EVIL DEAD II
US, 1987, 84 minutes, Colour.
Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Ted Raimi, Denise Baxter, Lou Hancock.
Directed by Sam Raimi.
Evil Dead was a cult horror success in the early 1980s, bringing director, Sam Raimi, to some kind of prominance – and a very successful career both in dramas and thrillers and Spiderman films. It also brought actor Bruce Campbell into some prominence.
The plot was a concoction of ancient books, curses and spells, and the raising of the evil dead to life. It capitalised on horror genre conventions rather than a development of plot and characters. It was so successful that this sequel was also concocted.
It is the same formula, an explanation of the Necrocomicon, a scholar investigating it, translating its curses and speaking them on to a tape recorder with dire consequences for himself and his wife.
Ash, Bruce Campbell, and his girlfriend travel to a remote village while the owners are absent – and listens to the tape recorder, again with dire results, especially for the death and decapitation of his girlfriend (and some grim comedy with her reappearance, headless). The Professor’s daughter and her boyfriend are coming to meet her family with further research but have to take a detour and get the help of another couple on the way.
This leads to the rising of the evil dead who have already tormented Ash in most gruesome ways. The newcomers are suspicious and push Ash down into the basement where he encounters the evil dead spirit of the professor’s wife.
The rest of the film is an expansion of the evil dead and there are attacks, a number of deaths, ghoulish presences, with Ash finally hurtling through time and space into the Middle Ages where he helps some knights who acclaim him as their leader.
In retrospect, the special effects are very small-budget, plot reliance on concoctions rather than any causal development. And, at times, the action is so absurd and the performances so basic. It takes its place in the development of this kind of horror which developed much more sophisticatedly in the 21st-century.
