Sam Raimi, Equinox, the Evil Dead and prior art

[somercet]

Equinox by Mark Thomas McGee and Jack Woods stars TV's Frank Bonner (AKA Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati) in a film that sounds astonishingly familiar:

• Four teenagers
• Visiting a professor who is now dead
• At his cabin in the woods
• Find an anti-Bible
• Which can summon evil spirits upon mere reading

Comments

[jordan179]

Both Equinox and Evil Dead draw from the same inspiration -- the Cthulhu Mythos.

[somercet]

Nah, this goes beyond Lovecraftian. I saw Equinox on cable several months ago and thought, wow, this is just like The Evil Dead: only later did I look it up. Also, the park ranger in the former is called Asmodeus and is repelled by the cross, which is not Lovecraftian at all.

[jordan179]

Also, the park ranger in the former is called Asmodeus and is repelled by the cross, which is not Lovecraftian at all.

Not strictly Lovecraftian, but the concept of an ancient book which opens a portal to another dimension containing alien-shaped demons is Lovecraftian; the thing which destroyed the house in particular resembled a shoggoth. Note that Evil Dead is even more explicitly Lovecraftian -- it actually calls its evil book the Necronomicon, though Lovecraft was not much into zombies, demonically-created or otherwise.