Evil Dead In Concert brings a cult classic to the big screen Oct. 18 at Uptown

5 hours ago

Nick Spacek,

Live scores to films are nothing new, but for the most part, it’s usually orchestras hitting big, brassy notes with action and adventure movies, such as Indiana Jones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the actual artists like composers Fabio Frizzi and prog rockers Goblin touring their own scores to obscure favorites such as The Beyond and Suspiria. Rarely does a production company take the time and effort to put together musicians and tour the score to an independently-produced, low-budget cult film.

However, if you had to pick one to do, the original Evil Dead is definitely the perfect choice. While many are quite familiar with the image of the film’s hero, Ash Williams, as portrayed in numerous films and television shows by Bruce Campbell, those who’ve actually seen the start to a decades-long franchise is likely small. Those who’ve seen it on the big screen number even fewer.

Thus, during this most creepy of seasons does Los Angeles production company Black Ink Presents bring Evil Dead In Concert to the Uptown on Saturday, October 18, as part of a national tour in which a live-to-film experience brings Sam Raimi’s classic horror film “in a newly restored format and brought to life on stage while a live ensemble performs the entire revamped original musical score from composer Joe LoDuca.”

John Kinsner. // image courtesy Black Ink Presents

It’s an interesting project to tackle in the first place, as the original score recordings no longer exist, meaning that the ensemble will be performing a “sweetened version” put together by composer LoDuca as The Evil Dead (A Nightmare Reimagined) in 2018, as Black Ink Presents producer John Kinsner explains one afternoon over Zoom.

“Joe will be the first to tell you that this score has a very special place in his heart,” Kinsner says. “It was his first, and it got him into the business and put him on a trajectory that never stopped.”

Compared to a lot of what Black Ink has done in the past, Evil Dead is a much more cult film than The Nightmare Before Christmas or Ghostbusters, but what attracted Kinsner and Black Ink to turning this into a touring performance is that it sits on the Mount Rushmore of cult films, as Kinsner puts it.

“Films that, when I was a kid, got passed around at school,” recalls Kinsner. “You got it from someone’s big brother, you didn’t tell your parents you had it and you watched it at sleepovers.”

The producer also points out that the film carries–quite comedically, by today’s standards–an NC-17 rating, something of a reflection of the Satanic Panic era in which Evil Dead was released.

“I am a huge, huge fan of cinema, and I’m a huge fan of the horror genre, and it’s been really wonderful to see it explode in the last 15-20 years, as it has, and really kind of become more mainstream,” the show’s producer reflects on the film. Kinsner puts the movie as one of the OGs, alongside the Universal monster movies of the ’30s and ’40s and George Romero’s Living Dead franchise of zombie pictures, pointing to Evil Dead as the original “kids in a cabin in the woods” movie as being one of its notable features.

“We were really drawn to it–one, because of our friendship with Joe,” Kinsner continues. “We’re friends with Ghost House and Sam Raimi’s company, and the Evil Dead universe has really grown.”

Blank Ink Presents are huge fans, obviously, but they also thought that there might be a market and interest in not only seeing the film on the big screen for what is probably the very first time for a lot of people, but also having an opportunity to hear this music on something besides your television speakers.

Side note: The first time I saw Evil Dead, it was on a very beat-up VHS cassette from the local video store in Lansing. It was so worn out, it made the speaker on our TV vibrate. I had to turn it down and then get really close to be able to hear it. Being about a foot and a half from the television set and watching that movie for the first time is one hell of an intense experience.

“It’s the best restoration that’s available through the studio,” as well, notes Kinsner. “The way that we do this in the live space is very similar and very reminiscent to actually how it works on the scoring stage–where we have the film, but then as their own individual files, we have dialogue, music, and effects, and we’re able to individually control all of those different files.”

The digital score is removed and Black Ink is still showing the presentation of the film with dialogue and effects, and then they effectively replace that score with the live music accompaniment of a six-piece ensemble, comprising a string quartet, a bass player, and a small percussion battery. It’s not a big group, but Evil Dead‘s score has its challenges. Even with Joe LoDuca having gone back and adding in some more body and lushness to his original score, the music gets rather near music concrete and sound design as much as traditional film score.

“Originally, it was almost minimalistic in terms of what was represented musically in the film,” Kinsner agrees. “It was not so many character themes, but more just psychological enhancement, and he’s definitely gone back and given us a much more vibrant, if you will, piece of music to perform alongside the film.”