And so my journey with the brothers Sam and Ted and their big-chinned buddy Bruce began.

Pouring back over a fairly recent issue of "Heroes Illustrated" (big ups to any of my fanboy peeps reading this who remembers this short-lived, ahead-of-it's-time knock-off of "Wizard Magazine") I faintly remembered a small article called something along the lines of "The 5 Best Movies You've Never Heard Off" that referenced The Hidden, They Live and... Evil Dead II. Yes, we were entering flavor country folks and it was time to hunt down this white whale and make it my bitch.

This "hunt" was mostly ignored what with the pressures of junior high and all the time and effort put into frequently exploring the new joys being presented to me with puberty (i.e. jacking off like the depraved monkey I was at least 3 or 4 times a day). The fact that these movies were also 'R' rated and I had the misfortune of being raised by responsible parents who knew that the content of such movies were intended for those of us 18 or over didn't help me make much headway either. However, the first week of October brought this previous quest back to my attention when the Sci-Fi Channel bestowed upon our unworthy skulls an entire month of theme weeks exploring different genres of horror movies, one of which was five nights of the undead called "Zombie-A-Go-Go" as hosted by, appropriately enough, then White Zombie front man Rob Zombie. One of these movies just happened to be The Evil Dead. Yes... motherfucking supercharger heaven sized HELL YES!

Once again the position of being a child with responsible parents meant that I couldn't watch the movie as it was being shown, what with its late hour and my daily requirement of education the following day. Douglas and Susan Bowen make no exceptions for b-horror movies boys and girls, and neither should you when it comes to Junior's schooling neither. But, situations like this were why Nicola Tesla invented the VCR and Jesus invented the blank video cassette my friends, so I simply recorded the movie and watched the video the next afternoon after school. Even after edited thanks to the restrictions of our corrupt, pansy ass government, Evil Dead still managed to rock the living shit out of me. I wasn't scared as the distinction between fantasy and reality had been discovered at an early age (as had my desensitization began some 6 or 7 years prior as my aunt and uncle exposed my cousins and I to the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels brought into our homes by the early age of home video), but my lack of fright had no impact on the utter awe which burned into my frontal lobe like some big flaming drill of amazement. Horror movies didn't have to be about serial killers and bad dreams, there was more out there and it was time to embrace that with The Evil Dead!

That Halloween my parents were insistent on staying home, as my sister and I had become "too old" for trick-or-treating and we were too far out in the middle of nowhere to do anything else. It wasn't a legitimate holiday, so there would be no day off from school or work the next day in which to recover from a party of any kind, so instead we opted to rent some movies. I think my dad rented a couple of Karloff Frankenstein flicks which, though I appreciate them now, had absolutely no interest in or use for during my impetuous youth when it was violence and gruesome make-up effects that were catching my twisted young mind at the time. However, knowing that I wasn't all that interested in his generation of scares, dad told me I could pick out a couple of movies myself to watch, so long as they weren't slasher movies, well known for their high sex and nudity content. In the Bowen house violence and terror were okay, so long as there weren't any nubile chest globes or full frontal nudity being thrown around. As such, I immediately went for the triple threat: The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness... the second of which didn't even have box art, as the original had apparently been stolen by someone with more taste than ethics before I could get to it. It was another 3 or 4 years before I finally saw the now classic Evil Dead II skull we all know, love and wear on our t-shirts today. Though my parents will always refer to the first movie as "the one with the girl getting raped by a tree" and to the second as "the one with the naked headless dancing girl with the chainsaw", all three took their place in my little fanboy heart. Though it was Re-Animator that really pulled me into horror movies as an obsession several years later, as soon as it happened I brought back that fire for the unholy trinity and it's been burning like an eternal flame ever since.

That brings us to the present, 7 years after the final curtain was pulled on H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. and since which I've moved to the sprawling big city life of Brooklyn and the Big Scrapple. The Evil Dead flicks have since become a franchise, most notably being the third installment, Army of Darkness because it was the only one to come from a big studio and was therefore tailored for a wider, more mainstream audience. We've seen action figures; video games, comic books and any and all manner of commercialized products hit shelves as a result. Sam Raimi's gone on to create one of the highest grossing film franchises in history (Spider-Man), Bruce Campbell’s written not one but two best selling books and Ted Raimi... well... Ted's still Ted, so there's really not a lot for him to do except walk-ons in brother Sam's tinsel town productions. However, the combination of my newly acquired big city exposure and the sky-rocketed market value of the Evil Dead flicks have now resulted in a new milestone for my life as a lover of less-than-fine films: Evil Dead: the Musical.

Yeah, I know, it took me no less than 7 different paragraphs to get to the whole basis of this review, but I thought it'd be nice to let you swim around in a little of the heated pool that is my past first. Sorry if you thought it was a waste of time, but forgive me for trying to make a bond with my audience! Fuck! You try to open up and make your audience feel special and all you get is back talk from the voices echoing in your head! Ungrateful little....

Performed at the New World Stages theater at 340 West 50th Street (check out the website for show times and ticket info), my Evil Dead Bride and would-be Evil Dead Mother-In-Law took in the October 6th preview showing, seated in the best (and most affordable) seats in the house: the Splatter Zone... or the "Orchestra Seating" section for you song 'n' dance crowd types. Believe me, there's a reason it's called "the Splatter Zone", and if the name is too complicated for your THC soaked gray matter to figure out, here's another hint at the type of show you're in for: ponchos are given out during intermission. Come on, you didn't think that a stage show based on a blood soaked franchise like this was going to go without a little of the ol' "red rain" for the audience, didja?!

The play itself is a combination of Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, with the characters from both all making an appearance sooner or later. 90% of the setting for this off-Broadway blood orgy takes place in the infamous secluded cabin of the recently deceased Professor Knowby, though we do get the "generic forest background" scenes (including a hilarious opening sequence with our cast's under-sized, overly-deconstructable automobile) and a rousing finale in halls of the beloved consumerism Mecca known as S-Mart. Shop smart, shop... meh, you get the idea.

The musical numbers were all adequately amusing and well acted with several bordering on lyrical genius while the dance numbers tired my ass out just watching them! The stamina and skill these people wield would make the cast of Down and Dirty Debutant Dick Dunkers three shades of envy green! Between "Do the Necronomicon" and the war dance of the dead climax, I'm reaching for the inhaler from the wiener kid next to me to resuscitate my lungs and the napkins in my girlfriend's handbag to wipe the gobs of stage blood from my eyes. The time of my life. Certain elements of the movies are played with here (dismemberment is apparently not the permanent solution to the unloving redhead that it once was on celluloid) and the events of the third movie are summed up in a few brief lines (though the potential for a sequel musical are winked at), but the creative minds behind this epic of Necronomiconical proportions are obvious lovers of the movies from which the material is drawn and said cinema's creators. Case in point? During the airport scene, be prepared for a comedic donkey punch or two fired in the direction of Sam Raimi and Spider-Man.

The show was almost perfect in every detail. The make-up FX were excellent for the most part with some moments intentionally comical in their unbelievability (the "Linda's headless body runs around with a chainsaw" scene especially) and many of the "quick change" moments done very well... less so if you're an uncooperative prick like myself and don't center your attention to other parts of the stage when you should be... The choreography was stellar, the songs were great and the cast radiated with awesome power the likes of which would make Richard O'Brien pop wood. Okay, maybe that's overselling it a little, but seriously, everyone was great. Ryan Ward was good as Ash (though think the skinnier, more awkward Ash from the first movie); Brandon Wardell turns Scott into a dumb-ass Stiffler type caricature )which is probably both for younger audiences to dig as well as opens up a slew of dick and fart humor possibilities); Jenna Coker shows she has what it takes to carry the show as the pun spewing, groan inducing, groin pulverizing-yet-adorable Evil Dead possessed Cheryl; Jennifer Byrne and Renee Klapmeyer are both just plain hot as the show's resident eye candies Linda and Shelly/Annie (Klapmeyer of whom loses frequent strips of fabric as Annie and, if you're seated in the far left of the front row, may just get to peak a panty shot of near the end... much like I did), both of whom also have enough acting and singing chops to help make themselves the centers of attention; with Tom Walker and Darryl Winslow rounding out a great cast as Ed (whose "Bit Part Demon" solo says what we're all thinking) and Jake (whose "Good Old Reliable Jake" solo needs to find it's way into my iPod post haste) respectively.

As I'm fond of saying, "I don't know musicals, but I know what I hate... and I don't hate this". 12 ounces of inspiration and a gallon and a half of creative genius, Evil Dead: the Musical has shown to me that there really is a stage show for everyone in the world; you just gotta look hard enough to find it. If I can ever get my hands on a copy of the Orgy of the Dead musical my co-worker and his wife put together, I'll be all over it. My real hope for a future viewing though would have to be Re-Animator on the Roof: the Herbert West Side-Story... come on, that was at least an 8 on the Wit-O-Meter!