1. Evil Dead II (1987)
Evil Dead II did something few sequels have managed; it twisted the genre on its decapitated neck and made it fun to laugh while at the same time, crap your pants. While most horror movies stayed true to the format of kill, kill, and kill some more, Evil Dead II went in a different direction while also managing to stay on the same path. Gone were the other cabin-dwellers from the original; a quick back-story showed Ash cutting up his demon-possessed girlfriend with a chainsaw. But for some reason, although macabre, it wasn't scary. Perhaps because she wouldn't stop nagging him while he was sawing her up. Raimi was given an actual low-budget horror budget to work from, slightly over $3.6 million, and it nearly doubled its return at the box office, despite its questionable reviews and a lot of people who "just didn't get it." Evil Dead II joined a limited number of sequels at the time that managed to best the original (Empire Strikes Back, Godfather 2, Friday the 13th, Part II) and allowed Raimi to continue to do what he did best, despite his previous already discussed bomb, Crimewave. Evil Dead II became its own cult classic, as different from Evil Dead as it was from Army of Darkness, although they were all part of the same trilogy. A lot of this is a credit to Bruce Campbell, who managed to raise the bar on physical comedy. And he did it in a horror movie. Bruce Vs. His Hand became an instant classic and is rated as one of the best sub-plots ever in a horror movie list compiled by me. A true horror/comedy classic.
How would you rank the works of Sam Raimi? Let us know in the comments section below.