If you were unaware that Stephen King wrote a hugely influential review of The Evil Dead before it received American distribution, well, now you know.

King attended a screening at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and was blown away by the film, calling it “the most ferociously original horror film of 1982”.

It is perhaps because of King’s review that we now widely know The Evil Dead as the cult classic it was always destined to be. His interest piqued the curiosity of American distributors, and the film was eventually acquired by New Line Cinema.

From a 2015 interview between Sam Raimi and IGN;

“During one of these marketing screenings at the Cannes film festival, where there were different distributors watching the films trying to make their judgments as to what they’ll buy that year, Stephen King was in the audience, and we heard, “Oh, he was really screaming and shouting during the movie.” And I was the biggest Stephen King fan in the world. “[Sales agent] Irvin Shapiro said to me, “Ask him for a quote, if he liked the movie.” So I called him… and said, “Could you give us a quote, what you honestly thought of the film?” He said, “I won’t do that, but I will write a review. If there’s something in the review that you want to use as a quote, you can.” “So he wrote a review for Twilight Zone Magazine. It was very generous of him, and we were able to use the very positive quote that he gave us. Without that, the movie may have been lost, but with Stephen King’s endorsement, we were able to make our first sales.”

The rest, as they say, is history. With an army of sequels, comics, video games, a reboot and a TV series, The Evil Dead is indisputably one of the most iconic horror franchises of all time.

Thank you, Stephen King, for always knowing what’s best for us.

The review was originally posted in Twilight Zone magazine and is available through the pictures you’ll find below, as found on Reddit. You can open the links below for a larger version.

Click Here and Here for enlarged versions.

For more Evil Dead, click here to read The Original Evil Dead Re-Released to German Cinemas

Source: JoBlo.com