11 October 2024
Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1987)
84 min.
Directed by Sam Raimi.
With Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Cassie Wesley, Denise Bixler, Richard Domeier.
This sequel to the original The Evil Dead (1982) is primarily a showcase vehicle for anti hero Raimi.

Picking up where Evil Dead left off, we find Ash still trapped in the woods and being tormented by the demons that were summoned forth in the first film.

Loads of comic silliness ensues - this is, after all, "slapstick horror" - such as Ash severing his own hand, mounting a chainsaw to it, the hand taking on an evil life of its own, decapitated heads that bite, and the like.

Meanwhile, Ash also comes by several missing pages from the Book of the Dead, which give him the key to summoning a huge vortex that pulls all the evil demons into it. Nuff said.

Apparently not. Seems Ash gets sucked into the vortex as well, ending up in another time dimension and being labelled the "Hero from the Sky" who will defeat all the deadites.

Got all that? Definitely more touches of humor in Evil Dead II than in the original, and they're mostly to its detriment. The gore fx are fun, but gore without a focus just becomes a cartoon.

Followed by Army of Darkness (1993).

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