Director Report Card: Sam Raimi (1987)

3. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

Following the clusterfuck production and subsequent non-release of “Crimewave,” Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert knew the best chance at preserving their reputation was to return to a previous commercial success. “The Evil Dead's” cult following was already steadily growing, even this early in its lifespan. And it was the eighties after all, that time when long-running horror series were popping up left and right. The decision was made to take Ash back to that damned cabin. A chance meeting with Stephen King would have Dino De Laurentiis providing funding for the sequel. This ensured “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” would have a bigger budget and a smoother production than the original. And the cult legacy of “The Evil Dead” would only continue to grow.

After surviving the night of grueling horror in the cabin, Ash is tossed even further into the woods by the unseen force. Ash's nightmare is only just beginning, as he's now partially possessed by the evil forces unleashed by the Book of the Dead. His own hand crawls with evil and the demons in the cabin work even harder to shatter his sanity. Soon, a new group of visitors – composed of the late Dr. Knowby's daughter, her boyfriend, a redneck guide and his girlfriend – enter the cabin. Initially assuming Ash to be a crazed killer, he soon proves to be their only chance at survival. The motley crew will have to further uncover the secrets of the Necromicon if they hope to live until dawn.

First off, fans have debated for years the exact nature of “Evil Dead 2's” relationship to the original. The film begins with a lengthy flashback, showing Ash and Linda arriving at the cabin, discovering Dr. Knowby's research, and awakening the evil spirits. Ash's other three companions are nowhere to be seen. The events of the first film are greatly abbreviated, focusing only on Linda's possession. Some have taken this sequence to mean Ash returns to the cursed cabin with a different but identically named girl, following the first film. This is blatantly not the case, as not even Ash would be dumb enough to do that. Some assume “Dead by Dawn” is a full-blown remake, retelling and expanding on the original's events. Personally, I've always seen that prologue as simply a practical recap of the original, abbreviating things when necessary. (Footage from the first couldn't be simply be shown due to rights issues.) That is what Raimi intended. “Evil Dead 2” is a sequel, simply put, and it basically picks up with the closing shot of the original.

Regardless of how the film connects to the original, “Evil Dead 2” is clearly an expansion of everything Raimi and company accomplished with the first movie. Instead of shooting in a real dilapidated cabin, the film was shot on a series of fantastical sets. So now the cabin and surrounding forest feel even more artificial, like even more of an odd dream. Furthering the “remake” theory, the sequel does recreate a few of the original's set pieces. Ash decapitates and buries Linda in an almost identical series of shots. Ash being chased through the cabin by the unseen force is revised, to be more manic. The infamous tree rape is transformed into a more fast-paced and less sleazy sequence, a girl dragged along the ground by demonic tree branches that pierce her flesh. Using the things he's learned and the higher budget, Raimi is clearly expanding on his original ideas.

However, there's a big difference in how the sequel approaches these familiar moments. While “The Evil Dead” pursued nothing but the grisliest horror movie thrills possible, “Evil Dead 2” made the brilliant decision to incorporate Three Stooges style slapstick in with its monster movie madness. The combination is inspired. Ash is hilariously battered by a spindly, Muppet-like corpse. Now blood, coming in a multitude of shades, spray and flies all over the place. Bruce Campbell was covered with the stuff last time but now he's bathed in it. Including a fantastic sequence where he trips and slips on fountains of gore. Or another where a power-hose of gruel sprays from the by-now notorious trap door. The film's biggest laughs occur when Ash battles his own hand. Bruce Campbell flips himself head-over-heels, bashing himself with plates, before being mocked by a disembodied hand's middle finger. It's inspired, hilarious insanity.

The original “Evil Dead” had a surreal edge to it, which was largely used in service of increasing horror. The sequel, however, uses that same absurd edge in favor of wacky comedy. When Ash is left alone in the cabin, the evil forces try to drive him mad. They drop Linda's decapitated head into his lap. Everything in the cabin begins to laugh at his misery. And that's when Ash embraces the madness. What's result is a hilarious sequence where Ash laughs along with the inanimate objects, even encouraging a wheezing lamp when it runs out of breath. It's a moment so wild and wacky, you can hardly believe you're watching it. And that's a big reason why “Evil Dead 2” would become an even bigger cult success than the original.

This madness provides even more opportunities for Raimi to utilize his by-now-trademark visual tricks. You can bet your ass there's lots of point-of-view shots from the unseen force, one especially memorable one concluding with a demonic face superimposed over the cabin. Increasingly unexpected P.O.V.s are assumed all throughout the film. A water faucet pours directly into the viewer's face. As the evil hand creeps across the floorboard, so does the camera. At one point, he even centers on a body as it's tossed horizontally through the air. Raimi often employs wild colors, demonic reds and cool blues, when possessed deadites are screaming on-screen. A hyperactive montage has bizarre sounds echoing in the hero's ears as the walls of the cabin stretch and shift in hellish ways. The director's creativity continues to be operating at full strength, the movie's wild visual presentation part of why it's so much fun to watch.

Plot wise, yes, “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” is a somewhat desperate attempt to continue the first one's scenario. Ash is trapped at the cabin, the bridge – and only way out – turned upward into a spider-like hand. As much fun as watching Bruce Campbell be tortured by the demonic forces around him, you probably couldn't have built an entire sequel around it. So, eventually, more people wander into the cabin. Professor Knowby's daughter at least has some sort of reason to be there. That she brings yet more missing pages of the Necronomicon with her feels like an excuse to add to the original's mythology. Everyone else is there largely to keep the story's wheels spinning in various directions. It's clear that “crazy demonic possessions happen in an isolated cabin” is a premise that can only be stretched so thin, “Evil Dead 2” taking the idea right to its breaking point.

Yet, really, who can care about the story being a bit thin when there's so much wonderfully creative monster mayhem contained within? “Evil Dead 2” has about the same number of deadites in it as the first one. However, the increase in budget goes a long way. Possessed Ash stretches Bruce Campbell's already unique facial features even further, making him a truly worthy on-screen monster. The so-called Evil Ed – not to be confused with other Evil Eds – is a grimacing ghoul straight out of E.C. Comics. I love the random way he sucks a woman's hair into his mouth. Yet Henrietta, a witch-like old woman zombie, is by far the undead star of the show. Utterly grotesque in appearance, Henrietta cackles, floats through the air, slams on a trap door, and tosses her eyeball in an unsuspecting victim's mouth. And that's before her head stretches and morphs into a snake-like monster. (Or after she's cleaved to pieces, spraying blood like a dead chicken.) It's awesome shit, is the point I'm making.

In the first “Evil Dead,” Bruce Campbell played Ash J. Williams as a somewhat wimpy horror survivor. He was practically a subversion of the traditional action hero. “Evil Dead 2” takes the character in a far more crowd-pleasing direction. Yes, Ash's sanity all but snaps after the horrors he's exposed to by the Evil Dead. That unhinged edge makes him into a total bad-ass, his recklessness making him willing to fight tooth-and-nail against the monsters. By the time Ash straps a chainsaw to his stump-hand and flips a sawed-off shotgun into his back holster, he has transformed totally into an awesome action hero. It's a change Bruce Campbell, always most entertaining when he's hamming it up, happily embraces. This is the stuff of eighties horror legend and watching it unfold is magical.

This is Bruce Campbell's show all the way through but, of course, there's other faces that appear here and there. Sarah Berry – her only other credit is in far less respected eighties horror/comedy sequel "Bud the CHUD" – is a decent enough heroine as Sarah Knowby. If nothing else, she trades barbs well enough with Bruce and is likable to watch on-screen. The appropriately named Dan Hicks is well-cast as the grotesquely stupid and unappealing Jake, the redneck tour guide who gets what's coming to him. Though Kassie Wesley DePavia's Bobby Joe really has no reason to be in the movie, save for upping the body count, she is an amusing riff on a country fried spoiled girl. Also, one must applaud for Ted Raimi, who truly suffered for his art inside the Henrietta suit.

“Evil Dead 2” keeps on escalating in craziness as the story goes on. In its last act, Ash battles an enormous monster-face – which recalls a rotten tree, a leathery face of the Necromicon, and a giant zombie – which I always took to be the actual appearance of the Unseen Force. From there, the movie opens a portal and tosses the Classic and an oven through the air. This is an amusingly absurd conclusion to a delightfully nutty movie. The final scene, the film's cliffhanger ending, could not be more pitch perfect. Each “Evil Dead” movie ends by putting Ash in a worst situation than the one he just came out of. In the first, he survived the night just to be tossed through the air. In the second, he sends the evil back in time only to be tossed backwards through history with it. It's a brilliant sick joke to wrap the movie up on.

While the first “Evil Dead” was embraced by sicko horror fans the world over, “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” would penetrate the cult movie zeitgeist even deeper. The movie would practically invent “splatstick,” a sub-style of horror that mixed ridiculous physical comedy with as much blood and guts as possible. It would launch Bruce Campbell into cult movie super-stardom. Sam Raimi, meanwhile, would become an even more respected auteur of frenetically powerful cinematic insanity. Overshadowing the original, “Evil Dead 2” remains one of the most respected, imitated, and highly beloved cult flicks of all time. As it rightfully should be, because this movie is still an amazingly entertaining experience that brings me immense joy. [Grade: A]