Hello again and welcome to another edition of the Anchor Bay Upfront.  Rather than take up a lot of space with a whole roundup of AB releases, I’m going to take up a lot of space with one.  But it’s a good one.

Evil Dead – The Ultimate Edition

Buy it from CHUDBUY IT AT AMAZON:  Click HERE
MSRP:  $34.97
RATED:  NR
RUNNING TIME:  85 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
DISC 1:
Widescreen Presentation
One By One We Will Take You:  The Untold Saga of THE EVIL DEAD
Commentary with Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert
DISC 2:
Full-Frame Presentation
THE EVIL DEAD:  Treasures From the Cutting Room Floor
Commentary with Bruce Campbell
DISC 3:
Life After Death:  The Ladies of THE EVIL DEAD
The Ladies of THE EVIL DEAD Meet Bruce Campbell
Discovering THE EVIL DEAD
Unconventional Featurette
At the Drive-In Featurette
Reunion Panel Featurette
Make-Up Test Featurette
Trailer
TV Spots
Still Gallery
Poster & Memorabilia Gallery

Twenty Six.

That’s how many times The Evil Dead has been released on DVD.  And that’s just The Evil Dead – not Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness.  And 12 of those were Region 1 editions.  Now, there have been some memorable releases up to now:  The Lunchbox Edition; The Fistful of Boomstick Game/Movie Combo; the stinky Book of the Dead Editions – but all were pretty much the same master file in a different case.

Until now.  On December 18th, Anchor Bay will release yet another edition of the revolutionary film and it’s no understatement to call it The Ultimate Edition.  With three discs (wow), both widescreen AND full screen presentations, commentaries by Raimi, Tapert AND The Chin, more bonus material than you can shake a boomstick at (yeah, that’s right – I said it) and heretofore the only release to use that awesome poster art (the Elite Entertainment Special Edition used a variant of it, but this is the only one to use it as it was originally designed – and it even has the little fold lines), the ONLY thing keeping this from being the last Evil Dead set you’ll ever need is still the lack of the short film “Within the Woods” (hopefully that’ll follow the Hearts of Darkness route soon and get a little standalone love*).  Whether you own one, all or none of the previous releases, this is definitely a must buy.

* – Hint, hint, Anchor Bay.