Raz’s Midnight Macabre Horror Review: “Evil Dead ll”

The lone survivor of an onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits holds up in a cabin with a group of strangers while the demons continue their attack.

Here we have a sequel that is basically a remake of the first film, just with a bigger budget and a different story. It’s not a group of friends this time, it’s a couple, Ash and his girlfriend Linda and once again the recordings are found that unleash the evil.

What we witness is a rarity of a film where it’s better than it’s predecessor. After gaining more experience in the film making industry the team seem more organised and you can see that experience shining through in all areas.

Bruce Campbell is in awesome form with this film, you could say this film is a solo performance from him and you can see he is truly enjoying it. He delivers a solid and believable performance. It’s easily one of his greatest and most memorable performances, in-fact I’d say it’s one of the best performances of the genre.

The gore is a-plenty once again, but this time we have more of a comedic sense with it, not just with the gore but also the dialogue. The mixture of these creates such a great visual and audio partnership. Huge credit to the effects team, they created some magnificent work.

This film holds one of my all time favourite scenes. When Ash saws off his own hand with a psycho laugh, while blood splatters across his face and his laugh slowly grows into agony and screaming. Yeah I know it sounds horrible but for those who have seen it, they’ll know exactly what I mean.

Cheesy? YES! Over the top? HELL YES! One of the greatest films in the Horror genre? TOO FUCKING RIGHT!!!!!!!

Miscellaneous facts about the film:

• One of the books on the can that traps Ash’s possessed hand is Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”.

• Ash’s chainsaw appears to switch hands in one scene. This is because Sam Raimi decided Ash should walk the opposite way across the room in that scene, so he flipped the negative.

• Often considered to be a remake of The Evil Dead, this was because the rights to show scenes from the original could not be obtained to re-cap what happened, so they recreated the beginning to explain how Ash got to the cabin, a headless Linda, etc.

• The recap of The Evil Dead includes a shot where the “evil force” runs through the cabin and rams into Ash. When this shot was filmed, Bruce Campbell suffered a broken jaw when Sam Raimi (who was operating the camera) crashed into him with a bicycle. Or so people were led to believe. This was a story concocted by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell as a gag to see how many people would believe it actually happened.

• The sexy, surly Bobby Joe was inspired by Holly Hunter, who was a housemate of Sam Raimi’s in the early 80s, along with Joel Coen and Frances McDormand. One particular incident inspired the character: Hunter was auditioning for a hooker part and was unusually made-up and wearing a sexy, short-skirted outfit. She became angry at Raimi when he somewhat leered at her. Raimi pulled for Hunter to play the part, but the producers wanted someone “sexier”.

• Most of the film was shot on a set built inside the gymnasium of the JR Faison Junior High School in Wadesboro, North Carolina.

• Stephen King was such a huge fan of The Evil Dead that he convinced producer Dino De Laurentiis over dinner (who was producing King’s Maximum Overdrive at the time) to have his production company DEG (De Laurentiis Entertainment Group) finance Evil Dead II.

• During the scene where the severed head of Ash’s girlfriend bites his hand, and before embarking for the tool shed, Bruce Campbell says the single line “work shed”. This line was later re-dubbed in post-production due to the quality of the audio, giving it a strange, slightly “disproportionate” sound to the audio. Nine years later, while filming his cameo in Escape from L.A., the first thing Kurt Russell said to Bruce Campbell on the set was, jokingly, “Say ‘work shed'”.

• A glove belonging to the A Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy Krueger character can be seen hanging above the door of the Toolshed when Ash carves his girlfriends head with a chainsaw and when he’s looking for the pages in the later cellar scenes. This was in response to the use of The Evil Dead on a television screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street.