Day 20 Evil Dead and Evil Dead: Dead by Dawn

The entirety of the Evil Dead franchise is an amazing thing. It’s had so many changes, and shifts over the years. It’s like a series that keeps remaking itself, while continuing it’s story. From all three films to the 3 seasons of the since cancelled show. Any Ashley Williams was a good thing.

Since these movies have no doubt been watched at least once by most of you, it’s safe to spoil the hell out of it and get into the melted cheese holding this potato together.

This is another fun series that I remember from our video store. Someone was out to make nightmares and catch attention with their box art for part 2. The first just looked epic. A woman struggling to escape the ground she’s being pulled down into by a demon hand. The sequel, a simple human skull with eyes shooting you a sideways glance.

Both of these things were pretty damn misleading!

But that’s the joy of these films. They’re not your normal horror. By far! It’s less an adventure and more an experience.

So lets dig up the grave, and avoid tree rape.

EVIL DEAD

This movie took roughly 5 years to make. Being filmed on weekends, days off and when the group could get together. The one thing that shows through is their genuine friendship, and joy they had making this thing.

So we open with a group of friends singing songs in a beat up car that’s starred in every Sam Raimi film since this one, and a very young happy looking Bruce Campbell, as Ash Williams. His friends decided to head off to a cabin for the weekend and unwind.

The trip immediately begins showing us everything about this idea was horrible, none of it was good. While examining a map to figure out where they are and how far away. They’re nearly hit by another car. When they go to cross a bridge to continue their venture. The bridge shows itself to be the least stable thing in the whole of creation.

If that wasn’t enough to warn them away, short of waving around flares, red flags and screaming DON’T GO IN THERE!!” When they arrive, the house looks as creepy as can be, and the outdoor bench swing is knocking itself into the side of the house. Which stops the moment one of the group touches the door.

Again, completely normal. Nothing to see here. So the group opens the door to their festive nightmare and. Dust clouds fill the room. Which already looks like no one has cared for it in years. They thought about it, then thought about their life, got depressed and dropped the broom.

It’s adorable, with an evil lived here look.

The group settles in as dinner is being prepared, Cheryl decides to sit by the window and draw for a bit. Which, again. No red flags or anything. She feels her hand begin moving of its own and begin sketching…a book. Which rightfully upsets her but she forgets it and pushes the event aside. As one does.

The group join for dinner, Ash in what looks like the worst wig in a long history of wigs, gives his attempt at a serious well thought out Greek toast. Which fails but no one has time to linger on it because the moment they take their first drink, another ‘It’s okay to ignore the omen’ event happens. The door to the cellar burst open. Gaining the curiosity of the group. Which they gather around and contemplate what could possibly be down there. WELL LET’S FIND OUT!

So the men venture down and, we discover an odd book, and recording. Which naturally has to be played without second thought. The recording begins creeping out the girls. Especially when it mentioned incantations which allow the spirits of evil to possess the bodies of the living. Again ignore it all. It matters not. Apparently.

So with an old man warning us about evil possessing the living, we move on to one of the few tender moments for young Ash. He’s presenting a gift to his girlfriend Linda. Which is honestly a fun joke for later about my sister. He presents her with a necklace and the couple embrace. But will it be, for the last time?! MUHAHAHAHAAAAA

Well sort of but no.

Now we get to the actual moment these poor saps discover they should’ve listened to these warning signs instead of ignoring them like the script dictated. One of the girls takes off into the woods in her robe and pajamas. We all know what’s coming, and we’re all a bit twisted for waiting for it and watching.

So the natural beauty and mist of the forest casually moans and groans ‘Join Us’ as nature does when it talks to us all. But this time, nature wants to make sure we know it really means it!

So suddenly branches begin poking out of nowhere. Imagine Hellraiser and pinheads chains just dropping from a ceiling we can’t see. Roots begin covering this poor woman and before we know it. Well actually when we get her robe removed and pajamas torn by the branches. We soon are witnesses our first ever poorly done Russian joke come to life. “In haunted forest, Forest rapes you!” Yes she is assaulted by many branches and roots, then allowed to escape.

Because demon forest like to torture people before taking them. Apparently. I don’t know.

The terrified girl makes it make to the Harry Potter cabin just moments before the chasing spirits can fully claim her.

I also am not joking. This cabin IS like a Harry Potter contraption. It can look so incredibly small on the outside, but contain multiple rooms on the inside that make it appear 3x its actual size.

So Cheryl is back with a story to tell. Her friends try calming her down, but she’s got the best idea when Cheryl bluntly states they are fucked, this is fucked, lets GTFO. So Ash gets chosen to drive her back into town and the two will find a hotel to check into. Leaving their three friends behind. Good for them on escaping rape tree forest.

But they don’t. Instead we discover the evil in the forest has decimated the bridge. There IS no bridge. The bridge is in your mind. It’s actually both creepy and funny because the beams for the bridge are curled upward like a clawed hand on either side. So back to the cabin of bad decisions we go!

Meanwhile back at the cabin. Everyone has regrouped and is now dealing with recent events. Ash has begin listening through headphones to the tapes translations from the book of the dead.

While two of the girls trying to relax, have fun entertaining themselves over who can guess which card the other is holding.

Which gets disrupted as one of the girls becomes possessed and demands to know who awoke the demons from their sleep. Also stating rather politely that ‘One by one we will take you!”

It’s their first encounter with a deadite. A bare makeup possessed body, with the most painful milky white contacts that not only hurt to wear, but also were impossible to see through so it left the actors blind while wearing them.

It also gives us our first honestly super gory attack! A pencil through the Ankle! Not just jabbed. No that wouldn’t do. No we have to dig it around, gape the wound and make it as absolutely painful to look at as we can! Which they did. Good on you FX team.

But there is fun here too! They move to dump their possessed friend into the cellar and. I did mention these people were friends making a super no budget movie in the woods over 5 years right? We get to see the leader of the group pushing back on the demon girl to keep them in the cellar. Where we see a very obvious fake head on a stick being jabbed into a shovel. Repeatedly.

So it’s safe to say things go from bad to worse for these friends in their vacation cabin. They lost a friend to demonic possession, another friend is deeply injured. We also had tree rape. What else could possibly happen?

Everything more or less. We get another possession and a lot of insanity. The leader of our group is battling for his life, trying desperately to get his hands on an ancient dagger which could help them out a great deal. But wait you say. Wasn’t….Isn’t Ash the leader? Well, no not especially.

He was never clearly named as such. Much like ALIEN with Sigourney Weaver, you don’t know she’s the hero until we get closer to the end. In this movie Ash is. I don’t want to say useless? But helpless. He’s trying to deal with what’s going on, what he sees, and ends up tossed like a rag doll for a good chunk of the film, while his best friend takes charge of fighting and exploring.

But together they make a hell of a team.

And they make for some fun moments. Cheryl when possessed and on the attack, meats an unfortunate end at the hands of an axe. Leaving her hacked to bits.

Which further shatters the sanity that is Ash’s mind. After the duo have taken care of her, Scott(the leader guy) tells Ash they need to bury Cheryl. To which the camera shows us the many parts of deadite Cheryl on the floor still wiggling and kicking.

After this Scott is all for plan ‘Lets GFTO’, but Ash is having none of it. He wants to protect his injured girlfriend Linda. She can’t make it out on her own with her hobbled foot and blood loss.

But those demons are assholes, and they claim his girlfriend. Another creepy cool fun moment.

Scotty left the house attempting to find a way out, ending up coming back, attacked by the woods, bleeding and mortaly wounded. Ash brings Scotty into the house and tries to comfort his friend. All while possessed Linda sits, legs folded n the floor, white eyes grinning wickedly and giggling. Which soon both deadites begin doing. Laughing and giggling happy as can be while Scott is dying and bleeding out.

Ash begins to snap! And starts slapping and punching his possessed girlfriend, all while Scotty begins weakly telling Ash what he must do. He has to kill the girl he loves.

Even the deadites taunt him about doing it and. He just can’t do it to her.

Score another victory for team Deadite.

Thus begins what will grow into the new life of Ash Williams. Being tortured and messed with by the deadites.

Leading to Lindas next creepy moment, her nursery rhyme of evil “We’re going to get you, not another peep, time to go to sleep’ It’s still pretty creepy seeing with the makeup. Even if she’s wearing white face paint and blue under her eyes.

What’s funny but not really supposed to. Is Ash’s broken mind.

He disposes of Linda outback, returning to the cabin to give his friend some water. Who is obviously dead. The water goes everywhere but his mouth.

Ash has had enough. He spots the car still outside and decides to take his chances with it. Only Linda pops up and stabs him as a reminder he can’t leave here alive. So the two begin an epic battle. Well three. Even celler Dweller is into the fight. But Ash gains the upper hand and is able to get Linda to fall backwards onto the sacred dagger. Ending the fight in the early rounds.

So Ash, going off of what they did with Cheryl. Decides to give us the coolest damn scene in the movie. He straps his girlfriends body down in the workshop, grabs a homelite chainsaw and is ready to go-to-town and hack her up. But. He. Just. Can’t. Do it! So he buries her in tact. A victory for the deadites, a loss for us waiting for chainsaw power time.

So of course while digging a hole for his now dead for sure never coming back formerly possessed girlfriend, The cellar dweller escapes the cellar. Ash stops for a moment considering something MAY have happened, and maybe his girlfriend MIGHT come back. But he proceeds to bury her as well. Even putting a cross on her grave.

It isn’t until he finds her necklace on the ground that she comes back from the dead and…..uses her nails to claw the hell out of his leg. Now I have owned many cats. I can tell you cats as kittens will climb you. Shorts/pants or none of the above. My legs bare the marks still of Mittens doing so as a kitten. This bitch just went full “Fuck your legs”

So it seems only fair that Ash cuts her head off with a shovel. But Linda won’t let him go that easily. Her body shoots out a gallon of blood onto his face before dying, and mocking him as it does so.

Tired from dealing with his dead girlfriend, Ash steps back into the cabin and discovers the busted cellar door. Now left to explore the house with a shotgun. Stalking room by room in search of this last demon.

But all he finds, is that deadites love fucking with him. He discovers a pip leaking blood which, burst and you guessed it. Smothers him in blood.

In fact this is the time Ash’s mind checks out completely. The entire house begins leaking and shooting out blood from every nook and cranny. Records begin playing along with old 8mm film, all while hearing the voices of his friends, the old professor who translated passages from the book of the dead. Safe to say he’ll never be the same again after this.

But just as the clocks all begin to turn and chime and return to live, the house grows a heartbeat, and sanity seems an old friend who doesn’t return your calls. The house begins animating. Shutters open and close. Ash reaches into a mirror only to see his hand vanish inside it. I mean if you’re going to go mad, why not go full hog mad right?

Then it hits him. Not the house, it already did that a few times. But the sudden realization what must be done.

He has to destroy the book! He also has to deal with the fact his friends won’t stay dead and he has to keep killing them. Repeatedly.

Including Scott. ESPECIALLY SCOTT!!

So as time grows closer to Dawn, madness takes a front seat and Ash is there to meat it. Fighting for the Book of the Dead and his right to throw it into the fire.

Which is the hardest thing imaginable. Between his former friend Scott eating his bloody cut open leg, his friend bashing in his ribs with a fire poker. It’s just a lot to ask of the guy. But he manages! He does it!

And we are rewarded with a gross, fun clay mation scene of the deadites, decaying, melting, changing. The Book of the Dead even gets in on the action and goes full animation. But just as the skeletal remains begin shooting out oatmeal. Large demon hands begin reaching through the corpses exploding them. For one final Ash blood bath.

But he made it! He survived the craziest night of his life. 4 friends dead. But demons defeated and sent back to the hell they came from. Daylight breaks through the windows and Ash hobbles off into the sunset.

Before the evil spirit of the forest comes to headbutt him.

This movie couldn’t really decide what it wanted to be. It was just its own beautiful thing. A comedy and a horror, Gorey and silly. A trend they started and others followed. Somewhat.

Sam Raimi was testing out a lot of things that’d later become his signatures. The shakey spirit cam. Quick zoom cuts, and torturing his friend Bruce Campbell.

So of course they had to do a sequel. The movie was a surprise hit and people loved its insane weirdness. So of course we had to get it, and thank god we did because this film wasn’t even full tilt. This was just banging your hips into the pinball machine. The next one is tossing the machine and humping it till he breaks

Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

In a style Robert Rodriguez would copy in his own right, we get a sequel/retelling of the same movie.

So the story? We have Ash and Linda heading up to a cabin for some alone time. No friends this time.

Just boyfriend girlfriend time for our man Ash and his lady Linda. Out in the woods, that don’t rape. No tree rape this time.

Instead things kick off right in the first 8 minutes. The couple arrive, settle in. Do some dancing and msooching. We even get the great line ‘What do ya say we have some ah, champagne baby? After all I’m a man, and you’re a woman, least last time I checked”

So while seeking out this, champagne. Ash finds a tape recorder, next to a womans photo and, As Linda tells him to play the recording. We are given a flashback sequence. The Professor discovering The Book of the Dead and the Kandarian dagger. We see him and his wife, as he deciphers and translates the passages of the book, which he glances through as the recording begins reciting the passages.

Just like that, Evil is unleashed and seeking out poor lInda all over again.

But this time, Ash is a man of action. He battles Linda and yet again finds himself taking off her head with a shovel. Burying her. The movie then picks up the very moment the first one ended. Ash standing outside the cabin by his car. The evil of the forest charging at him. We see him picked up by the evil, flown through trees hitting every one of them as he goes flying, then getting tossed face first into a mud puddle.

Where Evil Ash arises! The woods possessed Ash! But upon seeing the sunlike the evil goes into hiding and Ash returns to his tortured human self.

A win for Ash, a loss for the deadites.

As he comes too, he again realizes, things are not right. So he takes off at full speed in his car, heading for an escape. Which. Just like the first film. Results in him discovering in daylight now the bridge was imploded. A very cool Claymation shot again.

Daylight quickly is sapped away, we actually see the sun quickly vanish behind Ash as the night is brought in once more. This movie is about pushing things to 11. Including the humor of the entire situation and Ash.

Ash is a competent dope. Also a poor sap. But a lucky one. He’s chased by the evil in a great comedy sequence of being chased from one room to another, even through the walls of the house, and at a few points if you watch closely, you can see the top of the sets draped with black cloth. He manages to lose the spirit and is left alone in the cabin of never ending madness.

Speaking of. We need to check on Linda. Who appears as a rotting animated corpse doing a ballerina style nude clay dance in the woods for her boyfriend. Before grabbing him by a window and bashing his head into the boards repeatedly.

But thankfully Ash wakes up screaming like most of us do each morning and finds himself in a chair. Did he imagine it? Not at all because her head flips from outside into his lap just to say ‘Hello lover’ and bite his hand. She’s already jealous of him going back to his ex lover!

So now we get what we wanted, waited for in the first film. Ash brings her head to the shed. Puts it in a vice and revs up his chainsaw. Ready to do her away for good. He steps out bloodied and shaken by what he had just done, but all the better after having done it.

Until he’s not.

Ash loads up his shotgun and, well it’s time for the house to fuck with him like it did in the first film. This time with a chair moving and whimpering, Then him finding the mirror again, only to have his reflection tell him “We just cut out girlfriend up with a chainsaw, does that sound…fine?!” To make this point even more clear. The house possesses his hand.

And so we are given a show of Bruce’s flexibility, and commitment to Three Stooges style physical comedy.  Be begins fighting his own hand.

From a kitchen where plates are grabbed and bashed over his head. To punches both above and below, and escalating with a chainsaw. It’s one of the funnier moments.

We also around that time get introduced to some new characters. Mainly the Professor’s daughter, Annie, and her research partner Ed. Who are trying to get to the cabin themselves, along with the lost pages of the Necronomicon. As they reach the destroyed bridge they run into our local friendly redneck and his gal pal. Jake, and Bobby Sue. Our new party takes an alternate route to the cabin.

Just as round 2 of Ash vs his severed hand is beginning to escalate no less. They arrive just in time to begin hearing shotgun blast from the cabin. However what they missed out on, unfortunately. Is the moment every shotgun hole Ash made in the house turning into a firehose of blood. Both red and green. Firing out in all directions and once again soaking our hero. Raimi really, really enjoyed torturing Bruce.

Which is another fun lose yourself moment. Not just the blood firehoses shooting off. But Ash soon after trying to sit down and calm himself, only to end up on the floor after the chair breaks, and having the entire house animate to life and begin laughing at him. Which he can’t help but join in. Laughing with the creepiest mounted deer head you’ll ever see, playing a game of shadow with the Pixar lamp, and then genuinely losing his mind.

Which thankfully is interrupted by a sound at the door, and Ash demonstrates his patented “Shoot first, think later’ way of living.

But he’s not so lucky as it seems he shot Bobby Joe in the arm, so naturally Jake and the assistant beat him senseless. See having heard the gunshots, seeing the bloodied chainsaw, and an abused blood covered Ash. Well Annie assumes naturaly of course that Ash killed her father and mother who owned the cabin. So they decide to lock him up in the cellar.

Well as anyone could’ve predicted, even without having seen this movie. There’s something in the cellar waiting. Ted Raimi in a rotting woman fat suit in fact. Which is a great moment. We are treated to some Claymation once again. A flying eyeball plopping into someones mouth, two men riding the bronco busting cellar door, and the promise of a fight to come.

Which really is a great fight when it does. Ted Raimi is great as the Professors deadite wife. He can fly, well..hover and attack. They attack Ash at one point and you get two fun shots out of it. Once is again the ceilingless set of the cabin interior they built in a gym, As well as an open rubber suit butt shot of the mother deadite.

Before that though we get another fun chat with the deadites chanting the films subtitle. Again the deadites promise they will kill them all, one by one, swallowing their souls, but now they add a deadline. Dead by Dawn.

Just as the deadites are getting ready to party down though, and we see Annie’s assistant now possessed by the dead. Ash interrupts them as he’s already heard this speech and hacks up the green blood spitting corpse of the assistant with an axe.

Now it’s already been accepted by this point the group of people in this cabin are not going to survive. Even locals Jake and Bobby Sue. So of course they will perish. But it’s not ‘all’ bad. They get a visit from Annie’s dad, trying to help them by informing them their salvation is within the pages of the Book of the Dead. Which they will need if they wish to safe their own lives, and his soul.

Which is good information to have, until Ash’s severed hand interrupts things and everyone gets spooked, especially when Bobby Joe runs off into the woods and, well. We DON’T KNOW if the forest wood rapes her or not. We just know she runs off full speed into the forest, meets an angry puppet tree, gets attacked by vines, and okay she more than likely was filled with sap. But we just don’t know! See there’s no nudity and we see her dragged off by the branches through the woods

Which naturally leads Jake to run off in the woods with a shotgun to try and find her. Sadly he does not. But does find three very fake rubber monster trees. So the man decides he has seen enough and returns to the cabin. Where Annie mistakes him for evil and stabs him in the overalls with the Kandarian dagger. But he’ll be okay, surely.

He would’ve at least if he hadn’t been dragged and left near the doorway to the cellar, to be dragged down into it and turned into another firehose of blood. This time for Annie to get sprayed with.

Which brings us to Evil Ash!! He does come back! Attacking Annie and knocking her out, nearly killing her, until he finds the pendant he gave to his now headless girlfriend.

Now the group has a mission. They need to retrieve the lost pages of the Necronomicon from the cellar. So we get the montage we’ve all waited for. Ash returns to the woodshed and begins building a custom chainsaw to wear on his stump hand. Which he then demonstrates the POWER of, by sawing off most the barrel to his shotgun and stating for good and all his most known catchphrase, ‘Groovy’.

The scene I mentioned earlier of him fighting Ted Raimi in a fat suit, and a fun joke with my sister comes into play.

As at one point the mother demon comes at Ash with an elongated neck and oversized skullhead.

Many moons back, in the before time. The long long ago. I was young, as was my sister. I begged and pleaded with my family to take us to the Fangoria Weekend of Horror’s. Where my sister stumbled upon a table. Right in the middle of the lobby. With Ted Raimi, Sam Raimi and Bruce. This is where Linda got an autograph from Bruce and a kind of funny in joke as he signed a picture from the movie of Ash beside the changed mother demon, and as Linda was a character name in the film. Bruce signed it “To Linda, Never change” it’s kinda funny considering what happened to both Lindas each film.

So back in the movie, Ash is triumphant over the mom demon ad as it screams at him that she’ll swallow his soul. A turn shirt, muscle toned Ash tells her ‘Swollow this’ and boom goes the head.

The final act of the movie is NOT the house attacking them, but instead it becomes The march of the Ents as those evil trees destroy a scale replica of the cabin and the two final heroes begin struggling to finish the final passage from the book, to open a rift and send the evil back to where it came.

Ash sees the most gnarly demon face fill their doorway and it streaks his hair white.

The final fight for saving themselves and possibly the world from evil has begun! But the moment that final round rings its bell, Ash’s evil severed hand knifes his new friend in the back. But she’s a tough cookie and she says F U evil! I’m takin you with me!

So even though Ash has survived this evil and lost his mind many times, he still is a ‘mostly’ hero. We’ll go with part time. Because he’s still a doof. But it works very well. While his friend is reading pages of the book, opening the portal to vanish evil back to its realm. Ash is fighting for his life, about to be devoured by a tree and thankfully not raped by it. But thankfully, and I do mean many thanks indeed. Annie with her dying breath finishes the incantation sending evil back through a portal. However just as Ash is about to relax. The portal isn’t done yet. It’s sucking him through as well. Saying the last line of the film, and first line of the next one “For gods sake, how do you stop it!’  Ash goes spiraling through the Stargate along with his car and lands on a stone slab, in medieval times! He’s transported back in time and well on his way to becoming the prophesized savior of the world!

Whether he wants it or not

Army of Darkness follows the trend this film setup, but in a much bigger way. The movie got a hell of a budget push, was picked up by a major studio, and tells a slightly modified version of the last film(again) while progressing the story in the direction it showed us from the last. With an ending that further tortured Ash until they changed it last minute to a happier one In the original Ash is given a potion, says the magic words and when he wakes up, it’s a Rip Van Ash story. He wakes up in the future where the world is destroyed by the deadites and he’s, we assume. The last man on earth. Which they switched out to the funnier and lighter ending of killing a deadite, kissing the girl and creating many an awkward moment for women dating horror fans when Ash says “Hail to the king baby.”

Army of Darkness was different in tone, the same way Evil Dead 2 was different in tone from the first one. The humor got amplified. The story furthered, and Army of Darkness became, and is still seen as the gateway drug leading people into Evil Dead. Which when they see what the first two were like. It’s definitely a different meal than they were anticipating.

Even the show continued the trend, and the show was damn good. Bruce was having a ball on it and I was sad to see it end.

But still, the movie proved it could improve on the original, and use the gags that worked. It managed to retell its story while still making it fit into the first one and not dump Ash’s story. It gave more background and character, felt more like a complete film. It more than stands with the original, it kind of hikes a leg up above it in fact.

But there we have it. Two more of my favorite all time sequels, DO check them out.