The Sequel to the ultimate experience in grueling terror… well, it’s more of a remake to be honest. When
The Evil Dead ended our hero Ashley, sole survivor of a night of demonic possession and graphic violence with his friends, was attacked by an unseen entity, seemingly to perish a painful death at the hands of who-knows-what. As
Evil Dead 2 starts up though, we’re instead given a quick-and-dirty retelling of the events of the first film sans Ash’s buddies, his girlfriend Linda being the only companion on his trip to the rundown cabin in the middle of nowhere. As with the original, a demonic tome with a dust jacket of human flesh is found, along with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and what looks like Satan’s pairing knife. The tape on the recorder is played, ancient demons are summoned and the fun goes on from there. Linda’s possessed, Ash has to kill and dismember her, then he spends the next few hours of his life trying to keep the soul hungry demons from making him one of them as they possesses various inanimate objects, Linda’s re-animated headless corpse and even his own hand, which he’s forced to lob-off at the wrist via chainsaw.
Additional victims come along later to join the fray in the form of Annie Knowby, daughter of the unlucky archeologist Professor Ray Knowby to whom the cabin and all its evil inhabitants belong. Annie brings along her “dead ringer for Brad Majors” fiancé Ed, their redneck tour guide Jake and Jake’s bimbo girlfriend/sister Bobbie Joe. The quartet find a crazed, shotgun wielding, one-handed Ash and the sitcom type misunderstandings begin. It all leads to a geyser of blood, flying eyeballs, severed limbs, a killer hand and Annie’s giraffe necked howler monkey demon mother Henrietta (played by a very sweaty Ted Raimi) before culminating in a big inter-dimensional void, a very pissed off forest, the revelation of a legendary hero and, the greatest thing in movie history: a chainsaw for a hand. Groovy.
Thanks to a bigger budget than their first film, the Evil Dead crew manages to put out a slicker, sicker piece of sinema this time around. The movies looks cleaner, everything stinks of professionalism (with the exception of a visible string or costume seam here and there) and the humor, action and obsurdity have been ramped up just enough to make this 90 minute experience just a tad more entertaining than the last 90 minute experience. Bruce Campbell also gives Ash a little backbone here, and plays it like Master Thespian ("ACTING!") as he feigns madness and does battle with his own goddamn hand while still coming out on top and the take-charge, "let's stop and think about this for a minute" leader of this otherwise ragtag bag of zombie monster fodder. It's like watching art come to life, living and breathing and trying to bum a few smokes off of ya, but at the same time you not only don't mind but you're happy to do it.
Many of the opinions I've heard on the Evil Dead trilogy either favor the first or final flicks, as the former is a more serious horror movie and the latter is a comedy tour de gore. Me, I'm of the type who embraces balance in their viewing buffet, opting for an even blend of the nasty with the humerus... errr, "humorous"... heh heh. Besides, when you've got a chainsaw for a hand, who gives a fuck about anything else, right? If nothing else, I gotta give it up for little brother Teddy Raimi as he probably suffered the most in the making of this movie. Donning the costume to play the possessed Henrietta, Ted was literally sweating buckets while wearing the get-up! If you check out the behind-the-scenes footage on any number of the DVD releases for the movie, you'll see actual footage of the man dumping a gallon of his own pore excretions from the costume's feet... it's enough to make me want to solder all my pores shut. Uggh.
