Evil Dead II 1987

Cast:
Bruce Campbell - Ashley ‘Ash’ J. Williams
Sarah Berry - Annie Knowby
Dan Hicks - Jake
Kassie DePaiva - Bobbie Joe (as Kassie Wesley)
Ted Raimi - Possessed Henrietta (as Theodore Raimi)
Denise Bixler – Linda

Long before he began to direct box office hits like the “Spiderman” films (2002 and 2004), Sam Raimi wrote and directed a trilogy of films known as “The Evil Dead”. With a first film in 1981, and the conclusion in 1993, it was this middle section which, whilst slightly dated, remains the better part of the three. In “Evil Dead II”, Raimi has roped in friend Bruce Campbell to continue his role as Ash.J.Williams. Continuing on from the end of the original piece, the film continues with Ash being roped into fighting the forces of evil once more.

With Raimi apparently planning the three films to work directly as one continuous story, it could be quite easy for the second part to be completely at a loss to some if they haven’t seen the first. To deal with this, Raimi felt the need to have a brief ten minutes at the beginning in which he explains the events of the previous film. Whilst this beginning is by no means as enjoyable as the rest of the film, it remains necessary and is a clever way of introducing newcomers to the situation at hand and poor Ash’s position.

Raimi is part of what seems like an elite group of directors. Whilst some newcomers to that big chair behind the camera began working on television adverts, some of the most famous directors of the early twenty-first century began their careers making low budget films with unbelievable special effects and vast quantities of blood. Whilst Peter Jackson’s earliest work includes the extreme “Braindead” (1992), Raimi began with this trilogy. It’s quite tempting perhaps to compare and contrast just how much the directorial works of these two directors evolved. Both began with these wonderful films and eventually they both worked on huge blockbuster motion pictures (Raimi with the “Spiderman” films and Jackson obviously with the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy). In a way it’s worth wondering how the children who so adore the characters of those recent films might feel about Lionel from “Braindead” or Ash from this. They probably wouldn’t understand.

When it comes to actually considering the content of this sort of film, it can be tempting to condemn them for having such ridiculous plots and gore. This would be a shame however, mainly because the ultimate beauty of the “Evil Dead” trilogy is that there’s just something brilliant about them. Whilst the third part of the trilogy did lack compared with the others, it was still a good film, just not as good as it’s predecessors.

The second part of this trilogy is superb for a few reasons. Whilst it does possess low budget special effects, these effects feel a necessary part to what this film is. With an extreme, “cool” character like Ash involved, to actually have amazing C.G.I. effects of future standards would be to ruin the film. By having someone behind the scenes firing fake blood through a hose at Bruce Campbell, there’s this dumb humour to the situation which makes the audience laugh. With the evil hand and the possessed people as well, the excessive use of rubber to make them look evil works badly in terms of horror, but works brilliantly in terms of making the audience love this movie.

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