Evil Dead II (1987)

GROOVY.

18/23

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How the mighty fall! From 21 down to 18 is a shocker - this was my go-to favourite film for years! Before we get into the blood and guts of it all, let me share some of my favourite quotes from my teenage review of Evil Dead II, and give you a sense of my first impressions.

• Gory, schlocky, and completely mental, it is exactly what I hoped it would be.

• Bruce Campbell looks like he’s on crack for the entire film and it’s fantastic. His rapid decline into a crazed mania was excellently executed.

• The film kinda reminded me of Beetlejuice (1988) at times - the long elongated faces of the horribly stretchy Deadites. Gross. I loved it.

• On a final note, I was surprised just how well they pulled off a bit of emotion at the core of the film - at points, you do feel genuinely sorry for some of the characters - but this usually doesn’t last long before someone vgets thrown into a lightbulb, or a glass painting frame, or down some stairs. All the same, it added a nice sentimental layer to the film’s wild, crazy, violent gorefest.

Before everyone savages me to death, let me explain my point change. I still LOVE this film, but the fact is, its main goal is to be fun. And you know what, it is fucking fun, but it isn’t quite as frightening as the original. Teenage me was beyond caught up in the excitement of the movie and placed it straight in the Hall of Fame - long before I ever shared my horror opinions with the internet. Now I’m retreading these sacred paths, I’m able to recognise that I watched it at the perfect time, and that I was, perhaps, not so appreciative of the sorts of things I am now in my early twenties.

So, with all that said, let’s get groovy and return to that rundown, gore-streaked cabin.

We begin by entering the Necronomicon (Ex Mortes), as Fantasia like demons pelt toward us. Narration carries us into the meat of the story, sharing how the book disappeared in 1300CE. Speaking of the meat of the story, we’re reintroduced to Ash and Linda, now played by Denise Bixler. It is fascinating to see how Campbell approaches Ash in this film - he is a very different beast to the character we know. Now, Ash is sexually charged, and borderline eccentric. Also, he plays piano beautifully.

Young love.

This is the first time we get a good look at how the Necronomicon was rediscovered, in Castle Kandar, a foreboding ruin. The plot has a bit more happening in this sequel and I have a lot of love for it - after all, it helped a good deal with providing future material to Evil Dead content.

Interestingly, and amusingly, the Forest makes a very early appearance here. Linda is pulled through a window offscreen. Ash slashes her head off almost immediately, again with a shovel, just as we saw in the last installment, and buries her quick as you like. No time for character development here. She’s toast.

Ash now begins his journey of slapstick violence, the thing I loved most when I first watched Evil Dead II. First he is thrown violently into a tree, smashing face-first into a puddle. It’s silly, and only gets sillier as he bubbles and gurgles in the muck. However, when he arises as a Deadite it is a fucking great shock. Ash is restored to humanity without too much trouble (or so it seems…), but even so, what a surprise!

A note - the camera is swirling, nauseatingly fast and spinning in this film. The tone is fresh and intense and different, and despite the fact the events that play out aren’t so different to those of the first film, it feels like a completely separate thing.

The eyes of the cabin are hilarious by the way. I felt like I was hearing and watching the Mysterons of Captain Scarlet (1967). Equally excellent, and in fact, I’d say even better than in the OG, is the bridge being curled into a clawed hand. It is a fantastic visual, and Ash’s dismay is great. Campbell really sells the emotion.

The sequence that follows this is a blast too, as the Forest chases the car. When Ash is thrown headlong through the windscreen you hardly bat an eyelid. Fun fact - they actually pulled Campbell through the window here, and the behind-the-scenes clip is hilarious.

Soon after this we meet occult archaeologist Annie Knowby, who is a fun addition to the proceedings. Her boyfriend is a non-entity, which is perfect, as you know he can get killed off quick. By the way, Annie is a top-tier character. Big fan.

Before long we’re back with Ash alone in the cabin, and the best bits of the film arrive. The piano plays again, and finally we get a moment to mourn Linda. Fortunately she’s on her way back to the land of the…well, not quite living, but…

Up comes her hand, then the rest of her, nude, headless, and dancing. She pirouettes and twirls as her head rolls up and onto the hairy, degraded corpse. It is a nightmarish routine, only made spookier when she runs off into the dark, out of sight. When she appears right at the window and mashes Ash’s head into the glass it is almost a relief. And perhaps, a dream, as he awakes in a rocking chair. He is shrieking and screaming even before her head slips into his lap. The process of his trying to remove her biting teeth from his flesh with blunt surface slamming is hysterical. Soon, though, he slams her into the vice. In comes her body wielding The Chainsaw - yep, The Chainsaw, and as it flails and smashes against him Ash is COATED in yet more blood. He deals with the body fast and then the main event is on. Cutting open Linda’s head is a spurting affair that turns the lightbulb red, and despite only watching through a shadow on the wall, it feels sufficiently brutal.

By the way, Bixler is fucking awesome as Linda. There’s a great video of them making the mold of her head behind the scenes. They also used her real torso to make the mold of the corpse, too, which is amusing. The ‘secret’ footage of the crew chucking the fake head down the hill after Ash chops it off is properly funny.

But, we’re not done yet. The Shotgun comes into play, double-barreled as an upgrade from Evil Dead (1981). Ash gazes deep into the mirror, giving himself a Green Goblin scare as Ash 2.0 comes out. Watching Campbell strangle himself is a brilliant reveal, if only brief, and before you can wish for more we get the possessed hand. Seriously, this film has it all. It is just utter carnage all the time. Anyway, Ash’s nails grow long and his hand begins to squeal before clutching and clawing at his face.

“YOU DIRTY BASTARDS! GIVE ME BACK MY HAND.”

I, and I’m sure all of you, LOVE the intensity on display here. Extremely camp, but a great bit of genuine distress being acted out.

Unfortunately the story must add more characters, so we get a brief respite from the madness to meet hillbillies Bobby Joe (who is brilliant) and Jake. Don’t get me wrong, they’re a fun duo, but man, we left Ash just before a top tier scene.

Speaking of, the possessed hand smashes a great many plates into Ash’s head. He flails as it bashes him in the face, stomach, and flips him backward onto the floor. Campbell’s physical performance is genuinely remarkable. I cannot state enough just how utterly sick it is. Porcelain rains down onto Ash, and eventually he falters. The hand drags his groggy form across the floor, an amazing visual, and then BANG, it gets nailed into the boards. Blood coats Ash’s face as he chainsaws the appendage off. Ya gotta give him a hand for that one.

Fortunately there’s some gauze and duct tape on hand (HA) to fix him up.

I gotta say, there’s shades of Everett McGill’s Mr Robeson (The People Under The Stairs - 1991) in Campbell’s Ash. Of course, Evil Dead II came first, but the crazed fury and mania do feel similar. The laugh that comes out of our hero when his severed hand gets stuck in a mousetrap is a prime example.

I reckon he’d have been a good Ash.

Around about now is when we get the classic blood fountain. Oceans of blood spill from the walls, coating Ash completely before being sucked back in. Then things get really mental. Laughter spills from a deer mounted on a wall. Then a lamp. Then everything from the books to cupboard doors are laughing, goofy laughter, silly, even. Things devolve into complete madness, and Ash, initially joining the commotion with a dreadful laughter of his own, is left moaning out a kind of pained yell. You almost wonder if this is it for him, but then Annie and co arrive and everything stops. Once again we’re left with a dead silent cabin and a traumatised young amputee.

Annie’s concern at the gore-streaked chainsaw is great. Coated from head to toe in muck, Ash looks pretty suspicious, so down he goes into the cellar, crashing down every step. His face is slit and bloodied.

As it happens, Annie’s mother Henrietta is buried down there, having become ‘host to a Kandarian Demon’. Hooray. She comes up screeching in a brilliantly scratchy voice. Her legs are bloated like those of a drowned corpse, and her skin is pitted and grey. Just as Ash is snatched up from the darkness it begins to transform into something even grimmer. It rises up to savage the others, but they smash its head back down, popping an eyeball out. The glistening sphere shoots straight into Bobby-Joe’s mouth, a fantastic gross-out. This gag is lifted straight from The Three Stooges, which director Sam Raimi was a big fan of.

By the way, his brother Ted Raimi played Henrietta. He wore a full prosthetic suit, layered, and apparently wearing it was “beyond your wildest nightmares”. He’s also fantastic in Ash vs. Evil Dead (2015) by the way - super funny guy. You really have to respect the suffering he went through for Evil Dead II though - what a grim fate to be trapped in a full-body prosthetic for hours on end. Also, fun fact, they used lentil bags to give the Deadite some realistic movement.

When the lullaby rises up from the fruit cellar it is surprisingly uncreepy, but no one can deny the visual of Henrietta’s pleasant old face peering out is unnerving. Annie’s boyfriend is next to go Deadite, floating high in the air with a contorted, evil face.

This brand new demon leaps on Bobby-Joe, chewing and swallowing a chunk of her hair before Ash starts smashing him up with an axe. This time the gunk is a nasty shade of green - a choice made to battle the Ratings board.

Now, at the height of it all, the clock stops.

A note - this film is a fucking sensory trip, thick with bizarre sounds, unusual angles and fast-moving sequences.

We get a brief quiet moment, but it doesn’t last. The spirit of Dr Knowby appears to provide some exposition - the gang must read two pages of the Necronomicon to banish The Forest (and the Deadites). By the way, Knowby looks remarkably hokey. Also, this scene has a cracking reference to The Haunting (1963) - IYKYK.

Anyway, events turn bad and Bobby-Joe pelts off into the forest, screaming bloody murder. Soon enough a ghastly tree gets her, captures her in vines, and drags her brutally along through puddles and brambles until she finally smashes into a trunk. We don’t see the collision.

Jake, her boyfriend, has some genuinely strong acting after she disappears. He looks, as you would in this instance, fucking freaked.

It is at this stage that the Hero From The Sky and time-space nonsense comes into the story. This is a lot of nothing though as the Necronomicon pages that give us more context go flying into the cellar, courtesy of Jake. Shame, because the art in that book is rad. However, he’s not interested. We’re off to find Bobby-Joe, right into the Snow White Haunted Mansion woods. They creak ominously loud as the trio wander into the dark. Just to make things interesting, Ash is repossessed, and his zombified pursuit of Annie is a blast. The FX are as excellent as they have ever been. Also, we get some much-needed comic relief as Annie impales Jake, and then hits him repeatedly with the door as she fends off our Deadite protagonist.

Around this stage I began to wonder if Evil Dead is a better horror movie.

I know, I know, heresy, but while I was having a splendid time watching this, I did start to suspect that the fun outweighs the scares. This is fine, and possibly even the intention, but it does make the film a different, less terrifying beast than its predecessor.

Regardless, Jake goes headfirst into the cellar, and Henrietta is ready and waiting to blitz his ass into shiny red muck. Love it.

Ash returns once more to the proceedings, face like a living skull. His eyes are sunken (with contact lenses that rendered Campbell blind, by the way) and his teeth are jagged and rotting. Only thoughts of Linda can restore him, and this performance is super effective. The agonised cries as humanity floods back into the Boomstick demon-hunter do make us root for him once more. This personal, touching moment is immediately followed by Annie nearly executing him, and his I’M ALL RIGHT just barely persuades her. To be fair, his mad eyes and ever-raised eyebrows tell a very different story.

What also suggests that perhaps he is not completely fine is the fucking awesome montage of creating that iconic chainsaw hand. Before us now stands the Ash we know and love, wielding his beloved sawn-off, and spouting out that beyond iconic line:

Outside tree roots writhe as Annie and Ash saw into the cellar. Down he goes, armed to the teeth, and ready to face anything. It’s lucky he is prepared, as a bloodied skeleton and some lovely rats (I really love rats) nearly send him into cardiac arrest. Not a moment later Henrietta pulls him straight through a gap in the stairs, smashing him against a wall. Mother can focus entirely on daughter, and she does with wicked glee, spinning above Annie with fistfuls of hair in hand. When Ash shuffles back to fight her off, we get another joyous taste of the Long Neck Goblin Face monstrosity. She sounds almost monkey-like as she bites down at Ash, and when he decapitates her a wonderful deflating sound can be heard. Swallow your soul, and also a whoopee cushion, it seems. Her head is swiftly turned into a DIY firework with the sawn-off, in a scene reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption’s (2010) John Marston.

Outside, the trees have started beating the cabin walls and roof. It is time to banish the demons. The Forest, not overly keen on this, appears in the flesh, a big old motherfucker with big old chomping teeth. Annie is impaled by the Kandarian dagger before she can finish the ritual, and Ash is grabbed by a great big wooden claw. As he is dragged toward a gaping mashing maw, a single red eye bulges out in hatred at him.

Then, the recitation is complete. An inexplicable portal appears, dragging the car, the repulsive demon (who we spot has the faces of previous victims encased within), now bleeding wicked amounts of green goo, and then finally, Ash. Classical music blares, explosions flash and crash, and lightning splits the screen before we land, finally, in 1300AD. Armoured knights gather around our battered protagonist.

What The Fuck.

As if this isn’t crazy enough, a flying Deadite soars toward the crowd. It’s no match for shotgun shells, though, and after it goes SPLAT, the knights kneel to the Hero From The Sky. Hail to the King, eh?

All Ash can do is wail in utter despair as they chant praises. The dissonance isn’t quite The Wicker Man (1974), but it still leaves you in open-mouthed shock. What an ending!!!!

The Knights who say “Ni”, these certainly aren’t.

Man. What a film. I can see utterly why teenage me had it as a favourite. I do think the novelty has worn off on me slightly now, but barely. It is still an absolute blast to sit through - genuinely there is never a dull moment. I may even check out the musical adaptation as part of this miniseries, though I have reservations.

Right! Now it’s time for some bonus facts! There are far fewer, unfortunately, for this film, but they’re still interesting. For example, did you know…

• That many of the sets were built in an old high-school? You can see when the Forest is initially chasing Ash that the cabin has no roof.

• That Ash’s iconic chainsaw was plastic in the scene where undead Linda leaps on him?

• That, in that same scene, a Freddie Krueger glove can be seen in the background?

• That they used milk in the scene where Ash’s eyes cloud over initially. Clever stuff.

• The names of some of the incredible crew who made the FX? For instance, Aaron Sims, Shannon Shea and Mike Trcic.

• That Bruce Campbell, legend that he is, did a lot of acting in reverse? What a talent.

• That the crew made tons of holes in the floor to maneuver puppets around?

• That there’s an awesome lost scene of a half-destroyed head. Also, one of Deadite Ash eating a squirrel. Gnarly!

• That the Evil Dead II behind the scenes contains a fun little Re-Animator inspired short called Evil Dead Baby? It’s as silly as it is fantastic.

As ever, thanks for reading,

Until next time,

H.E.

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