STUFF YOU GOTTA WATCH

EVIL DEAD 2

(1987)

With Bruce Campbell, Denise Bixler, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Ted Raimi
Directed by Sam Raimi
Reviewed by JB

If Chins Could Kill! How many people have become fans of Bruce Campbell through Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD Trilogy? I remember one afternoon in 1987, walking into a movie theater not knowing what to expect from a film called EVIL DEAD 2 and coming out as a rock solid Bruce Campbell fan. And once you're a fan, it never stops. Two things you can count on when it comes to Bruce Campbell. One, he'll always be around in something somewhere and, two, he'll never be a big star. (If he ever did become a big star, he wouldn't be Bruce Campbell any more.)

In the original EVIL DEAD, Campbell played Ash, a young man who, along with his girlfriend and some buddies, hangs out in a decrepit old cabin, where he accidentally unleashes ancient evil which then ensues havoc. In EVIL DEAD 2, it's essentially the same story, only with a bigger budget, better makeup and some wild slapstick humor thrown into the mix. It's hard to think of another another movie that gets down to business faster than EVIL DEAD 2. Inside of six minutes, Ash's girlfriend has been possessed by pure evil. Inside of seven minutes, Ash has decapitated and buried her. From then on, EVIL DEAD 2 is a nonstop barrage of evil violently throwing itself, and everything else, at Campbell for 85 minutes. In this film, things don't just jump out and say "boo!", they jump out, bite off locks of your hair, chomp on your hand, smash things over your head, stab you with sharp objects, send you hurtling through door and windows, and spew gallons of black bile in your face.

And it's all played for laughs. Self-confessed Three Stooges fans, director Raimi and star Campbell fill the movie with the kind of slapstick the Stooges themselves might have done if they had access to chainsaws, body parts and ancient books of evil. Campbell is Moe, Larry and Curly all in one, especially in one scene in which he fights with his own evil hand, which smashes dishes over his head and literally flips him over on his back. Campbell's performance is over-the-top, with his reactions to various undead shenanigans straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. It's his self-awareness as an actor, and his innate ability to self-parody a complete unknown - himself - that makes him a fan favorite. (Check out the short-lived TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. for more evidence of this talent.)

It's fun to see how much director Sam Raimi could do before Computer Generated Imaging began removing sweat and heavy lifting from the special effects equation. He pulls out all stops here, with inventive camera work (including some incredibly complicated tracking shots), rubber suits, fake heads, karo syrup, puppets and even some stop-motion photography ala Ray Harryhausen. If there's one thing Raimi's SPIDERMAN films lack, it's physical believability. In EVIL DEAD, when Bruce Campbell is bashing the hell out of something, he's usually bashing the hell out of some thing. The effects may be cartoonish, but they are cartoonish in a physical way, not in the literal way of SPIDERMAN.

Although it is only 85 minutes long, EVIL DEAD 2 still manages to overstay its welcome, and is a much better film when it is a one-man show starring Bruce Campbell than when extraneous characters begin to show up. Still, EVIL DEAD 2 is the film that put Campbell on the map, even if he remains only a very small town (population: 1) on that map. ½ - JB

ADD ANOTHER QUOTE AND MAKE IT A GALLON:

"Groovy." (Ash's one-word reaction to the chainsaw he attaches to his arm to replace his missing hand.)