Its summer and it i time for a good campy horror film. This one actually gots good reviews for being a funny as well as scary film. Not my usual fare, but I bet it will be fun to watch. The film starts at 5:40.
Sam Raimi is probably best known as the director of the "Spider-Man" trilogy. But for cult-horror junkies, he'll always be the man behind the three "Evil Dead" flicks, arguably the funniest, cheesiest, most repulsive series in the history of splatter.

He left that genre behind in 1993 but now returns there with "Drag Me to Hell," a goofy ode to gothic schmaltz that never pretends to be anything it isn't. Start with the title, a straightforward imperative that promises B-movie levels of supernatural hooey. And it delivers: A corn-fed blond (Alison Lohman) is cursed by a Gypsy crone (Lorna Raver) and winds up getting smacked around by an invisible horned demon.

It has a séance scene. It has a black cat named Hecuba. It even has an exhumation in a graveyard, complete with a few noodly organ riffs and dramatic crashes of lightning. Don't expect a subtle reinvention of the horror oeuvre. "Drag Me to Hell" is what it is. And if you can stomach the projectile-sputum gags and stapled-eyelid attack scene, it's hilarious.

It's almost as hilarious as the "Evil Deads." Is it as gory? No way - this is a PG-13 film, so it lacks the slapstick dismemberment and endless fountains of blood. There is a beaut of a nosebleed, however. And Raver's Mrs. Ganush does barf up all manner of gook on Lohman's Christine, a bank loan officer who wishes she'd given the old hag that third extension on her mortgage.

They all play their roles with hammy gusto. Lohman goes from zero to freaked in seconds, but she also manages some deftly comic bloodlust when things get truly nasty. Raver is a vision of toothless retaliation. Dileep Rao is a sympathetic clairvoyant with a fondness for Jung, and Justin Long plays Christine's skeptical but supportive boyfriend. His job is to doubt, look handsome and say things like "Thank God you're OK."

Visually, the film is cleaner and pricier than Raimi's early works; it also forsakes stop-motion for a bit of C.G.I., though it looks bargain-basement compared with most genre fare these days. Fans should be on the alert for Raimi's iconic yellow Oldsmobile and keep their eyes peeled for the moment when a fly, buzzing ominously around Christine, lands on the lens for a close-up. It's a brief but telling nod to the fourth wall - and the spirit of Raimi, whose spoofy art and artifice allow us to laugh at horror.

-- Advisory: Horror violence, terror, disturbing images and language.

E-mail Amy Biancolli at [masked].

Will eat at Thai Stick after the movie. Please only sign up if coming to dinner aftewards even if only for drinks, coffee, Thai Ice Tea, or dessert we don't mind.

Here is a review