Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1987)

I've already given Evil Dead a great review for being fun and frightening, with all the shine of a great Hollywood camp classic. Unfortunately, by the time Evil Dead II came around, the zombie-fied adventures of Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell - a man with so much camp cred, they put it in his name) are wearing a bit of tarnish.

After a mildly disorienting recap of the first film (director Sam Raimi, unable to reuse footage from the first film due to a rights conflict, had to film new footage recapping the first film), we pick up right where we left off - with a mysterious force attacking Ash (Campbell) just as new faces are coming to the haunted cabin in the woods. Along the way, Ash encounters a(nother) demon in the fruit cellar and has to cope with the infection of his own hand, which goes rogue in top slapstick form.

Evil Dead II delves more into the mythology of the franchise, exploring in greater detail what the creepy creatures are and where the Necromicon (Book of the Dead) came from. This attention to detail - and the increased appearance of stop-motion and body-suit monsters - ends up hurting the film, distracting us from the emotional heart of the movie: namely, Ash and the four new forest-going folks. Where the first movie kept the invading forces a mystery - and rightly so (see The Strangers for the utmost in anonymous villainy) - Evil Dead II's interest in world-building seems forced and self-conscious.

Perhaps the creatures would have worked if they looked more realistic. The first film's creatures were predominantly just the actors wearing ooky makeup once their characters became infected. Here we have a full-figured rubber suit living in the fruit cellar and a headless stop-motion skeleton in the woods, as well as a Harryhausen-esque hydralike creature attacking Ash at the climax. And don't get me started on the incarnation of evil that appaears at the end of the film, which looks something like a ridiculous cross between The Blob, Starro the Conqueror, and Spidertron from Power Rangers. Keeping it real rather than resorting to fantastic creatures might have helped the film.

But Campbell still keeps it light as Ash, inciting a decent amount of guffaws - particularly at his antics once his right hand becomes infected. And it takes a special kind of camp to strap a chainsaw to your arm (is this where Cherry Darling's gun leg was born?) and deliver the line "Groovy!" without destroying the audience's experience. So kudos to Campbell.

As sequels go, this isn't the worst I've seen. Evil Dead II is probably on the level of Attack of the Clones as far as sequels go; it takes a while to get going, but the same charm from the first movie is still present and the ending is wow-inducing, setting up perfectly for the third installment in the series, Army of Darkness. Groovy, indeed.


Evil Dead II was initially released unrated, but the creature violence (graphic blood of all kinds of colors) and gruesome shadowplay (mostly involving chainsaws) would land it a hard R rating today, with the help of some strong language.