Random Movie #7: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

For our seventh Netflix incursion, Becky and I watched the 1987 horror-comedy Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn.  Interestingly, this particular film is one that both Becky and I chose for the bucket.  We have both seen and enjoyed the original 1981 film (her more than myself) as well as its 2013 remake (myself more than her).  And having also seen the admittedly Army of Darkness, the second installment was the only one that I had not yet seen, which I had often seen referred to as the best of the series.

After surviving the undead assault of his possessed friends the night before, Ash (Bruce Campbell) finds himself no less in danger.  Still trapped by the bridge collapse, he desperately fights a losing battle against demonic possession and his own growing madness.  Meanwhile Annie (Sarah Berry), the daughter of the cabin's rightful owner, research partner Ed (Richard Domeneier) and locals Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley) make their way to cabin to translate the missing pages of the Necronomicon that may prove to be the key to saving Ash's soul.

The film begins with one of the most head-scratching openers that I have ever seen: a "recap" of the first films that completely retcons everything that happened in it.  Among the most dramatic alterations that it made was that it completely wrote out third, fourth and fifth wheels Cheryl (Ellen Sanweiss),  Scotty (Richard Demanincor) and Shelly (Theresa Tilly), changing the friendly weekend hangout in the woods into a secluded romantic getaway.  In addition to retconning the first film, it also serves the purpose of expanding upon the previously non-existant lore of the Necronomicon, providing deepening layers of interest in the events of the film.

Evil Dead 2 is essential The Three Stooges meets The Exorcist in Pewee's Haunted Playhouse.  It somehow manages to avoid outright farce to deliver something which is equal parts comedy and terror, akin to F. W. Murnau directing Modern Times.   Sam Raimi infuses the film with a crazed, manic energy derived from rapid tonal shifts between slapstick antics, body horror, sight gags and psychological torture.  In the over-the-top battle with his own possessed hand, Bruce Campbell delivers a "Three Stooges" one-man show (complete with the famous eye-poking gag), which quickly changes to horrifying as he cuts off his own hand with a chainsaw.  The scene comes full circle when Ash traps his disembodied hand under a bucket weighted down with a copy of A Farewell to Arms.

Due to the psychological nature of the horrors that Ash must face, it is often not clear whether or not he is truly under assault by demons (which mean to possess him) or merely insane (and dismembered his girlfriend in a fit of madness).  The boundaries of the real are continuously blurred in the film, ranging from the mounted animal heads hysterics to Ash interacting with his own tangible reflection.  Even Annie's possessed mother ambiguously shifts between murderous "deadite" and helpless old woman, bringing into question what really happened when Ash and Linda were alone.

Visually, Evil Dead 2 is a macabre masterpiece, whose makeup mutilations comparable to those featured in The Thing: decayed, gray-toned skin; rotted teeth; blind, pupil-less eyes; sharply defined facial bones.  These deformations are further enhanced by extremely high-contrast lighting and the frequent shifts between the actors in and out of their possessed forms' makeup.  When combined with scenes of Linda's head being crushed in a vise, Ash severing his own hand and any number of characters being showered in geisers of blood, it creates a singular vision of bodily deformation and horror.

The film also features what is absolutely the most astoundingly good use of stop-motion outside of fully animated features like The Nightmare Before Christmas.  The scene in which Linda's decapitated skeleton dances in the woods like putrefied ballerina is the film's crowning achievement: a sickeningly entrancing image of ghoulish beauty.  She twirls, pirouettes and even juggles her head about her skeletal frame before disappearing like a lingering wisp of smoke, leaving us to wonder if she was ever there at all.  Even the ultimate confrontation with the manifested evil from the Necronomicon is suitably epic, sickeningly riveting despite the film's paltry budget and out-moded style of special effects.

While a shade more slapstick than a usually care for, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn strikes the proper balance between scares and laughs for a horror comedy.  In the true tradition of Paris' Grand Guignol theater, the juxtaposition between comedy and horror makes the scares scarier and the jokes funnier.  I give the film a high 8, the same as I have given to Scream, The Hills Have Eyes and Ghostbusters.  Becky gave the movie a 6.5