As part of the Flashback Weekend nostalgia convention, which runs through Sunday, the west parking lot of the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare in Rosemont will be converted into an open-air theater. Patrons are invited to bring blankets and lawn chairs (the “drive-in” part is purely sentimental).
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Friday night’s program features a screening of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1983, NC-17, 85 min.), introduced by star Bruce Campbell (see Critic’s Choice in Readings & Lectures) and other members of the cast and crew. Reader reviewer Pat Graham described the film as “ferociously kinetic and full of visual surprises, though its gut-churning reputation doesn’t seem fully deserved: if anything the gore is too picturesque and studied, an abstract decorator’s mix of oozing, slimy color. There’s a weird comic energy in the frenetic physical playing–hysterical actors running in and out of rooms, zombies popping up from the floorboards and out of wall cabinets like jack-in-the-boxes–and the mad Punch-and-Judy orchestration takes on an almost choreographic quality at times (this may be the first commedia dell’arte horror film). There are lots of clever turns on standard horror movie formulas, and one image especially lingers in the mind: a woman splintering into an infinity of hairline cracks, like the suddenly shattered surface of a ceramic vase.”
