Dead Good: The Evil Dead Trilogy

Review by John Reppion

In the spring of 1979 three young filmmakers, Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert, made a short super-eight horror movie called Within The Woods. The film cost $1,600 to make and was shot over six days on the Tapert family’s farm in Michigan. Within The Woods was made as a show reel, designed to pique the interest of potential investors for the trio’s planned “big budget” movie The Book Of The Dead. Three years later, Raimi, Campbell and Tapert’s first “real” film was in the can. They had formed a company called Renaissance Pictures and were looking for someone (anyone) to distribute the movie. Everybody they showed the film to absolutely hated it. Everybody that is, except for the legendary Irvin Shapiro. He didn’t like the title though, explaining that he felt that any literary reference might prove off putting to some of the film’s target audience. Shapiro suggested a different title: The Evil Dead.

The Evil Dead (1982)

ED is the story of five twenty-somethings (Lynda, Cheryl, Shelly, Scotty and Ashley) who decide to take a short holiday in an old abandoned cabin in the woods. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bad idea. When the group discover a shotgun, Gigeresque dagger, a strange looking ancient book and a reel-to-reel recorder in the shack’s cellar they decide to listen to what’s on the tape. The voice on the recording is that of the cabin’s owner, apparently an archaeologist, who had retired to his woodland retreat in order to translate the writings contained within the weird book “undisturbed by the myriad distractions of modern life”. The book is entitled “Nutiran Demondo, roughly translated, The Book Of The Dead” and its subject matter is demonology and demon resurrection. As the tape continues the old man begins to recite the book’s passages, the very passages that are supposed to grant the evil spirits entrance to this world. Within the woods a seemingly invisible force is awakened. One of the girls shuts the machine off in a fit of hysterics, but it’s already too late. The Evil Dead have been awakened from their ancient slumber.

Cheryl is the first to succumb to the diabolic influence of the force soon after attempting to flee and being attacked by the very woods themselves. Inside the cabin she suddenly levitates and hangs puppet fashion in the air, her eyes glazed over and her head rolling wildly. This sequence runs at a different speed to everything that has gone before; it’s suddenly very weird, disorienting and eerie. “Why have you disturbed our sleep?” she groans in Exorcist style multi track “One by one we will take you”. And that’s exactly what happens.

After a fight the zombified Cheryl is trapped in the cellar, but soon Shelly too is possessed and her boyfriend Scotty forced to dismember her with an axe. Scotty tries to escape but the woods wont let him, he is attacked and fatally wounded. Meanwhile Linda, seemingly ‘infected’ by her wound from the fight with Cheryl (a particularly nasty stab in the ankle with a sharpened pencil), has been transformed into a cackling Baby Jane like ghoul. Ashley aims a shotgun at his grotesque girlfriend but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. “Kill her if you can, lover boy” goads Cheryl from the cellar. Suddenly, Linda is back to normal and sobbing, “Please don’t let them take me away again”. It’s unexpected, a strange and sudden gasp of reality. Ashley embraces Linda and we hear Cheryl call out from below the cellar’s trapdoor “Ashley, help me, let me out of here”. As he kneels down and fumbles for the keys to unlock the cellars entrance the tension builds. Ashley peers into the darkness and is unexpectedly punched by a pair of horrible hands. The demons are toying with him.

“We’re gonna get you, we’re gonna get you” chants the repossessed Linda. It’s all getting a bit much for poor Ashley and with Scotty now dead he’s literally the last man standing. The film cranks up a notch now as Ashley’s torments increase. Forced to stab the manic Lynda in the back with the bizarre dagger, Ashley then decides to dismember her body with a chainsaw (the first of the now instantly recognisable fast cut, sound effect heavy Raimi sequences). He can’t bring himself to do it though, and instead buries her close to the cabin. Of course, she rises from the grave (one hand first, echoing the shot at the end of Carrie) but Ashley then manages to decapitate her with his spade. Back in the cabin Cheryl has escaped from the cellar and Ashley is out of shotgun shells. He decides to venture into the cellar in search of more ammo since that’s where they found the gun in the first place. Down in the gloomy underground store Ashley is confronted by pipes spewing gallons of blood and a gramophone and projector suddenly coming to life of their own accord, he grabs the shells and heads back upstairs. “We’re gonna get you, we’re gonna get you”, is Ashley losing his mind?

The camera spins and swoops wildly and disorientingly; a heartbeat thumps on the soundtrack. Ashley stares at his reflection in a mirror and reaches out to touch it only to have his hand push through the glass as if it were water: a truly wonderful and surreal image. Cheryl is outside the cabin trying to in whilst Scotty, now undead, battles with our hero. Ashley pushes his thumbs into Scotty’s eyes (which burst like over ripe fruit) and pulls out the piece of wood, which protrudes from his stomach (from his earlier attack in the woods). Blood gushes from Scotty’s wound and he collapses just as Cheryl smashes through the door. The Book Of The Dead is lying on the floor close to the open fireplace and Ashley struggles to reach it as the two zombies set about him (Cheryl with a poker and, the now blinded Scotty, with his teeth). Just as Ashley is being dragged backwards away from the tome he manages to hook it with Lynda’s necklace and pull the book towards him. In desperation Ashley flings the volume into the fire and suddenly everything stops. Cheryl and Scotty freeze, then begin to melt and decompose. The book itself begins to thrash in the fire as the possessed pair undergo a lengthy suppurating sequence, which culminates in gigantic demonic hands bursting out from their torsos. The hellish voices of the undead fade (“Join us. Join us”) and all is quiet.

Ashley wearily climbs to his feet. The sun is rising as he opens the cabin’s front door and limps towards his car (Sam Raimi’s 1973 Delta Royale Oldsmobile). We cut to the woods and the point of view of the invisible demonic force from earlier in the film as it rushes toward the cabin’s rear entrance. We crash through the shack and out through the front door towards Ashley who turns towards the camera, his mouth wide in a scream. The credits roll.

The Evil Dead was a pretty successful film, at least it was as successful as Raimi, Campbell and Tapert had ever have dreamed it might be. The trio’s next film Crimewave, despite its Coen brothers script, was a real stinker. As the boys from Renaissance Pictures sat with their heads in their hands wondering what went wrong Irvin Shapiro was already putting out promotional material for Evil Dead II: Army Of Darkness. Raimi, Campbell and Tapert had no intention of doing a sequel at the time but they gradually warmed to the idea. Raimi had plans to give the film a medieval setting but the $3.6 million budget stumped up by Dino De Laurentiis wasn’t nearly enough to carry that off convincingly. Instead, joined by old friend Scott Spiegel, they decided to recreate the spirit of the original film but with a comical twist. The result was nothing short of groundbreaking.

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (1987)

The book is more prominently featured as the key to the plot in ED2, as the animated sequence at the film’s beginning explains: “Legend has it that it was written by the dark ones – Necronomicon Ex Mortis, roughly translated The Book Of The Dead” (someone’s been reading their Lovecraft between movies).

Young couple Ash and Lynda journey to a deserted cabin in the woods for a romantic weekend. In the shack Lynda finds a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which she switches on. The voice on the tape is that of the cabin’s owner, an archaeologist who we see in flashback as we listen to the monologue. We learn that Dr. Raymond Knowby (for that is the archaeologist’s name) discovered The Book Of The Dead in the castle of Kandar accompanied by his wife Henrietta, his daughter Annie and professor Ed Getley. The doctor then retired to his secluded cabin accompanied by his wife in order to translate the passages contained within the book. In another room Ash discovers the book with its weird face like cover. As the doctor recites “the phonetic readings” of the book’s words on the tape an invisible force rises in the woods and crashes through a window towards Lynda. Ash runs to investigate and finds Lynda outside already horrifically altered by possession. She leaps towards him and he decapitates her with a nearby shovel. Ash buries the body and marks the grave with a makeshift cross. We are just six minutes into the film here. The force smashes through the cabin and into Ash, carrying him spinning and screaming through the woods and eventually smashing him into the trunk of a large tree. He lands, face down, in a deep puddle, stays under the water for what seems like enough time to drown him and suddenly rises up as one of The Evil Dead. Dawn breaks and the morning sun drives the demon out of Ash but he’s still being pursued by the irascible force and ends up hiding in the cabin’s cellar, peeking out from the trapdoor.

Lynda returns, ballet dancing, from the grave and her severed head bites Ash on the hand. After being taunted by the demons (once again) and fighting with Lynda’s headless body, Ash manages to dismember his what remains of his girlfriend with a chainsaw. The mirror scene from ED is reprised but this time Ash’s reflection bursts through the looking glass to throttle him. The hand that Lynda bit becomes infected, the same black spider web veins that spread from Lynda’s wound in ED covering it’s surface. The hand gains a personality of it’s own and a crazy speeded up slapstick scene of Ash being punched, flipped and generally assaulted by his own five fingered foe ensues. Ash tricks the hand into thinking that it has knocked him unconscious and manages to stab it with a butcher knife just before it crawls close enough to reach a meat cleaver. “Who’s laughing now?” he grimaces, blood fountaining into his face, as he lops off his hand with the chainsaw. “Who’s laughing now?” Ash traps the still wriggling hand under an upturned bucket, balancing a pile of books on top to weigh it down. The top most book is Farewell To Arms; great gag! But the hand escapes and scuttles into a mouse hole in the wall (to emphasise the weird Tom & Jerry like twist the film has taken?). Ash fires at the wall and gallons of blood and black fluid spew out at him; it’s all gone mentally over the top. Books, cupboards, lamps and even a stiffed and mounted deer’s head, which hangs on the wall, begin to laugh hysterically. Ash joins in; he looks like he’s lost it at last. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the front of the cabin, everything stops dead as Ash fires the shotgun twice into the wooden door.

Enter Annie, Dr. Getley and two hicks called Jake and Bobby Joe. Annie and Getley have discovered more Necronomicon pages and have travelled to the cabin, assisted by the two locals, in order to bring them to Dr. Knowby. They beat Ash up and throw him in the cellar assuming that he is a maniac and has killed Annie’s parents. The group listen to more of the tape on the reel-to-reel and hear Dr. Knowby speaking of his wife becoming “host to a Kandarian demon”. Unable to bring himself to dismember her corpse the doctor says he buried his wife in the cellar and we see the proof as a bloated zombie rises from the earthen floor “Someone’s in my fruit cellar”! Annie and co pull Ash to safety and manage to keep the monster trapped in the cellar (but not without slamming the trapdoor on its head and causing it’s eye to pop out and land in Bobby Joe’s mouth).

Soon Dr. Getley falls under the demon’s influence and is dismembered with an axe by the ever-heroic Ash. The ghost of Annie’s father appears and implores them to recite the final passages from the Necronomicon to dispel the evil “Save my soul. And your own lives.” Bobby Joe runs out into the woods and is attacked by the trees themselves (as Cheryl was in ED). Ash and Annie are concentrating on the Necronimicon’s pages but Jake wants to go and look for Bobby Joe. He grabs the shotgun, throws the loose pages into the cellar and forces the pair outside. Ash becomes possessed once more and attacks Jake. Annie runs back into the cabin and grabs the Gigeresque dagger from ED, mistakenly stabbing Jake in the stomach as he re-enters the shack. Whilst evil Ash stalks around the buildings exterior Jake, dragged too close to the trapdoor by Annie, is pulled into the cellar by Henrietta, gore flowing like a waterfall. Ash gets into the cabin and is exorcised by the sight of Lynda’s necklace (the same miniature magnifying glass on a chain as in ED) and the memory of their love. He and Annie need those pages from the cellar, but first Ash needs to arm himself.

We see Ash in the work shed customising the chainsaw so that it fits onto the stump of his severed hand and then sawing off the end of the shotgun. It’s a fast cut, sound effect heavy sequence that really rouses the audience. “Groovy.” Ash heads down into the cellar, finds the pages and throws them up the Annie who immediately begins to read them aloud. Henrietta and Ash battle insanely until the ghoul’s head is eventually severed with the chainsaw. “I’ll swallow your soul. I’ll swallow your soul” repeats the head, “Swallow this!” replies Ash as he blasts the skull with his shotgun. Annie has completed her reading of the first of the passages from the pages but that chapter only makes the demons into creatures of flesh and blood. A gigantic diabolic head smashes through the cabins front door, turning Ash’s hair white with fright. Annie is still chanting away, trying to get the rest of the incantations done, but she is cut short when Ash’s severed hand stabs her in the back with the Kandarian dagger. A huge swirling rift in time and space has opened in the sky and in seems to be sucking all of the evil spirits into it. Unfortunately, the black hole like opening seems to be sucking everything into it including Ash. He tumbles through a tunnel like surreal landscape of flashing lights (a bit like the sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey but not so long or elaborate).

We see Ash and the 1973 Oldsmobile falling from a height and landing in a dusty landscape. Ash is suddenly surrounded by knights in armour who are poised to kill him. A winged demon flies screeching towards the group and Ash, instinctively, blows its head off with his shotgun. The knights cheer “Hail he who has come from the skies to deliver us from the terrors of the Deadites! Hail! Hail!” Ash falls to his knees in horror and the camera pulls back to reveal that the landscape is that surrounding the castle of Kandar circa 1300 AD. The credits roll.

Evil Dead II received rave reviews worldwide. It was a genuine hit and still regularly appears in “top 100”s of many a film magazine and website. However, Dino De Laurentiis had asked Renaissance to make him an R (restricted) picture and they’d given him an X (un-rated). That bothered Campbell and co, they felt like they’d been given a challenge and not risen to it. So, a couple of years later (soon after finishing work on Darkman), Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan started working on the script for the third Evil Dead movie: Army Of Darkness. The film would use the medieval setting originally proposed for EDII and the gore would be suitably downgraded to allow for a more mainstream audience.

Evil Dead III: Army Of Darkness (1992)

Army Of Darkness picks up, more or less, where EDII left off. We get a brief recap from Ash of all that has gone before: the book, the cabin, Lynda, his hand, the vortex and his arrival in 1300 AD. The difference here is that the winged Deadite doesn’t appear and, although a wise man claims that Ash is the one “prophesised to fall from the heavens”, the leader of the knights/the king (named Arthur) doesn’t believe it. Ash is taken to the castle as a prisoner and there we see one of his fellow captives (“One of Henry’s men”) cast into a great pit. Blood fountains up from deep inside the pit, proof of the deadliness of whatever monster is contained within. Ash is the next to be cast into the hole.

Down in the pit Ash battles with a bizarre Deadite until the wise man throws down his chainsaw (which neatly lands on Ash’s stump with a “Thwump”) and the creature is rapidly dismembered. A second monster surfaces as mechanical spikes close in around Ash; it’s time to leave. He lassoes his belt around part on the spikes mechanism and is carried upwards to safety. Ash demonstrates his shotgun, blasting the Arthur’s sword in half before killing the second pit beast when it surfaces. He has proved himself to be the hero of the prophecy, or at least a pretty close match.

Inside the castle, the wise man is telling Ash that only the Necronomicon has the power to return him to his own time. One of the servants suddenly becomes possessed and, after a rapidly cut and well choreographed fight, Ash is forced to shoot her dead. The wise man urges Ash to quest for the book and prevent the Deadites from obtaining it.

Another trade marked fast cut, sound effect heavy Raimi sequence sees Ash and a blacksmith manufacturing a new hand for our hero, using a gauntlet as its basis. The new hand is super strong, as demonstrated by Ash crushing a metal goblet at the end of the scene. “Groovy.”

Ash sets off on horseback in search of a cemetery where he is told he will find the Necronomicon. The wise man tells Ash that, before removing the book from its resting place he must recite the words “Klaatu Birata Niktoo” (these words were also part of the incantations read by Annie in EDII and are actually from the sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still). Ash is pursued through the forest by the invisible force from the previous films and ends up hiding in a windmill. Another mirror scene occurs, this time tiny versions of Ash climb out of a shattered looking glass and terrorise him. Eventually they manage to get Ash to swallow one of their brood and he is forced to drink boiling water to kill the imp in his stomach. Infected by the mini demon Ash begins to grow a third eye on his shoulder, then a head until eventually he splits into two versions of himself. The pair fight, but good Ash soon wins by shooting the other in the face. He dismembers the body and buries the still living parts, marking the grave with a makeshift cross. Arriving at the cemetery Ash is confused to find, not one, but three books waiting for him. When the first book flies at Ash and bites him and the second is seen to contain a vast sucking vortex instead of pages it becomes apparent that the third is the genuine article. Ash can’t remember the words that the wise man told him and so mumbles something similar and takes the book. Lightning flashes and skeletal hands erupt from the graves, grabbing at Ash and attacking him in a Three Stooges-esque slapstick way. The discorporated remains of evil Ash rise from their grave and reassemble themselves.

Back at the castle Ash gives the book to the wise man. Learning that the words where not spoken correctly he explains that Ash has awoken “the army of the dead” and that they will come looking for the Necronomicon. Ash doesn’t care, he just wants to go home, but then Sheila (the love interest) is kidnapped by a winged Deadite (closely resembling the creature at the end of EDII). We see evil Ash commanding an ever-growing army of Ray Harryhausen type animated skeletons as they raid graves for yet more recruits. The winged Deadite dumps the girl in front of evil Ash who embraces her despite her struggles.

In the castle the occupants are panicking, terrified of what will happen when the undead army arrives. Ash takes charge proclaiming that they must stand and fight and he and the blacksmith set about customising the Oldsmobile.

Days later (?): The army of the dead are gathered outside of the castle, commanded by evil Ash and the now possessed Shelia. They far out number the living and, after some very enjoyable battle scenes, easily gain entrance to the castle. Inside the courtyard Ash dispatches several of the reanimated soldiers with his newly modified automobile, which now has large rotating blades on its front. He crashes the car in an effort not to run over Shelia but then ends up fighting with her and throwing her into the pit. Meanwhile, living reinforcements begin to arrive in the form of Duke Henry’s men (once Arthur’s enemy but now united in their battle against the Deadites). Evil Ash defeats Arthur and moves towards the Necronomicon but is stopped just feet away by Ash. The pair engage in a bit of old fashioned swash buckling until Ash manages to set his evil counterpart on fire. Now reduced to an amazingly cartoony skeleton, evil Ash refuses to die and the battle between the two continues. Evil Ash grabs the Necronomicon and somersaults onto a nearby gunpowder sack laden catapult, gloating at his victory. Ash severs the bony hand that holds the book and slashes the catapult’s rope, sending evil Ash flying off into the distance where he and the primitive bomb explode. The battle is won and the undead army retreat.

(There are two different endings to Army Of Darkness, one of which pretty much does away with the idea of an Evil Dead IIII and another, which pretty much sets it up.)

Ending one: The wise man gives Ash a phial of liquid and tells him that he must take six drops. Ash bids goodbye to Shelia and rides away. Inside a cave Ash settles down to take the magical potion, but is disturbed by a noise midway through counting the drops. The distraction causes him to take one drop too many and he falls asleep. Ash awakes with a floor length beard and hair, covered with cobwebs. He clambers out of the half collapsed cave and is greeted by the ruins of a once great city (London presumably, judging by the inclusion of Big Ben). “Nooooo! I slept too long!” The credits roll.

Ending two: The wise man gives Ash a phial of liquid and tells him that he must drink the fluid and once again recite the words “Klaatu Birata Niktoo”. Ash bids goodbye to Shelia and rides away. Flash-forward to the present, Ash is narrating the story, he’s been telling a disinterested Ted Raimi (Sam’s younger brother who played the monstrous Henrietta in EDII) all about what has happened. “So did you say the words right this time?” “Maybe I didn’t say every tiny little syllable, no, but basically I said them, yeah. Basically.” Ash is back in his old job at S-Mart (a career briefly established in the recap at the beginning of the film) but The Evil Dead are there too. A customer turns suddenly to reveal the characteristic face of one who has come under the dark influence of the force. The Deadite attacks Ash and the pair fight, Ash eventually smashing a gun display and shooting the zombie dead. He sweeps a good-looking female customer into his arms whilst his own voice narrates the scene. “Sure, I could have stayed in the past, could have been a king. But in my own way I am a king.” He looks into the customer’s eyes “Hail to the king baby” and kisses her. The credits roll.

The third instalment of The Evil Dead trilogy is much less of a horror and more of a rip-roaring adventure in the tradition of summer holiday television classics like Jason And The Argonauts and The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad. It doesn’t have anything like the impact of the first two films but its great in its own way (I must have seen it at the pictures at least five time when it first came out). Army Of Darkness also did okay at the box office but it’s never been a particular favourite of the critics despite its more mainstream approach. The film comes across as a bit muddled in some ways, unsure of its target audience and exact tone. Perhaps that’s why the first two films work so well, since there was really nothing out there to compare them to (particularly with EDII) Raimi and co were literally making up the rules as they went along. Without The Evil Dead would the Coen brothers ever have made their first movie Blood Simple? Would the young Peter Jackson have been inspired to make the no budget classic Bad Taste? Maybe, but then again maybe not.

Renaissance Pictures we salute you.