is so messy that it's actually getting us drenched.

Finally, to make it even nastier, Raimi cuts to all of Shelly's body parts lying chopped up on the floor, and they're still wiggling around like a chicken that lost its head. About halfway through the movie, Raimi shows the audience how far he's willing to go, and he never lets up from here.