Grindhouse Releasing is bringing Sam Raimi’s EVIL DEAD to theaters for the first time in 4K with a terrifying new soundtrack!

Original Composer Joe LoDuca Revisits Sam Raimi’s Horror Classic

This special edition of EVIL DEAD presents the horror classic for the first time with a reimagined score by original composer Joseph LoDuca and a thrilling new 5.1 surround mix created by Marti Humphrey and Jussi Tegelman, the award-winning sound crew behind DRAG ME TO HELL and ASH VS. EVIL DEAD.

Star BRUCE CAMPBELL explains, “Mixing the sound for EVIL DEAD in the early 80’s, we were forced to shove everything into one monaural box. As a result, Joe LoDuca’s great score had to compete unfairly with Kandarian Demons, gore sound effects and lots of screaming. With this new release, Joe can finally have his dynamic composition mixed, balanced and featured properly – for perhaps the first time ever!”

Grindhouse Releasing owner Bob Murawski worked with Raimi to restore EVIL DEAD from the original 16mm camera negatives, and brought the stunning 4K transfer together with LoDuca’s new soundtrack. Murawski is an Oscar-winning film editor whose work with Sam Raimi includes DARKMAN, ARMY OF DARKNESS, THE GIFT, SPIDER MAN 1, 2, & 3, DRAG ME TO HELL, and ASH VS. EVIL DEAD.

“With this fantastic new score, Joe LoDuca proves that he’s the Bartok of blood, the Shostakovich of shock, the Mahler of the macabre.” Murawski said. ”The new music, new sound mix and new 4K restoration have elevated EVIL DEAD from the scary to the sublime.”

The special presentation will travel to select theaters nationwide this fall.

FROM THE COMPOSER

EVIL DEAD was my first film commission.  As fate would have it, this is the movie that has the most enduring impact on generations of fans. Every few years I get a request to release the score.

The EVIL DEAD trilogy launched my career composing for films and television. I still get asked to write for horror/thrillers.  I love doing it, because the genre has no rules when it comes to music, save the objective of building tension and sustaining dread. Today’s audience is more savvy, so I have to constantly re-examine what is scary.  Keeps me on my toes.

Producers always want the popcorn to fly, and I am often afforded large orchestras to insure that happens. Yet I never seem to be able to sell the idea that intimacy conjures a bubbling cauldron of fear just as potent. With limited resources, I scored EVIL DEAD for a string quintet augmented by piano, hand percussion, a synthesizer and a bit of guitar–anything I could get my hands on.

So when I was last approached to reissue the score, I asked myself this question: Knowing what I now know, how would I write for that ensemble today?

I am happy that I did.

So sit back in a darkened room and listen to the soundtrack to what Stephen King once called “a black rainbow of horror”.

Welcome to my nightmare: reimagined.

Joe LoDuca