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popculturebuffet · 3 years ago

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Evil Deadtrospective Part 2: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Hello you happy screwheads! I’m back with part 2 of my look at the Evil Dead Films. This time we’re going back to the cabin for Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn. Like the first film, this one is one of the most treasured and influental horror films of all time. This film reprsented a gear change for the franchise, as while the previous film was well loved and rightly celebrated, it also had a dumptruck of infamy due to it’s gore , and got tons of bans and edits. So to try and head this off as well as try something new, Rami pivoted to hororr comedy. Naturally given he was up against the MPAA... this didn’t quite work out but we’ll get to that.

Getting into the history a bit more than last time, as I shoudl’ve done more last time and regretted not doing it, this sequel’s story began on the set of the original: Sam Rami was pushed by the film’s publicist to make a sequel, so brainstorming with another screenwriter, Sheldon Letch, and came up with the idea of sending Ash back to the past, Samurai Knight Ash, as he went back to the middle ages to battle deadites then. While the publicist was able to drum up a ton of publicisti for the film, Rami wasn’t able to find any takers and the project was shelved for Rami’s next film Crimewave, a gangster comedy writtne by the Cohen Brothers, yes, really, and starring Bruce Cambell. I”m honestly intrested in seeing it, if cautious since my friend Cory described it as “ It’s bad, it’s an assault of the senses, it’s all over the place” though he did appricate both the film’s direction, it’s style and the hell Rami and Cambell went to make it. To make a long story short the studio constantly interferred, they forced Rami to not use Cambell as the lead, Though Rami simply extneded a supporting part in retaliation and gave it to our big chinned savior. It got Cambell to swear off working with big studios and in general and the resulting film lead to audience reactions of..

Leading to the film bombing. So not wanting their careers to end as they were getting started, they decided to try Evil Dead 2 again. They got one studio, Embassy Pictures to finally bite.. only to be stalled in pre-production. That’s when a key ally swooped in to save the project.

Yes folks Stephen Fucking King is the reason we got Evil Dead II. He was a huge fan of the first one, even being quoted as loving it on the poster. He was flabbergasted about their troubles so he went to producer Dino DeLaurentis to campaign for the guy. After hearing how big business the film did in Italy , Laurentis agreed. There was a caveat though: he didn’t want the time travel plot, but instead something a bit cheaper and more like the first one. Rami happilly agreed , worked on some rewrites and here we were. Production went smoother, but as I say the MPAA was a problem: the company didn’t want to submit it as they knew it’d get an X Rating, making it unresleasable, so they did what any studio who didn’t want an unrated film on their roster but still wanted to make back their money: They created a shell company, Rosebud Releasing ENTIRELY to distribute this film, with Rami even making the logo. The film didn’t do great in box office, but got immense critical praise with even ROGER FUCKING EBERT praising it. To understand why that’s a huge deal Roger REALLY, REALLY hated horror films for some reason, and was prone to pearl clutching overeacting about them and about “kids thinking the world is evil and you’ll get killed” even once crossing the line horribly by giving out the final girl’s address from Friday the 13th, leading to her getting harassing mail and being stalked.

So for him to praise a horror film took a LOT. Critters is the only other horror film I can think of he didn’t hate, so it’s in good company.

Naturally Home Video was kind to it though, the film became another cult classic and the rest is history. So 34 years later, how does the film hold up? Awesomely but that’s a rather weak excuse for a review so join me under the cut as I dive into a sequel better than the original as we get groovy and swallow some souls with Evil Dead 2.

So we open with a narration explaning the necronomicon, describing a time on earth when the seas ran red with blood and said blood was used to write the book.

We then cut to Ash and his girlfriend Linda driving to the cabin in the woods.

We have. See back in the 80′s a lot of horror sequels, friday the 13th most famously, tended to recap the previous movie since, even with Home Video, it wasn’t always guaranteed someone had seen the first one or COULD see the first one. Rami wanted to do it like most, simply splice together some clips from the first one and call it a day. Problem was the rights for the first film were so horribly and unbelievably tangled and messy, to the point I think I owned the rights to it in one point and I wasn’t even born yet, making it impossible to use the clips without tying up the film in the same hell. Rami then planned to still have all 5 characters from the original, but ended up pairing down to just Linda, who was recast on top of that because her actress was pregnant at the time. As for which version canon that was a riddle for the ages until Ash Vs the Evil Dead. While I haven’t seen it I do know the second season revolves around the fact Ash was blamed for the murders and ran out of town. I do prefer that as the deaths in the first one held so much weight I like that they aren’t just forgotten aside from Linda. That said the retelling isn’t bad either and allows people who just want a horror comedy to jump into this one without any prior knowledge.

So the changes this time: the evil force ISN’T stalking Ash and Linda as they approach the cabin, the romance scene is slightly diffrent and highlights the necklace as it’s vital to the plot again later, our heroes are just squatting in the cabin while the owners are seemingly away, and when they play the recording big flashes and what not don’t happen this time, making Ash and Linda far less brain dead than Scotty. Granted that’s not a remotely high bar, but at least they cleared it while scotty impaled himself on it.

The final change is that after they play it, Deadite!Linda is far more proactive, attacking ash to his horror, and leading to her accidental decapitation outside... which is the first indication of the tone shift as the head flopping around is played for laughs, as is Ash getting hit by the evil force leading us into the film proper, as he screams his head off while being taken for a ride. It’s with this film Bruce Cambell really gets to shine. He was utterly excellent last time, no question, but this time he gets to show off the chops that would make him a star: an utter talent for facial expressions that makes him come off like a live action cartoon, expert comedic timing for lines, and a hamyness that no one can match grounded by real human emotoin when the script calls for it. I cannot sing Bruce’s praises enough: the man can easily pivot from scared out of his mind shenanigans to utterly broken defiant screaming as he chops into his girlfriend’s severed head without missing a beat. This film simply would not work without him and it’s clear Rami not only knew that but built this part as a showcase for his friend and creative partner’s talent. Almost all of the first act from this point is a mostly one man show from Cambell, with only the occasional cut away to set up the rest of the cast. Knowing about the crimewave stuff now, it comes off as Rami giving his friend the showcase he SHOULD’VE had there, and it works so well the guy built a whole career off this one movie.

While I could praise our lord and savior Bruce Cambell all day and rightly so we should get back to the plot. So after being flown around a bit like the flying scene in Superman gone wrong, Ash turns into a deadite... only to turn back in the sun. It’s a nice bit of playing with expectations. Another common as hell 80′s trope was killing the survivor of the previous film at the start of the next one, then setting up a new cast, sometimes justifiably like with Friday the 13th where again the poor lead was stalked and harassed so she didn’t want to come back for a full flim, and sometimes not like with Nightmare on Elm Street 4 where they murdered everyone we spent a whole film rooting for in the span of half an hour. There... there may be a reason I haven’t seen that one yet but I can’t put my finger on it.

Instead Ash is kept alive... unlucky for him. He makes a few attempts at escape, with more planned in the script including him trying to use the hiking trail Scotty mentioned in the first film that comes back in this one, only to fail. Eventually night falls again and he books it back to the cabin only to get stalked by the headless corpse of his ex who does a ballet. Don’t you hate it when your ex dosen’t get the hint? ...... i’m asking I don’t have the experince to properly know if that’s a thing or not.

So she attacks again, leading to a scene that demonstrates just how well this film juggles comedy and horror: Ash takes Linda’s severed head and puts it on a vice in the work shed, which sounds horrifying if you don’t have proper context. I’ll prove it.

“Garfield took John’s severed head and put it in a vice in the workshed”

See not so pleasant. Though it is the inevitable end to the Garfield Canon. My point is the scene is horrific, but also a bit comical due to the way the face acts, dips back into horror when the deadite takes on the regular apperance of linda to torture Ash and buy time for it to dip back to comedy when her headless body shows up with the chainsaw. In a lesser work it’d be horrible tonal whiplash. With Evil Dead 2.. it’s just tuesday. Ash ends up forced to dismember her to survivie and heads inside.

Taking a break from ash for a second, let’s get the introduction to our latest batch of deadite food out of the way. On an airstrip presumably somewhere in michigan, as Ash’s home town of Elk Grove where he and his friends clearly drove from has to be near the Knowby’s Cabin to be able to drive there on a college kid’s budget, the professor’s daughter Annie arrives. She was unmentioned in the previous film, but the recording here was slightly alterted to add mention of her and the knowby’s research assitant Ed, who also happens to be Annie’s loving boyfriend. Despite looking a LOT like Ted, he’s thankfully just a bland inoffensive cutout of a man who could be replaced with a male sex doll dressed up like fred from scooby doo and have just as much impact on the plot.

The two drive up to the cabin only to encounter...

That, and two local rednecks, Jake and his sweetie Bobbi Lou. A couple of things to note here. The first is with Jake, who I share a name and a gut size with if nothing else. Honestly i’ll take the suicidal moronic hillbilly sharing a name with me over the generic cool kids I got saddled with in the 2000′s, Jake Long excepted. I mean Jake does end up causing a LOT of problems later, but at least he has something resembling a personality. All those featherted head kids were just generic crush fodder, it was annoying. As for Bobbie Jo she was supposed to be played by Holly Hunter, but Dino shut it down, citing she “wasn’t attractive enough”

So yeah... ..

Or for the long version: Rolls should be based on talent, not conventional attractiveness, and Holly Hunter has both you deeply weird, sexist moron. Though it was probably a lot to expect an 80′s film producer who would go to the trouble of making a shell corporation for one movie to be remotely sane, let alone not a sexist nightmare. I shoudln’t have to say this but given certain subsects of geekdom will gripe and moan about a character not being as “hot” as the original version or chaster costume changes, I tragically do.

So Jake , after some prodding and a brief snit between Bobby Jo and Annie because Annie refuses to say why she’s there.. despite the easy fact she can just say “it’s my parent’s cabin” so I don’t get why but given the whole Holly Hunter debalce let’s just be greatful he didn’t demand they jello wrestle over the matter. Point is jake’s going to lead them through the woods. This also makes logical sense for the dead: it wants fresh blood so while it won’t let anyone, i.e. Ash, OUT, it’s happy to let people in.

So while this goes on Ash lops off his own hand which is turning evil then has a Tom and Jerry style chase with it, which takes as long as all the sequences with these schmucks combined, and for good reason as it’s endlessly hilarious. Don’t get me wrong the other characters and this setup are necessary.. it just feels like every time we end a scene with them to get back to ash fighting his own hand it should transition with..

It’s not bad for standard horror setup stuff but it’s like if the first fifteen or so minutes of the original child’s play had cuts to that scene in Child’s Play 3 where chucky gives a man a heart attack.

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It just dosen’t mix well, esepcially since the opening remake with Linda already felt like the slow easing into the horror.

So Ash, frustrated over this and having watched almost everyone he loves die horribly, and having to kill most of them on top of that, not only fails to kill his own hand, which flips him off, but also has everything in the house laugh at him. Honestly I felt the house moving stuff last time was easily the highlight, so expanding that with even BETTER effects including making a lamp laugh of all things, was a no brainer and Ash’s mad laughter is a nice mixture of kind of funny and deeply disturbing.

So naturally THIS is where the rest of the party find him: in tattered clothes, covered in blood and laughing like a mad man.

So Jake tosses him in the fruit cellar. Annie finds her father’s notes... and keeps playing them, revealing what we know from last time, that the demons possesed his wife... and unlike last time which implied he dismembered her, this time it’s revealed what happened to her: he threw her in the fruit cellar. Where Ash is right now and finds Mrs. Knowby now mutated into a grotesque demon about to kill him.

Mrs. Knowby is played by Ted Rami who hams it up to all hell. It is glorious and she’s easily one of the best parts of the entire movie as a result. Kudos Ted. So naturally the rest of the party let Ash out who books it, revealing the existance of the demons to everyone.. and getting Ed bit by Ted. Naturally this turns him and he gives the demon’s spiel for the film, saying they’ll be dead by dawn and they’ll swallow their souls and all that. Ash and Jake manage to shut Mrs. Knowby back in and Ash dismembers Ed.

A short time later Ash has clearly explained himself to them, what the demons are etc , or it’s heavily implied anyway given how comfortable they are with him for the rest of the film, and moves into telling them the woods itself is evil. This shows what I was getting to last time: that Ash’s change from a somewhat passive final guy, to his more ballsy action heroy self this time is a natural evolution. Last time much like the other people in the cabin, he was a surivior, seeing this shit for the first itme, and dealing with it. He’s still SCARED, but he knows enough now about how these demon works and what’s goign on and had a day to process it, so while he’s not exactly in a GREAT state of mental being given this happened about an hour ago...

He’s clearly calmed down enough to once again have the clarity of mind he had at the climax of the last film, pissed off and ready to deal with it. He’s not dealing with his pain.. but it’s a coping mechanisim: he dosen’t have TIME to dwell on what he’s lost or the sheer pain he’s in: the force is still after him, it’s after a new host of people now, he has to find someway to kill it for GOOD this time. Part of what makes ash such a likeable and intresting character is he isn’t invincible: he gets knocked to shit, is emotoinally tormented, and clearly is BARELY holding his psyche together with duct tape. What makes him a hero is that he KEEPS GOING. Despite all the loss and pain, despite only MORE coming to his doorstep... he’s not giving up. He’s had to devlope a tough rascally shell to be able to surivive this hell and comes out of it groovy.. if still again held together by duct tape emotoinally. This is why therapy exists and why ash should’ve gotten some between the next film and Ash Vs the Evil Dead.

Annie by contrast just lost everything like Ash, so she’s not dealing well> To her credit though when the deadite version of her mother tries the whole “turn back to normal apperance trick” she falls for it.. but snaps herself out of it even easier than ash did, realizing it’s not her mom. It shows just how strong she is and is part of what makes her an intresting character: like ash she’s human, she shows fear and strife.. btu she’s still determined to keep going.

Our heroes are soon distracted by a flash of light in one of the rooms and after sending Ash in first, everyone else joins him to seemingly find nothing.. till a ghost shows up. IT’s the good professor, who tells his daughter their salvation lies in the passages she found, which she brought with her to the cabin.

This gives our heroes hope, as Annie translates it, finding out there’s a chant in there that gives the evil form. And while that seems like the worst idea imaginable, said form means they can use the second half to summon a giant portal, and banish it from wence it came to the bowels of time itself.

We still have a half of hour of film to fill though, so naturally things go horribly wrong. Bobby Jo runs out into the woods and gets exactly the welcome treatment you expect

Well more like “grabbed by a haunted mighty oak, having her clothes slightly ripped and rammed into a tree to her implied death by a mighty oak” but it’s still not pretty. It’s all in all a way better tree scene than last time and far less exploitive, again some slight clothes ripping but more from the strain of the branches squeezing her. Though now I say that, I now realize that this scene, where a woman is being attacked by a tree, was the reason he wanted her to be attractive.. and probably expected something more like last time. Say chucky you mind coming back?

That’s a good murder doll uncle. Look forward to tomorrow. So despite her clearly being dead and Ash telling Jake as much, and focusing more on you know surviving Jake decides to take the roll of “horror movie stupid asshole idiot head” for the film, and pulls out the shot gun, demanding they go look for her in the woods and throws the pages into the cellar just to be a dick.

So SHOCKINGLY going out into the woods and screaming a bunch after threatening two people with a shot gun doesn't end well for Hillbilly Me, as it only gets Ash turned back into a deadite who attacks Jake. Annie runs inside and grabs a horrifying looking dagger and stabs.. Jake.

Jake is dragged in.. and gets killed by getting his head squished real good. Though i’m not convinced he’s dead... if only because if he’s anything like me his brain is located deep in his stomach.

Regardless Ash attacks, and Annie nearly dies.. only for Ash to spot the necklace. and in a touching and powerful moment wails out in despair. It’s a great moment from cambell. Laughs quickly return as Annie tries to attack ash ... and after a pause she tries it again. She eventually is placated, and the two now know their only hope is in the cellar... and they gotta be motherfucking ready for it. Cue one of the most badass montages in film history.

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It’s perfectly shot and perfectly mark’s Ash’s transition from Ash Williams, the slapstick target and perpetual victim to Ash MOTHERFUCKING Williams, badass action hero.... whose also a slapstick target and sometimes victim. So Ash barges back in for our awesome climax. Ash faces off with Mrs. Knowby, who has an awesomely goofy neck stretch effect and who nearly gets him and once again knocks him over, but Ash gets knocked down, he gets up again and chainsaws her giant phallic neck off and tells her to swallow this as he shoots her in the head. Annie starts the chant, seemingly fixing things. So that’s good film’s over right? Well... Ash made a horrible mistake and forgot his greatest foe...

Yes the hand returns and stabs April, an awesome chekovs gun. This leaves ash to face not only the giant evil tree from earlier, who has a hilarious face but the embodiment of the evil, as April completed part one. It’s entrance is awesome, having the usual zoom.. but the arriving as a truly awesome and horrifying beast. This also leads to awesome moments for both our heroes: Ash definatly fights the Evil Force anyway, putting a chainsaw in it’s eye and April puts all her power left into finishing the ritual, using her literal last breath to banish it.

So the Evil is sucked into the portal, the woods calms and Ash is seemingly free and clear. Given how well that worked out last time, you can see where this is going: Ash gets sucked up himself and ends up in midevil times, nearly killed.. before killing a flying deadite. He’s seen as a hero from the gods... and instead shrieks in horror, now stuck back in time with no way home.

TO BE CONTINUED

Final Thoughts: This film is a masterpiece. Pure and simple. Like last time there are a few issues, as I said the scenes without ash are slow as hell, but that’s a fraction of an excellent film that deftly ballances character, slapstick gory comedy, and horror to make one hell of a movie. It’s a brisk 84 minutes and packs each minute with content, holding your attention the whole time. It’s a textbook example of a perfect sequel :it keeps the horror, great gore effects and Bruce Campbell of the first film, but makes it’s major female character far more well rounded than any last time, Scotty is retconned out of existance, and it adds a sense of humor that makes the film a true joy and helps ballance out the horror, allowing the audience to breath once in a while and adding some hammy action to the mix. This film is treasured and rightfully so

Next Time: I go into uncharted territory as I FINALLY watch Army of Darkness for the first time as Ash goes back to King Arthur times, joining the ranks of the kid in king arthur’s court, Martin Lawrence, Donald Duck and Scooby Doo.

If you enjoyed this review, consider joining my patreon for exclusive reviews to help keep this blog afloat and i’ll see you real soon.

#evil dead II #evil dead 2 #evil dead #the evil dead #sam rami #bruce campbell #ash williams #annie knowby #professor knowby #indie films #horror #halloween #ted rami

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