Stephen King's glowing 1982 review of Sam Raimi's low-budget horror film "The Evil Dead" is widely credited with rescuing it from obscurity and helping it reach a wider audience. The film had initially struggled, playing in just 15 US cinemas after its October 1981 release, with most major distributors turning it down.

King saw the film at the Cannes Film Festival, where it had been invited to screen out of competition by co-founder Irvin Shapiro, and subsequently wrote a highly positive appraisal, calling it "the most ferociously original horror film of 1982" despite noting it might never find an audience. The phrase "ferociously original" was later used in the film's marketing, and King's endorsement is thought to have helped persuade New Line Cinema to pick up distribution, leading to a profitable box-office run for what became a cult classic and notorious "Video Nasty".