Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn – A Look Back…
I can’t really remember the first time I saw “Evil Dead 2.”
I think it was the summer of 1996, right after I had graduated high school. At that time, I had only just started to become a film nut in earnest, having held down a job at a movie theater for a few months. I was in anew state of mind by then. I didn’t just have a few films I loved, but was slowly growing into the cinema snob that I am today, memorizing arcane facts, and becoming familiar with the careers of little-known character actors. I had seen Sam Raimi’s “Army of Darkness” a few years before, and did indeed fall in love with it. But by 1996, it was more than just a wacky movie. It was an important film. And so, in my youthful enthusiasm, I likely sought out “Evil Dead 2.” Did I get it from 20/20 Video on Wilshire in Santa Monica, CA? The one that’s now a hairdresser? That would be the most likely place.
I do know that, by the time I got to college, I knew it. I had bought it on video, and was using any excuse I could to watch it. Whenever I met someone new, I would typically plop them down in front of “Evil Dead 2” as a bonding exercise. I did similar ploys with “Eraserhead,” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It was a cult litmus. If they could understand “Evil Dead 2,” they could understand me.
Keep in mind, this was way, way back in the late 1990s, when geek culture had not yet exploded in earnest. The kids who watched “Evil Dead 2” on a regular basis were not the cool kids yet. They were the outsiders. Like for realsies. I ran in those circles. I had friend who played “Magic: The Gathering,” and my roommate in my second year was a member of the Anime club. My local video store, Backstage Video (which, I recently learned, is still proudly in business) offered a special every weekday: five movies, five days, five dollars. I was swimming in my new-found geekiness, hanging out with fellow nerds and watching as many movies as I could.
Like most people, though, I found “Evil Dead 2” to be a head above the other horror flicks I had seen. This was more than a mere horror movie. This was part of a growing canon. “Evil Dead 2” belonged in the same circles of thought as films like “The Shining” and “Clerks.” There were movies, and there were Great Movies. “Evil Dead 2” was a Great Movie. Have you ever asked an 18-24-year-old to list their ten favorite movies? You’ll usually find a mixture of legitimately classic films they had just discovered, a few more recent greats that they had seen recently, and a handful of goofy genre films that, usually for reasons of nostalgia, are near the top of their list for canon’s sake. As a result, you’ll find kids who list “Casablanca” in their top-10, but it will still fall behind “Evil Dead 2.”
As I aged, and passed kicking and screaming into my 30s (and, trust me, it’s not bad here), I went through several cycles of film fandom. I watched obtuse indie films and experimental movies ((I still own my copy of “Begotten.”). I went through that early 20s phase of extreme shit, wherein I saw things like “Mondo Cane,” “El Topo,” and “Pink Flamingos.” I went through a camp phase, and watched Douglas Sirk for the first time. I caught up on my classic horror, and am now the proud owner of several “Wolf Man” pictures. It wasn’t until my 30s that I managed to catch up on some of the greater ’80s classics, and I finally saw “Die Hard” and “Lethal Weapon.” Yeah, it took me that long. And, since I was also going to film school, I went through a long and intense period of European Art Films, wherein I fell in love with Jean-Pierre Melville, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, and all the rest of that crowd. I even caught up on the notoriously difficult great filmmakers like Yasujiro Ozu, Bela Tarr, and Robert Bresson.
And through it all, I have never lost my appreciate for “Evil Dead 2.” I sat down recently to re-watch it for the purposes of this essay. Even though I had seen the film over a dozen times at this point, it was still pleasant and funny and delightfully gory.
And it endures. “Evil Dead 2” is still played at midnight screenings all over the country. I haven’t visited too many college campuses recently, but I get the sense that a DVD of “Evil Dead 2” is now standard suburban issue for teenagers. The same way Classic Queen was.
Why does “Evil Dead 2” persist in the way it does? Why is it still part of the singular cult canon? Why do teenage boys the world over still hold it up as something sacred?
It can’t be its mythology. The film, in terms of story and myth, is surprisingly trim. Sam Raimi, the film’s director, was clearly not trying to expand on “The Evil Dead” which he had made six year before. He was clearly more interested in doing the same film correctly. “The Evil Dead” was an attempt at a legitimate horror film, which, to our eyes, looks shabby and campy. “Evil Dead 2” was his attempt to up the stakes, and make the silly stuff even sillier. He was not interested in expanding a myth, explaining the monsters, or giving poor Ash a backstory. No. None of that. In this modern age, we seem to have reached a frustrating place where all stories must interconnect. All TV shows are long-form dramas now rather than episodic snippets. Even comic book movies bleed into one another, thanks to the upcoming mashup of “The Avengers.” “Evil Dead 2,” by contrast, is without connective material. It is boldly and happily content to stay inside itself and merrily not make any larger sense.
What do the demons want? They’ve been asleep for millennia, and now they’re eager to cause mischief. They can haunt a building and make dead things come back to life. They can possess you if they want. They can float abstractly through the woods, but also seem to live inside evil trees. This is an evil that is, at once, smoke, zombies, ghosts, zombies, and creatures. No rules. No way to kill it. Just a buncha random shit.
It can’t be its horror. I realized something kind of revelatory this last time I watched it: “Evil Dead 2” is not scary. I never thought it was. I always found myself giggling at the film. Sure, it has several moments of atmospheric creepiness, and the creature effects are surprisingly advanced, given the film’s time and budget. But I never found myself curled up in a ball, shrinking away from the fearfulness on display. And I was a fearful kid. Even though I loved horror movies today, there was a time when they would give me nightmares on a regular basis. I remember when the video box for “Evil Dead 2” hit the shelves at my local video store, and the sight of Bruce Campbell being strangled by a disembodied hand was enough to scare me. I dunno. Maybe I was too old by the time I saw it, but nothing in “Evil Dead 2” was scary.
It’s certainly not the dialogue. Sure, we like to quote the film in our geek conversations with one another, but this is hardly David Mamet. Looking over the Internet Movie Database reveals these gems: “Old double-barrel here will blow your guts to Kingdom Come!” “You did it kid…” “Here’s your new home!,” and, my personal favorite “Maybe something trying to make its way into our world.” The dialogue is a weird mutation of badass action clichés and functional expository horror wastrels. There’s no inner music to the dialogue. It’s just as blunt as the wacky visuals.
I don’t think it’s even the film’s quality that really drives it. “Evil Dead 2” may be a good deal better and far more sophisticated than its zero-budget forebear, but it’s still kind of shabby. There was only one set (built in a high school in Detroit), and only one exterior, out in the woods of North Carolina. The story is clunky and moves on an odd way. Indeed, it’s only 6 minutes before the first decapitation. Less than ten minutes later, Ash is chainsawing the severed head in half. Sam Raimi has since gone on to make some really great movies. He did four superhero movies (although “Darkman” and Spider-Man 2” are really the only good ones), and even made a legitimate tragedy with “A Simple Plan.” In comparison, “Evil Dead 2” feels low-fi and, through certain section, amateurish. To be fair, it was only Raimi’s third film.
But then, it’s that shabbiness that makes it stand apart. With low budget films, its the earnestness that usually makes them notable. Raimi, for all the goofy camerawork, oddball padding, and bizarro horror/comedy scenes of Bruce Campbell fighting off monsters and ghosts, was clearly making something he believed in. He clearly thought all of this was amusing as Hell, and filmed what he wanted.
And while it may look cheap, it looks great.
And about that dialogue. As teenage boys, we tend to immerse ourselves in shallow action films, and are drawn to delightfully callow badassery. And no hero is more delightfully callow than Ash. As played by Bruce Campbell, Ash is a handsome and put-upon everyman whose workaday attitude and practical thinking lead him to deal with evil ghosts in the most pragmatic fashion. For instance, when he sees a monster lunging toward him, he doesn’t think to prepare a weapon for decapitation, but merely punches it in the face. Indeed, there is a lot of punching in this film. People punch monsters and monsters punch people. That’s kind o brilliant. The spawn of ancient evil forces lurches up from under the ground, and all they can think to do it smack you around a little bit.
“Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn” may have all the trappings of a horror film; the ancient curses, the evil book, the monsters, the death, the buckets of blood; but it’s not a horror film “Evil Dead 2” is a comedy. While there had been horror comedies leading up to 1987, I don’t think any had been as effective as this. What Sam Raimi does is expertly use the iconography of horror in the language of comedy. Horror films are intended to invoke fear in the viewer. I don’t think this was ever Raimi’s M.O. He wanted to make you laugh. That the laughs came from demon possession, slayings, and chainsaws is incidental. “Evil Dead 2” is a horror classic, but it really ought to be in the comedy section of the video store.
So when poor Jake (Dan Hicks) is dragged into the fruit cellar by the demon-possessed Henrietta (Ted Raimi in ghoulish makeup), and buckets of Kool-Aid looking blood flood out through the trap door, we cackle and cackle. Not because we’re immature and cruel-minded teenage boys (although that may have a lot to do with it), but because the film is so deft at creating the comedy of the situation. When Ash has to knock off his girlfriend’s head with a shovel, and later dismember her with a chainsaw, it’s actually a funny moment. When Ash has to stab himself in the hand – in order to fight the evil that has taken possession of it – it makes a kind of sense.
Oh yes. Chainsaws. Thanks to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” chainsaws are now a regular slaying tool in a serial killer’s arsenal. Thanks to “Evil Dead 2,” chainsaws are now weapons. Indeed, thanks to “Evil Dead 2,” most young men can’t look at chainsaws going through wood any longer. It looks wrong. Chainsaws are not for wood. Chainsaws are for zombie limbs. It is now a truth as inevitable as the phases of the moon.
The thing that really makes “Evil Dead 2” into a triumph, though is, I think, its overall tone. Since it’s making comedy out of horror, there’s a naughty streak of anarchic irreverence to the affair. This is not a dark and broody film about real death. This is a film that makes death into a joke. And a really funny joke at that. When we’re teenagers, we find ourselves fighting to survive through a hormonal miasma of new ideas, new feelings, and new ways to be humiliated. As geeks, we find ourselves suddenly ostracized for the interests that, a few years previous, would not be shunned by our peers. We have to content with new concepts and rules that we didn’t bother to contemplate as children. Stuff like death, sexuality, politics, beliefs. We have a new-found resentment of authority, once we find that parents, teachers and cops would take away the vices we have just discovered. Our best defense (and it’s not a very sophisticated one) is to merely dismiss anything that has even the slightest whiff of authoritarian control and irrelevant or stupid. Cops are dumb. Religion is dumb. Teachers are dumb. Parents are dumb. I don’t like anything. I’m going to go read my “Fangoria” magazines, and set my old toys on fire.
Into this miasma jumps “Evil Dead 2,” a film that makes light of death, and turns a bland action badass into a hugely funny demon fighter. A film that takes all the darkness and seriousness of life, and turns it on ear. Look kids, the film seems to be saying to each of us, here’s something that has all the mayhem you crave, but is still fun. There is no darkness. There is only joy and comedy. This is not about real suffering. This makes light of suffering. This makes horror into laughter. Sometimes, after a hard day of high school, you can pop I this film, and remind yourself that you can laugh.
“Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn” gave us hope. It let us see that we could still have a sense of humor. As the ages pass, teenage boys watch the film, and still jibe with its gloriously clunky, gory, edgy, dark laughter. Not cruel. Not evil. But certainly irreverent. And its that irreverence we crave. Why do you think teenagers like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” so much?
Will “Evil Dead 2” survive? I hope so. As time passes, and new films enter the cult canon, “Evil Dead 2” might one day find itself teetering away from its relevance as a cult icon. It may pass into that place where aging gorehouds remain the only class of people who still discuss it. I suspect, though, that there is something eternal about the film. Something grand. Something joyously universal about this silly, bloody film wherein a tree monster gets chainsawed in the eyeball. It may seem like a niche “cult” film, but there is a part in all of us that can remember a time when this sort of film would have been the most important thing in the world to us.
For many it was.
Today marks the films’ 25th anniversary; it was released on March 13th 1987. Happy anniversary, you li’l deadites. Please continue your important work.
