(Sam Raimi, 13 March 1987)
“We are the things that were and shall be again! We want what is yours…life!”
Yesterday, in 1987, we all took a trip to the woods with nothing but chivalric romance on our minds…and instead had our souls completely swallowed. A cinematic chimera of vaudevillian pratfalls, visual puns, and multi-colored viscera, EVIL DEAD II is a departure from continuity due to a loss of rights to the original, but easily becomes its own entity from the first frames to the last.
Despite the riotous antics, there are several sequences that are deeply unsettling as the audience bears witness to our reluctant hero — Ash Williams — losing his grip on reality and succumbs to mental collapse. Mental collapse…and a harrowing host of possessed appendages, an undead lover, demonic incantations, corrupted creatures from the other side, evil forest foliage, and fiendish surprises from the fruit cellar. In short, Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell — along with as many gallons of blood as they could cram into the back seat of that iconic Delta ’88 — all helped us to kiss our nerves goodbye with the sequel Roger Ebert called a “comedy disguised as a blood-soaked shock-a-rama.” It may surprise horror fans that the often stodgy critic gave Raimi’s film favorable reviews upon release, going on to say that “it looks superficially like a routine horror movie — a vomitorium designed to separate callow teenagers from their lunch — but look a little closer and you’ll realize that the movie is a fairly sophisticated satire,” suggesting that the tongue was firmly planted in cheek…before Raimi ripped out said tongue with child-like glee, beautifully capturing the mayhem with his kinetically-inventive approach to filmmaking.
What is there to say about this classic so often billed as a horror-comedy hybrid that hasn’t already been said? We aren’t sure exactly, but that’s no reason to stay tight-lipped on the anniversary of this beloved nightmare’s release. Playing like a revisionist history of the first film, the gore and ghastliness all move from the horrific to the surreal at an incredibly deft pace, always brutalizing icon and star Bruce Campbell along the way. The special-effects here are a veritable fireworks extravaganza of viscera and talent, with Mark Shostrom serving as supervisor to an effects team which included KNB, Mike Trcic, Bryan Tausek, and Tony Gardner, among countless others. EVIL DEAD 2 remains a favorite of horror fans everywhere, and a great many of us can vividly recall video store anecdotes of that iconic skull with disturbingly in-tact eyeballs, leering from the shelves of the horror section.
Often considered “equal parts remake and sequel,” EVIL DEAD 2 is often included on lists of sequels that are perceived as “better than the original.” In our book (bound in human flesh, of course), we see the films as incomparable, and both hold court in the in the vast video store horror aisle of our dreams. Thanks, EVIL DEAD 2…stay groovy.