The film’s stylishness and extreme content attracted the enthusiasm and support of admirers like Fangoria magazine and Stephen King, who talked it up every chance he got after seeing it at Cannes in 1982. Released in 1983, it became a minor hit in theaters but an even bigger one on home video. That paved the way for Evil Dead II. Sort of a sequel to The Evil Dead, sort of a remake, it opens with a condensed version of the first movie, but retcons the events so that Ash and his girlfriend (now named Linda and played by Denise Bixler) were vacationing alone when they found the book, now called Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, and were attacked.
The fuzziness doesn’t matter; Raimi throws one wild set piece at the audience after another, mixing bizarre make-up and stop-motion animation as Ash deals with his increasingly aggressive undead foes. The humor of The Evil Dead is even more prominent in Evil Dead II, which, while legitimately scary, does little to hide how deeply the creative team was inspired by The Three Stooges. Here, Campbell masters playing his leading man looks against his cornball instincts.** **
That skill is even more crucial to Army of Darkness, the third Evil Dead film, released in 1992. It picks up where Evil Dead II ends, with Ash stranded in medieval England fighting the Deadite threat in the past. This one turns the humor all the way up for an adventure film that owes as much to Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion spectacles as George Romero.
The Spin-Offs
Army of Darkness underperformed in theaters, stalling any immediate plans for a third sequel. But, fittingly, Evil Dead refused to die. The original had inspired a 1984 video game for the Commodore 64 and in the long gap between film entries, games again picked up the slack. Released, respectively, in 2000 and 2003, Evil Dead: Hail to the King and Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick served as sequels to Army of Darkness. Campbell reprised his role in each. Ash’s adventures have also continued in many comic books put out by several different publishers. Some of these have realized team-ups and crossovers of fans’ dreams, bringing in Marvel characters, and horror icons like Freddy and Jason.
The most notable spin-off, however, came in the form of Ash vs Evil Dead, the Starz TV series that ran from 2015 to 2018 in which Ash, thirty years on from the events of Army of Darkness, has become a blowhard drifter haunted by the events of his past and trying to figure out what to do with the Necronomicon. Mixing humor and horror, it brought in a fun supporting cast that included Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo, Lucy Lawless and, in later seasons, Lee Majors as Ash’s dad. (Its final episode seemingly finally put Ash into retirement, but the recently released **Evil Dead: The Game **connects to it directly, and there’s been talk of an animated series.)
The Reboots
In 2013, Evil Dead, like so many of its horror peers at the time, got the reboot treatment. This new take on the Evil Dead world is seemingly unconnected to what had come before, until a stinger in the credits. If nothing else, it’s widely different in tone. Jane Levy stars as Mia, a heroin addict brought by her friends and family to a remote cabin to kick her habit. This, predictably, does not go according to plan, particularly once the group discovers—you guessed it—an evil book that summons the dead.
Keith Phipps
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