Let's get right into the review this time: The beginning of Evil Dead 2 does a quick recap of the events of Evil Dead 1, except completely changes a lot of them. This time:
When the evil thing hits Ash, he goes flying through the air at an alarming rate, and eventually lands by ricocheting off of a perfectly placed gigantic tree. He then falls from a height of about 30 feet and lands in another perfectly placed large puddle of mud. Then comes areal plot twist as Ash starts totally flipping out and becomes a zombie. This could end our story quite quickly, if our hero becomes a zombie, but luckily when the sunlight hits zombie Ash he quickly reverts back to normal Ash and decides that right now would be the perfect time for a nap. Ash sleeps for quite some time, and then wakes up and decides to get in his Oldsmovile and tries to drive the hell away form the evil cursed haunted woods that are full of zombies. His plans to do so are thwarted, however, because the only bridge is out, like in the first movie.
Much to Ash's dismay, as he stands at the bridge flipping out it becomes night very very suddenly. That means the whole day lasted, including Ash sleeps time, about 2 hours. This is quite dismaying for Ash, because the moment it gets dark evil demon creature comes for his blood again. There then follows a great chase scene, usign Raimi's bitchin camera technique that he always uses to let us see what the monster sees. basically the camera man runs after Ash and Ash runs the hell away from him. Its hardcore! Anyway, it ends with Ash hiding from it in the basement and the monster backing out of the house in reverse.
Later, Ash is hanging out in the house trying not to be killed by zombies, when he sees the piano from earlier playing itself, as if this were a horror movie or something. Then comes the most bizzarre dance sequence ever as Linda, Ash's beheaded girlfriend digs herself out of ther grave and does a dance number with her head. Yeah, you read that correctly, her body and head do a dance number together... talk about fucked up. Anyway, after their freakish dance, the head and body decide to try to kill Ash, because everything in this series at some point tries to kill Ash. Ash has quite the battle with the head and body of Linda, who attack separately but witha group effort, but he eventually manages to chainsaw the hell out of both of them, but the head does get its own blow in, when it bites Ash's hand for like 4 straight minutes. Ash has a chainsaw now, but nothing could possibly prepare him for what happens to him next, because its just really screwed up...
Ash's hand becomes a zombie and tries to kill him. Yeah, if you think thats trippy, you might want to know that the hand can somehow laugh without a mouth. The hand beats the shit out of Ash, by hitting him with everything from the counter, to easily breakable plates, hell, it even tries to drown him in the sink. Ash screams out a quoteable quote "YOU DIRTY BASTARDS!..... give me back my hand!" Then the hand knocks Ash out and drags him to the nearby meat cleaver, with the intent of killing Ash quite violently. Luckily, Ash wakes up, stabs his own hand, and then chainsaws off his own right hand, while screaming "Who's laughing now?!" Yes, Ash is so hardcore that he chopped off his own fucking hand. Damn he's hardcore. Then Ash puts a pot over the hand, and puts books on top of the pot, to stop the still posessed hand from escaping. Hilariously enough one of the books is "A Farewell to Arms" which isn't really about losing your arms, but makes for one of the only funny puns in the history of puns. The hand escapes, and goes into the wall via a mousehole, where Ash tries to kill it anyway using his astounding shotgun firing skills and blindfighting attribute to shoot it without being able to see it. Then comes Sam Raimi's love of fake blood. The entire wall gushes at this point wiht enough blood to flood a small city.
This causes Ash to go insane, I think. I mainly think this because all of a sudden every single thing in the room starts laughing. Everything. The lamp, the clock, the bookshelves. Even the deer head over the fireplace starts laughing wildly. Ash joins in, laughing like he lost his mind. Then, hearing a noise, Ash blows a gigantic hole in the door with the shotgun. He is subsequently beaten up by a redneck and thrown in the basement.
Let me explain that last sentence. Throughout the movie thus far every once in a while the action switched to another storyline, which basically included a girl named Annie, a preppy blonde loser, a girl named Bobbie Joe, and a redneck going ot the cabin that Ash is in to see Annie's parents, the scientist who was researchign the Necronomicon and his wife, and give them the "missing" pages of the Necronomicon. I left these parts out because you want to finish reading this some time this century. Oh yeah, I suppose the preppy guy and the redneck had names but I listened damn close throughout the entire movie and I couldn't figure out the name of either, so I will refer to them as Dick and Hick.
Now, when Ash shot through the door he shot Bobbie Jo (somehow the shotgun didn't make her bleed and caused her only slight discomfort) and Hick and Dick beat Ash and locked him into the basement, because they assumed that he killed the Professor or whatever and his wife. They soon find out that Ash is not to blame, however, when they listen to more of the Professors tapes, and learn that his wife, Henrietta, had become a zombie, which he buried in the basement. Almost as if on cue, when her name is mentioned Henrietta pops up out of the dirt to try her hand at killing Ash. Henrietta is quite the decomposing zombie creature, and even though you don't need to know it, Henrietta was played by Ted Raimi, Sam Raimi's brother, whom Sam cast in almost everything he ever directed (he did the same thing with Bruce Campbell).
Henrietta and Ash bust out of the basement and there is a drawn out fight scene that eventually ends with Henrietta going back in the basement, Dick dying, and I think that when Henrietta's eye pops out it flies into Bobbie Jo's mouth and she swallows it, which is quite disgusting. Then a bit later they all wander into the other room in the cabin and are communicated with by the ghost of Annie's father, who tells them that they must use the Necronomicon to send away the demons. They must use the evil book to get rid of the evil dead. I guess one cancels out the other.
Anyway, this and the fact that Ash's hand makes a return to the set is too much for Bobbie Jo, who runs screaming off into the forest, where she immediately runs into the raping tree. Luckily for Bobbie Jo, however, the tree has apparently tired of raping women since the first movie (or maybe just didnt want to get the VDs that Bobbie Jo almost definately has) and decides to simply kill her instead. Back at the cabin Hick grabs the shotgun and forces Ash and Annie to go in the woods looking for Bobbie Jo. His plan fails miserably, however, because Ash becomes a zombie and fucks him up bigtime.
Annie and the barely alive Hick return to the cabin, where hick is sucked into the basement by the Henrietta, and his death causes an unsettlingly large amount of blood to come flying out of the basement door, much like the numerous other Raimi directed scenes that incuded fake blood. Then theres quite a long time where zombie Ash tries to and fails to kill Annie. He eventually becomes unzombie by looking at the necklace that he had given Linda, which somehow breaks the spell. I'm not sure exactly how that works, considering it failed miserably to save Linda, too, but I don't really ask questions about things like this, especially when Raimi's involved. He'll kill me. We can tell Ash is allright because he tells us all so, with this beautifully written line: "You listenin to me?! You hear what I'm saying?! I'M ALRIGHT!!" Ash is obviously alright.
At this point, Ash and Annie decide to get the pages of the Necronomicon from the cellar and use the incantation to banish the evil power or whatever. This involves Ash welding on a chainsaw to the stump which once contained his arm and sawing off his shotgun to make it more deadly. Then he went to the basement, but he didn't do anything quaint like "opening" the door. Oh no, that would be the easy way to get to teh basement. Instead, Ash uses his new chainsaw arm to saw himself a new door into the basement. Seems like a waste of precious chainsawwing power to me, but my opinion doesn't matter.
Then there is a huge fight sequence that I will not describe in detail, but rather in very terse, uninformitive sentences. Ash kills Henrietta. Entire forest attacks cabin. Annie reads the incantation. Evil appears, fights with Ash. Time vortex appears. Annie dies. Ash fucks up evil with a chainsaw. Ash, Ash's Oldsmobile, and Evil go flying into vortex.
Now, the vortex is a hole in time and space that is opened when Annie reads some stuff out of the Necronomicon. The inside of it looks like soem 1980s special effects guy used every special effect he had on a blue screen with Bruce Campbell standing in front of it. Which, to think of it realistically, it was.
Anyway, Ash wakes up surrounded by medieval knights and then he shoots a demon, forcing them all to worship him as the god he is. Basically. And thats where Evil Dead 2 leaves off.
All in all, Evil Dead 2 is quite a good fucking movie. This movie successfully blends horror and humor. It has an awesome collection of quotes, many of which were used in this article. The one liners in this movie are only surpassed by those in Army of Darkness, which is the next step in theEvil Dead-a-thon. Also, let me just tell you, Evil Dead 2 is regarded by many Evil Dead fans as the best movie in this series. DevNul included. In fact, Me, DevNul, Shinigami, and Miles all watched Evil Dead 2 together, and a fun time was had by all.
I give it a 317/365.
--Scuba Steve, November 1, 2001