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Evil Dead II (1987)
Starring Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, and Kassie DePaiva. Cinematography by Peter Deming. Edited by Kaye Davis. Produced by Robert G. Tapert. Written by Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel. Directed by Sam Raimi.
Ash (played by Bruce Campbell) and his girlfriend Linda (played by Denise Bixler) have gotten away to spend a romantic weekend alone in a secluded cabin hidden deep in the woods. Upon their arrival they discover a tape recording of a professor named Raymond Knowby (played by John Peakes) reciting passages from the Necronomicon, also known as the Book of the Dead. While Ash and Linda listen to the playback of the ancient text, the woods surrounding the cabin suddenly come alive with evil.
Linda is overtaken by a demonic spirit and Ash is forced to decapitate her. As Ash struggles to stay alive, Knowby’s daughter Annie (played by Sarah Berry) arrives, along with her assistant Ed (played by Richard Domeier) and two local guides (played by Dan Hicks and Kassie Wesley), in search of the Necronomicon. Now with even more souls to posses, the Deadites continue their relentless assault upon the living until daylight breaks.
The idea for an Evil Dead sequel was on the mind of Sam Raimi even as he filmed the original one. His follow-up film would feature Ash as he traveled back in time to defeat an entire army of cursed Deadites. But this epic scale story would demand a significantly larger budget and that was something that his associates at Embassy Pictures just didn’t have at their disposal.
And so as Raimi and his creative partners Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell patiently waited for financing to come through, they started interviewing potential cast and crew for their upcoming film. One of the candidates that they had interviewed was about to go to work on Stephen King’s first filmmaking experience, Maximum Overdrive. In a conversation with King, the crew member relayed the difficulties that Raimi and company were having trying to get Evil Dead 2 off the ground.
King passed this information on to his producer, Dino De Laurentiis, who in turn offered Raimi help financing a sequel. But De Laurentiis was not interested in the story of Ash in the fourteenth century. Instead he wanted to virtually recreate the first film; the cabin, the woods, and all. Evil Dead II would not officially be a remake, but when the eagerly anticipated sequel went into production that’s basically what they had (the rejected story would, of course, become Army of Darkness a few years down the road).
While Raimi was being limited to use the same story as he did in The Evil Dead, there were no guidelines given on the tone of the picture. So instead of developing another cut and dry horror flick, Raimi and his friend Scott Spiegel infused their screenplay with a satirical humor that had rarely been seen in the genre. Replacing the meek and docile Ash of the first film was a wisecracking, undead annihilating, warrior that perfectly enhanced the recycled story.
But the shift in approach and character didn’t detract from the amount of blood and gore in the picture; quite the contrary actually. Evil Dead II was ultimately released and distributed unrated as to avoid being damned with a certain X rating from the MPAA. Its theatrical run was brief, but like its predecessor, it eventually found its market on home video. Evil Dead II has since become one of the most celebrated horror/cult films of all time and it’s hero, Ash, is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining and memorable characters of the decade.
Budget: $3,500,000
Total US Gross: $5,923,044
Genre: Horror
Runtime: 85 Minutes
US Release Date: 3/13/87
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Awards: none
Tagline: There’s Only One Movie Scarier Than The ‘Evil Dead’… Kiss Your Nerves Goodbye.
Quote: “Then let's head on down into that cellar and carve ourselves a witch.”
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