anchor bay has released 'evil dead' more times than you can throw a quivering severed demon limb at, so why did i pick up the ultimate edition? a few reasons. number one, the packaging is incredible. it's well-made and the cover is the original poster art complete with fold marks (artificial or not, i don't know or care). two, i do not hold out any hope for a future edition that includes the well-known short 'within the woods' that raimi and crew made prior to 'evil dead' (bruce campbell has said in many interviews they will never release this, and it's very easy to find online for anyone who is curious). three, and probably most important, the 'ladies of the evil dead' disc! at long last, the female leads come forward and share their experience making this landmark film. they have a truckload of new and interesting stories to tell, and i loved watching all the footage of them together after all these years. if there is a future edition that features a commentary track by these ladies, i'll buy it (reference to a commentary is made in one of their interviews, but it's not specified whether or not it was for dvd or if they did it live at a public screening). they're awesome and frankly all we've heard for the last 20something years on this film series is male perspective. anchor bay was smart to seriously acknowledge the female contributors to this classic film as they make up the majority of the lead roles and endured the same pain and makeup torture as everybody else.



my only complaint, and the reason this edition gets 4 stars instead of 5, is that i can't give away my previous 'collectors edition' anchor bay dvd of 'evil dead' because they put bruce campbell's commentary on a separate disc from the one with sam raimi and rob tapert. if anything happens to one of these two discs you still have the movie but you'd be missing one very important commentary track.