The biggest reason the scene doesn’t work… is because it’s silly. If Ed Wood was alive and making movies in the 70s, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. You can almost see the crew at the edge of frame, waving branches back and forth, all in the name of being “scary.” You can tell what shots were run in reverse to make it look like the branches were wrapping around her. It’s horrible filmmaking — we assign it more value because it’s Sam Raimi. But it’s Raimi *before* he knew what he was doing… and it shows. He even agreed with that.

For me, it almost works on the level of Wood, SHOWGIRLS… you name it. It’s Grade-A cheese! Which is why it can never be scary, regardless of what people are or aren’t afraid of.

I can’t remember the setup to the scene in question, but in a way the sheer outlandishness of the concept works against it inspiring fear. I’ll bet you a coke that no one in the theater shouted “Don’t go into the woods you idiot! You’re going to get raped by a tree!”

Well, at least not the first time they saw it. Although I agree with Mlawski (and Raimi) that this scene should honestly never have been filmed, it does pull off one sort of neat trick. If you are watching The Evil Dead for the second time, you know that the scene is coming. And you become afraid – afraid for the characters in the movie, but afraid of the movie itself. “Don’t go into the showing of Evil Dead! You’re going to have to watch the tree rape scene!”

I still maintain, however, that the tree rape scene fails to reach a level of parody or of real terror. If it was meant to be a parody, the tree attack would have had to be far more exaggerated. For example, if the tree started whipping the young woman’s behind or if there were an “I got wood” pun, then we’d be aware that we were entering the realm of satire.

To make the scene legitimately scary and about our primal fear of nature, it would have had to be filmed differently. Maybe the trees would be shot in such a way as to seem more grotesque, or maybe there would be a shot of a stop-motion fox chewing on his own entrails while saying “Chaos reigns!” in a creepy voice. In Evil Dead, though, the trees are just, well, trees. They weren’t scary to me in the least. Disgusting and misogynistic, yes, but not terrifying. Bear in mind, everyone, that I am about the biggest scaredy cat in the Universe. I had nightmares about Synecdoche, New York, for goodness’ sake. If the tree rape scene didn’t scare me, of all people, then my bet is it’s just not scary.

Boiling it all the way down to “scared of trees” is disingenuous, I think. I think you’d find a lot of children scared of the forest or of monsters in the forest. I also think there are a decent number of people who, if dropped alone in the forest at night, would be absolutely terrified.

It’s a silly scene, but how many times have tree branches been used in film to make a creepy tap on a window? Or had their branches described as “skeletal” in books? Or been seen as the bones of a skeleton by a terrified victim? In this case, the tree wasn’t distracting the victim from the danger. It actually WAS the danger.

It would be like if the cliched cat that jumps out of the darkness to give the audience and the victim a false scare. Except if the cat actually then turned around and ripped the victim’s face off.

To analyze it more deeply just for kicks, though, I think it’s worth noting that when looking at the “primal fear” of nature, as discussed above, Nature-with-a-capital-N is overwhelmingly a female force – the destructive flip-side of creation. The primal fear of Nature comes from the sense of something that holds us, nourishes us, and protects us is lashing out at us, making us feel like a child getting spanked by its mother. Even though individual sentient trees are typically characterized as male (Ents, for example) the fact that Nature itself, the fear of which this scene rides on, is female makes the rape disturbing in an entirely different way, and actually supports the notion of satire over parody.

Speaking of the line between parody and satire, I would like to once again mention Evil Dead: the Musical, which I believe walks that line itself. Sadly, I can’t speak too eloquently on it, as I’ve not seen it performed… but based on the soundtrack alone, it seems to meld musical theater tropes seamlessly with the horror film cliches it already embodied, while simultaneously being an indictment of the fading art of musical theater almost as cleverly as, say, Urinetown.

But I find my original experience of the movie itself quite funny-interesting now. I was twelve-ish, watching a marathon of the three with my dad, and he (I now realize quite conveniently) told me to go help my mom do something with my younger brother somewhere in the middle. It must have been during this scene- there is no way in HELL I’d forget something that unnerving. Clever man, clever man indeed. I never got around to watching the whole thing on my own because, well, it’s hardly ever on TV, while the other two are on every few months, it seems.

Was there any backlash or condemnation of the tree-rape scene when the movie first came out? Did it cause any hurdles for Raimi when he was trying to put the second movie out?

And if it’s going to be shown again and Raimi realized post-release the scene shouldn’t have been in at all, maybe he’ll have it taken out??? I mean, the article doesn’t give too many details, but while the quote suggests the scene may remain (since that is, by far, the scene that feels the most like “punishment” and gives the most “pain”) in, perhaps Raimi’s own discomfort with it will mean a change.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/10/28/evil-dead-will-return-to-the-big-screen/

Bruce Campbell’s quote:

“Nothing can prepare an audience for what they are about to see, because nothing punishes an audience like EVIL DEAD – especially on the big screen… I’m really glad it’s back. People are gonna be hurt.”

Indeed, if “tree rape” was supposed to be the shocking way to get people interested in this franchise… it’s important to note that not only was any kind of rape scene NOT included in the sequels… but *NO similar horror scenes* were included either. So while one can argue Raimi didn’t want to repeat himself with an even scarier/sillier “tree rape” scene… he didn’t try ANYTHING that was “scary” in that way in the sequels.

I think more obviously, he and Campbell felt that what made EVIL DEAD unique was the slapstick comedy… which is why EVIL DEAD 2 is broader and sillier with less of an accent on the horror… and why ARMY OF DARKNESS pretty much throws the horror out the window entirely, and goes for laughs from start to finish.

(I would also point out that typically when people talk about the franchise, they don’t have much to say about EVIL DEAD — it’s much more about EVIL DEAD 2, which is for all intents and purposes a *remake* of EVIL DEAD with a slightly better budget and the ideas that appealed to Raimi and Campbell… and the absurd comedy of ARMY.)

“Scary movies reach back to our primal fears, but who here—show of hands—was ever scared of a tree as a kid? More specifically, how many of you were ever scared of being raped by a tree?”

You are correct with the latter point — no, I don’t know anyone scared of being raped by a tree — but incorrent as to the first.

LOTS of kids are scared of trees. That’s why one of the major sequences of another movie that walks the line between horror and comedy (though in the reverse order of EVIL DEAD: comedy->horror rather than horror->comedy), POLTERGEIST, deals with the young Freeling boy being scared of… the tree outside his bedroom window.

Think about it: while plenty of trees aren’t menacing… it’s also true that plenty ARE. Those that, like in POLTERGEIST, are just outside what’s supposed to be a “safe” place. Those that are old, wrinkled, and gnarled to the point that if you squint your eyes JUST RIGHT… you almost think you see human features (faces, but more relevantly arms and fingers with which to grab you). And the scene absolutely works in POLTERGEIST whereas it fails in EVIL DEAD… even after the tree has pulled the boy out of his room and is trying to swallow him.

While “fear of trees” isn’t primal on the order of “fear of the dark”… if you broaden it to “fear of nature,” it absolutely *is* primal, almost as much as “fear of water” or “fear of snakes/sharks/spiders/etc.” is. For nature is unknowable when you’re a child — what happens with those things when you’re left defenseless, or when you fall asleep? THAT’S what kids are afraid of… and why it’s perfectly reasonable for children to be afraid of the big, old, misshapen tree outside of their bedroom window.

(Also, I would argue that children aren’t afraid of clowns only because they “cross the Uncanny Valley” — in some cases, that’s true, as in POLTERGEIST — but more importantly, for the same reason they’re afraid of trees: they’re supposed to be “safe” and “happy” and “fun”, but ultimately are mysterious and potentially dangerous. Think about clowns: they’re usually adult/quite larger than kids; their faces are painted so their appearances are disguised — what’s really underneath that makeup?; and they talk in high/unnatural voices and tend to move in unnatural ways.)

But let’s get away from talking about children’s fears… Alternately, for women, “fear of rape” is *absolutely* relevant in their adult years. But again, the scene in EVIL DEAD fails BECAUSE it combines what are essentially two very *different* fears: a child’s primal fear of nature, and an adult’s primal fear of being taken against their will sexually. THAT is why the scene as conceived by Raimi is wrong — the combination of those two fears very obviously doesn’t work. NOT because it has to do “with trees,” though that’s the most apparent reason — but because the child and adult fears aren’t juxtaposed in an entertaining, scary, or *relevant* way, as they are in one of your own examples, Stephen King’s IT.