Splatter and Slapstick: Evil Dead II

Evil Dead II (1987), promoted as Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, is the comedy horror sequel to The Evil Dead (1981). Sam Raimi directed it and co-wrote it with Scott Spiegel. Bruce Campbell returns as Ash Williams, who plays a tape of readings from an ancient book at a remote cabin and unleashes demons that possess and torment him. Bigger, faster and much funnier than the first film, it mixes splatter with slapstick. It is the film that gave Ash his chainsaw hand. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made, and many critics rate it above the original.

At a glance

Release date	March 13, 1987 (US)
Director	Sam Raimi
Writers	Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel
Based on	Sequel to The Evil Dead (1981)
Starring	Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Kassie Wesley, Ted Raimi
Runtime	84 minutes
Rating	Released unrated in the US
Budget	About $3.5 million to $3.6 million (sources differ)
Box office	About $5.9 million
Franchise	Evil Dead: followed by Army of Darkness (1992)

Plot summary

Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda go to a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods for a romantic getaway. There, Ash plays a tape left by archaeologist Raymond Knowby, who recorded himself reading from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the “Book of the Dead.” The incantation releases an evil force that kills and possesses Linda, turning her into a “deadite.” Ash is soon fighting for his sanity, alone in the cabin with the bridge out and a severed hand that refuses to stay dead.

Meanwhile, Knowby’s daughter Annie (Sarah Berry) and her research partner Ed are on their way to the cabin with the book’s missing pages. They hire a local handyman, Jake (Dan Hicks), and his girlfriend Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley) to guide them there on foot. They find a battered, wild-eyed Ash and assume the worst, which sets up a long night of possession, betrayal and gore in the cabin and the woods around it.

Spoiler section: the ending

In the cellar is Knowby’s possessed wife, Henrietta. One by one she and the deadites claim Ed, Bobby Joe and Jake. Ash has already cut off his own possessed right hand. He fits a chainsaw to the stump, saws off a shotgun and kills Henrietta. Annie performs a ritual that makes the evil take physical form and opens a portal to banish it. She is stabbed by Ash’s severed hand, but completes it with her dying breath. The vortex sucks in the demon and Ash, along with his Oldsmobile, and drops them in the Middle Ages. Knights take him for the hero foretold by the book, and Ash screams in despair. The ending leads straight into Army of Darkness.

Production and behind the scenes

A sequel was discussed while the first film was still shooting. Publicist Irvin Shapiro pushed Raimi to come up with a premise, and an early idea sent Ash back to the Middle Ages through a time portal. After Universal and 20th Century Fox passed on it, the project was shelved for Raimi’s Crimewave (1985). When Crimewave flopped, Raimi, producer Rob Tapert and Campbell went back to the sequel. Stephen King, whose glowing review of The Evil Dead had helped it at Cannes, was then making Maximum Overdrive for Dino De Laurentiis. King called the producer and asked him to back the film. De Laurentiis agreed within twenty minutes to put up $3.6 million. He wanted something close to the original, so the medieval premise was saved for the third film.

Raimi wrote the script with his childhood friend Scott Spiegel, who wanted less straight horror and more comedy. They wrote most of it in a house in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, that they shared with Joel and Ethan Coen, Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter. Hunter was the main inspiration for Bobby Joe. Filming took place in 1986 in Wadesboro, North Carolina, rather than at De Laurentiis’s nearby Wilmington studio. Some scenes were also shot in Detroit. Mark Shostrom supervised the makeup effects and gave much of the work to Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger. Raimi’s brother Ted played the deadite Henrietta in a full-body latex suit that filled with sweat. For Ash’s chainsaw hand, effects artist Verne Hyde replaced a real saw’s engine with a small electric motor and filed down its teeth. Joseph LoDuca composed the score, as he did for all three films in the trilogy.

Release and reception

De Laurentiis Entertainment Group was a member of the MPAA and expected the film to get an X rating. Cutting it to an R would have left a film of “about 62 minutes,” according to the company’s head of distribution. Instead DEG took its name off the film and released it through Rosebud Releasing Corporation, a shell company, so it could play unrated. It opened on March 13, 1987, in about 310 theaters, taking $807,260 in its first weekend and about $5.9 million in total. Its reputation grew on home video, starting with a Vestron VHS in 1987.

Critics were largely enthusiastic. The New York Times called it “genuine, if bizarre, proof of Sam Raimi’s talent.” Roger Ebert gave it three stars, describing it as “a fairly sophisticated satire.” Empire declared “Bruce Campbell and Raimi are gods.” The film has an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 72. In 2008, Empire ranked it No. 49 on its list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

Legacy and influence

Evil Dead II has a large international cult following. Its blend of horror and physical comedy shaped Ash into the wisecracking hero of the later films, and it led directly to Army of Darkness (1992). The series later continued with Evil Dead (2013), the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead (2015) and Evil Dead Rise (2023). Its influence reaches beyond film: the 1993 video game Doom grew out of John Carmack’s idea of combining the styles of this film and Aliens. Its opening recap is a long-running puzzle for fans. It retells the first film with only Ash and Linda, so many viewers treat the sequel as partly a remake, although Raimi and Campbell have said it was meant as a direct sequel.

Trivia

Freddy Krueger‘s glove hangs in the cellar and the tool shed. It answers a scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street where Nancy watches The Evil Dead on TV. That scene in turn answered the torn The Hills Have Eyes poster in the first film.
Henrietta’s flying eyeball was a painted ping-pong ball supplied by KNB EFX, spun on a motor mounted to the camera.
Tobacco smoke was pumped through a tube running up Campbell’s leg to make the chainsaw appear to smoke.
The crew nicknamed the rat in the cellar “Señor Cojones.”
At the wrap party, Raimi and Campbell sang the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” with Greg Nicotero on guitar.