| Evil Dead II | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Sam Raimi |
| Produced by | Robert Tapert Alex De Benedetti Irvin Shapiro Bruce Campbell |
| Written by | Sam Raimi Scott Spiegel |
| Starring | Bruce Campbell Sarah Berry |
| Music by | Joseph LoDuca |
| Cinematography | Peter Deming |
| Editing by | Kaye Davis |
| Studio | De Laurentiis Entertainment Group Renaissance Pictures |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures (Canada) Rosebud Releasing (United States) Anchor Bay Entertainment (Home Video) |
| Release date(s) | March 13, 1987 |
| Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,600,000 |
| Box office | $10,900,000 (est.) (As of July 26, 2006) |
Evil Dead II (released as Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn) is a 1987 horror comedy action film directed by Sam Raimi. It is a retcon sequel to the 1981 film The Evil Dead. The film was written by Raimi and Scott Spiegel, produced by Rob Tapert and starring Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams. Raimi and Spiegel wrote the script during production of Crimewave.
Filming took place in Michigan and North Carolina in 1986 and the film was released in the United States on March 13, 1987. It was a minor box office success, achieving just under $6 million. As of 2006, the total US box office gross is $10.9 million. It also received critical acclaim. Observers praised Raimi for the direction and Campbell for his role in the film. Evil Dead II was eventually followed by the 1992 film Army of Darkness.
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Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) and his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler) take a romantic vacation to a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods. While in the cabin, Ash plays a tape of an archeology professor (the cabin's previous inhabitant), reciting passages from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (or "Book of the Dead"), which he has discovered during an archaeological dig. The recorded incantation unleashes an evil force which kills and later possesses the body of Linda. Ash is then forced to decapitate his girlfriend for his own safety. After he buries her, a spirit is seen on the hunt for Ash. Ash becomes briefly possessed by the demon, but when day breaks the spirit is gone, and Ash is back to normal. Ash finds little chance of safety, however, as the bridge leading to the cabin is destroyed. To make things worse, Ash is forced to sever his right hand, which has become possessed.
While Ash is dealing with this force, the professor's daughter, Annie, and her research partner, Ed Getley, return from the dig with more pages of the Necronomicon in tow, only to find the destroyed bridge. They enlist the help of Jake and Bobby Joe to guide them along an alternate trail to the cabin. The four of them find an embattled Ash, who is, seemingly, slowly being driven insane due to his encounter with the evil force, such as hallucinating that the inanimate objects in the cabin are laughing at him.
At first, he is mistaken for a murderer by the four people because he shoots at them through the door (mistaking them as the Evil Force), but they find out the truth after listening to a recording of Annie's father, Professor Knowby (John Peaks), that talked about how his wife Henrietta was possessed and buried in the cabin's cellar rather than dismembered. Ed is possessed and is soon killed by Ash. Bobby Joe tries to escape, but is attacked by the trees and dragged to her death. Ash is possessed once again and turns on his remaining companions, incapacitating Jake. Annie retreats to the cabin and accidentally stabs Jake and drags him to the cellar door, where he is killed by Henrietta in a bloodbath. Ash tries to kill Annie, but returns to normal when he sees Annie's necklace, which reminds him of Linda.
Ash, with Annie's help, modifies the chainsaw and attaches it to where his right hand had been. Ash eventually finds the missing pages of the Necronomicon and kills Henrietta, turned into a long-necked monster. Annie chants an incantation that sends the evil force back to where it came from. The incantation opens up a whirling temporal portal which not only draws in the evil force, but nearby trees, the Oldsmobile, and Ash himself. Ash's possessed hand stabs Annie with the Kandarian dagger.
Ash and his 1973 Oldsmobile land in what appears to be the Crusader-held Middle East in the year 1300 AD. He is then confronted by a group of knights who initially mistake him for a deadite, but they are quickly distracted when a real one actually shows up. Ash blasts the harpy-like deadite with his shotgun and is hailed as a hero who has come to save the realm, at which point he breaks down and screams "No!"
The concept of a sequel to The Evil Dead was discussed during the location shooting on the first film. Sam Raimi wanted to toss his hero, Ash, through a time portal, back into the Middle Ages. That notion eventually led to the third installment, Army of Darkness.
After the release of The Evil Dead, Raimi moved on to Crimewave, a cross between a crime film and a comedy produced by Raimi and Joel and Ethan Coen. Irvin Shapiro, a publicist who was primarily responsible for the mainstream release of The Evil Dead, suggested that they next work on an Evil Dead sequel. Raimi scoffed at the idea, expecting Crimewave to be a hit, but Shapiro put out ads announcing the sequel regardless.
After Crimewave was released to little audience or critical acclaim, Raimi and Tapert, knowing that another flop would further stall their already lagging careers, took Shapiro up on his offer. Around the same time, they met Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis, the owner of production and distribution company DEG. He had asked Raimi if he would direct a theatrical adaptation of the Stephen King (written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) novel Thinner. Raimi turned down the offer, but De Laurentiis continued to be interested in the young filmmaker.
The Thinner adaptation was part of a deal between De Laurentiis and King to produce several adaptations of King's successful horror fiction. At the time, King was directing the first such adaptation, Maximum Overdrive, based on his short story "Trucks". He had dinner with a crew member who had been interviewed about the Evil Dead sequel, and told King that the film was having trouble attracting funding. Upon hearing this, King, who had written a glowing review of the first film that helped it become an audience favorite at Cannes, called De Laurentiis and asked him to fund the film.
Though initially skeptical, De Laurentiis agreed after being presented with the extremely high Italian grosses for the first film. Although Raimi and Tapert had desired $4 million for the production, they were allotted only $3.6 million. As such, the planned medieval storyline had to be scrapped.
Though they had only recently received the funding necessary to produce the film, the script had been written for some time, having been composed largely during the production of Crimewave. Raimi contacted his old friend Scott Spiegel, who had collaborated with Campbell and others on the Super-8 films they had produced during their childhood in Michigan. Most of these films had been comedies, and Spiegel felt that Evil Dead II should be less straight horror than the first. Initially, the opening sequence included all five characters from the original film, but, in an effort to save time and money, all but Ash and Linda were cut from the final draft.
Spiegel and Raimi wrote most of the film in their house in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California, where they were living with the aforementioned Coen brothers, as well as actors Frances McDormand, Kathy Bates, and Holly Hunter (Hunter was the primary inspiration for the Bobby Jo character). Due both to the distractions of their house guests and the films they were involved with, Crimewave and Josh Becker's Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except, the script took an inordinately long time to finish.
Among the many inspirations for the film include The Three Stooges and other slapstick comedy films; Ash's fights with his disembodied hand come from a film made by Spiegel as a teenager, entitled Attack of the Helping Hand, which was itself inspired by television commercials advertising Hamburger Helper. The "laughing room" scene, where all the objects in the room seemingly come to life and begin to cackle maniacally along with Ash, came about after Spiegel jokingly used a gooseneck lamp to visually demonstrate a Popeye-esque laugh. Scott Spiegel's humorous influence can be seen throughout the film, perhaps most prominently in certain visual jokes; for instance, when Ash traps his rogue hand under a pile of books, on top is A Farewell to Arms (adding to the joke, the author is listed as "Stubby Kaye").
With the script completed, and a production company secured, filming could begin. The production commenced in Wadesboro, North Carolina, not far from De Laurentiis' offices in Wilmington. De Laurentiis had wanted them to film in his elaborate Wilmington studio, but the production team felt uneasy being so close to the producer, so they moved to Wadesboro, approximately three hours away. Steven Spielberg had previously filmed The Color Purple in Wadesboro, and the large white farmhouse used as an exterior location in that film became the production office for Evil Dead II. Most of the film was shot in the woods near that farmhouse, or J.R. Faison Junior High School, which is where the interior cabin set was located.
The film's production was not nearly as chaotic or strange as the production of the original, largely because of Raimi, Tapert and Campbell's additional film making experience. However, there are nevertheless numerous stories about the strange happenings on the set. For instance, the rat seen in the cellar was nicknamed "Señor Cojones" by the crew ("cojones" is Spanish slang for "testicles").
Even so, there were hardships, mostly involving Ted Raimi's costume. Ted, director Sam's younger brother, had been involved in the first film briefly, acting as a fake Shemp, but in Evil Dead II he gets the larger role of the historian's demon-possessed wife, Henrietta. Raimi was forced to wear a full-body, latex costume, crouch in a small hole in the floor acting as a "cellar", or on one day, both. Raimi became extremely overheated, to the point that his costume was literally filled with liters of sweat; special effects artist Gregory Nicotero describes pouring the fluid into several Dixie cups so as to get it out of the costume. The sweat is also visible on-screen, dripping out of the costume's ear, in the scene where Henrietta spins around over Annie's head.
The crew also sneaked various in-jokes into the film itself, such as the clawed glove of Freddy Krueger, the primary antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of slasher films, which hangs in the cabin's basement and toolshed. This was, at least partially, a reference to a scene in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street where the character Nancy Thompson (portrayed by Heather Langenkamp), watches the original Evil Dead on a television set in her room. In turn, that scene was a reference to the torn The Hills Have Eyes poster seen in the original Evil Dead film, which was itself a reference to a torn Jaws poster in The Hills Have Eyes.
At the film's wrap party, the crew held a talent contest, where Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell sang The Byrds' "Eight Miles High", with Nicotero on guitar.[1]
Evil Dead II received very positive reviews from critics and audience members; it holds a 98% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.[2] On a similar website Metacritic, it holds a score of 69/100 (generally favorable) with a user rating of 9.2/10.[3] Empire magazine praised the film saying "the gaudily gory, virtuoso, hyper-kinetic horror sequel/remake uses every trick in the cinematic book" and confirms that "Bruce Campbell and Raimi are gods" and Caryn James of The New York Times called it "genuine, if bizarre, proof of Sam Raimi's talent and developing skill."[4] Leonard Maltin originally rated the film with two stars,[5] but later increased the rating to three stars.[6]
Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #19 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films."[7] Sight and Sound ranked it #34 on their 50 Funniest Films of All Time list. In 2008, Empire magazine included Evil Dead II on their list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, ranked #49.[8]
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