Dead By Dawn: Evil Dead II

            A dancing, stop-motion, headless corpse with a chainsaw. A mischievous disembodied hand. A mounted deer head trophy laughing maniacally. Where can one find such wonders? In Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II (1987) of course! All this, and fountains upon fountains of bright red, and black, and green blood! Bring an umbrella.

            The follow up to the low-budget masterpiece The Evil Dead (1981) was a long time coming. Raimi and Co. (including his brother Ted Raimi, writer Scott Spiegel, and star Bruce Campbell) enjoyed remarkable success with their debut picture, especially on the home video market. But five years and a failed production later (Crimewave [1985]) they were at a loss for a new project.

            Allegedly, Sam Raimi did not want anything to do with a sequel to The Evil Dead. But studios were clamoring for it and Bruce Campbell convinced him – Convinced him by locking him in a room with co-writer Scott Spiegel and forcing them to write a script. The incessant laughter coming from the room was an indication that something entirely different than their first effort was being concocted.

            With a completed script, and a budget ten times that of the previous film, the crew headed to location in North Carolina to shoot one of the most original sequels ever made.

            Fans of the Evil Dead franchise are a curiously segregated group. While all seem to love each of the three movies, the whole seems split into distinct sects with almost religious devotion to their favorite installment. Yours Truly here happens to pledge his undying allegiance to the first film, but as mentioned, there is a love affair with all three. That said, those who call Evil Dead II their favorite seem to be the weirdest of the bunch. The humor of this film is seriously, and I do mean seriously, demented. Where else will you find the leading man battling his own possessed hand?

           

Much of what makes this sequel work so well is the humor. Whilst the first film was ‘The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror’, Evil Dead II takes itself much less seriously. It never even really attempts to scare (in spite of the tagline ‘Kiss Your Nerves Goodbye!’) and instead almost styles itself as a spoof of the original as opposed to its sequel.

            This is most evident in the unrelenting gore that oozes all over the screen, and the set, and the actors, and everywhere. Instead of spurting or gushing, the grue frequently erupts in sprays of volcanic proportions, almost as if being released from a fire hydrant. It literally covers everything. With spectacle so ridiculous, the audience is simply forced to let go of any realistic expectations of fright and give in the hilarity. At times, the evil force even literally bids the viewer “JOIN US!”

This invitation is practically the entire aim of the film. Each gag is designed to draw the audience in with every *wink wink* *nudge nudge* moment, well-placed pun, and not-so-subtle pop culture reference – just check it out when Ash tries to imprison his unruly hand in a bucket and weighs it down with a copy of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms! The film is perhaps at its most effective when parodying its predecessor. At times, nothing is funnier than when a film makes fun of itself and Evil Dead II not only knows that, it relishes in the fact with unholy glee.

 In The Evil Dead, Ash’s girlfriend Linda becomes possessed and laughs for an uncomfortably long time in very disturbing, very high-pitched cackle. Ash can’t deal with it anymore and screams “Shut up!” “Why are you torturing me like this? WHY?!” and we as the audience feel the same way. In true parody fashion, Evil Dead II takes this moment and makes it do a handstand and juggle bowling pins with its feet. The mounted deer head becomes possessed and starts laughing. Followed by the desk lamp, and the books, and the book shelf, and the clock, and the shutters… Finally, Ash can’t take it and starts laughing uncontrollably as well. “JOIN US!” Laugh with us! Resistance is most definitely futile.

But crazy jokes and ooey-gooey gross-out gags on their own do not a movie make. There is an undeniable craftsmanship at work in Evil Dead II as well. To say that the film is paced at a rather quick clip is a gross understatement. This sequel is a slick, well-oiled machine created for a specific purpose- to thrill and tickle the funny bone. There is almost no fat here, all of it is trimmed. There is not a single scene in the film that can be deemed unnecessary. As a result, the movie’s run time of 84 minutes goes by in a flash. Credit certainly goes to Raimi and crew for making this ride a fast and enjoyable one. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and leaves the audience desiring more. One might complain that the downside of this is that bothersome things such as character development and depth of story are completely eschewed in favor of a candy-coated ride through the theatre of macabre. Characterization? Storyline? Raimi and Co. call that fat. And fat is to be trimmed.

In spite of such ‘overlooked’ issues, any viewer of Evil Dead II will be treated to Raimi’s always ingenious cinematography. Like The Evil Dead before it, this film’s greatest strength is its inventive camera work. This time the crew had the benefit of a steady-cam and it impressively shows. The famous POV ‘Demon Cam’ looks a lot more like a rampaging evil and a lot less like two guys running through the forest with a camera on a two-by-four. The better equipment also left much more time to spend on the effects that abound in every frame. No more acrylic paint masks, here we get latex appliances and make-up!

The final aspect that makes Evil Dead II such an entertaining film is none other than an incredible turn by star Bruce Campbell. Ash’s personality shifts drastically from installment to installment, and here he is his most dynamic. The role is much more physical than the previous film and it must take a special kind of person to fight with his own hand so viciously! But more impressive than that is the setting. Ash is alone for the entire first half of the film and Campbell plays it off beautifully and convincingly. An actor acting against himself for forty-five minutes and pulling it off is a testament to his skill and dedication to his craft. Quite frankly, without Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead II just would not work.

The middle installment in a trilogy can often be the weakest. It takes a lot of ingenuity and more than a bit of luck to coax lightning to strike twice. Ultimately, the charm of Evil Dead II lies in more than its humor and technical excellence. Like its predecessor, it is frightfully original and it is this left turn that keeps it feeling fresh even twenty-five years later.

So go check it out! But be careful, you might just end up ‘DEAD BY DAWN!!!’

Necronomicon Ex-mortis: The Evil Dead

Once in awhile you stumble across a film you might never have known existed, and it turns out to be a work of genius. Film nuts such as Yours Truly spend a lot of our free time seeking out films that not many people have heard of. Their existence is almost a myth sometimes – like the battle epic Siege of Firebase Gloria (1989). It’s always a wonderful moment when, half-way through the film, you realize that you have practically tripped over something very special. Then there is The Evil Dead (1981).

           

The Evil Dead sits in a decidedly different category of discovery. The nature of this wonderful gem of a movie is perhaps more akin to a legend than a myth. The Evil Dead is something that everyone has heard of, and many have seen. Yet for some reason it still sits in that place where it enjoys a sort of beloved notoriety. The title itself is enough to ward off most of those who do not desperately desire to see such things (and God have mercy on the ones who see it accidentally). But for horror aficionados, The Evil Dead is the holy grail of low-budget filmmaking.

Anyone questing to see it has a bewildering dilemma. Some movies are difficult to watch because they are hard to find (just try finding an uncut copy of Razorback [1984], I dare you). The Evil Dead has the exact opposite problem. To date, there are no fewer than six Region 1 DVD releases and two blu-ray releases (one with an extra special features disc and one without). This is disregarding the Region 2 4-disc set, multiple VHS releases, and a Sony PSP version. Needless to say, pursuers of the film are faced with the problem of which release they should lay down their hard-earned bucks for. Die-hard fans tend to buy multiple releases simply to own the complete array of supplemental material out there.

Even more puzzling than this is that the film isn’t more popular in the mainstream, considering its wildfire popularity in the horror community. Certainly, its gore isn’t for everyone. And the atmosphere of terror will put off more than a few for sure. But there is a magic to it. For anyone seeing it for the first time, no matter how much they have heard about it, The Evil Dead is an unexpected treat.

So what makes this cult classic so great? Is it originality? Ingenuity? Or is it simply fun? How about all of the above? Honestly, when one takes a look at the film on a surface level, it just should not work as well as it does. When director Sam Raimi and company embarked on production in late 1979, they had no location, two actors, and a budget of $375,000. Finding three more cast members was hard enough, but when they arrived at the cabin they were supposed film in, they found it occupied by about two dozen squatters.

A change of venue was in order. Raimi and producer Rob Tapert discovered an abandoned cabin outside Morristown, Tennessee. There were no squatters this time, but the floor was completely covered in four inches of manure. Actor Bruce Campbell (who would become the famous hero, Ash) almost single-handedly shoveled the entire cabin. The crew knocked down walls and replaced them, added a generator and a telephone, and used a good chunk of the budget to do it.

If these hurdles weren’t enough, it is safe to say that no Hollywood producer of the time would back the picture if they saw it in production. Raimi and crew seemed to violate nearly every tenant of horror filmmaking. First off, they had a male hero – a strong female lead was considered a must at the time. Secondly, the set-up was almost flip-turned upside down. Instead of the characters being picked off one by one, the hero is basically tortured and picked on for the duration. Simply, it should not work. But it does.

Perhaps the biggest reason for this is that The Evil Dead is astonishingly proficient filmmaking. This makes it all the more impressive considering that the primary cast and crew all dropped out of film school to make it. The storyline is tight, the acting is honestly too good for a film of this budget and this genre, and most of all the camera work is positively captivating. The cinematography is so intricate and unique, in fact, that one can spot its influence on big-budget productions in practically every genre since. From the POV ‘Demon Cam’ to the ingenious placement of the car and camera on an incline to make the actors look off-kilter – it’s all been copied from a film which, for all intents and purposes, is practically a home movie.

The fun of The Evil Dead comes from a brilliant and original combination of horror and humor. Most horror films at least attempt to rely on subtlety to build suspense. Here subtlety is chucked out the window. The audience gets to see everything happen. There are no *wink wink* cutaways from the action, nothing is artfully implied. It is all onscreen. Raimi and Co. keep the blood flowing, the goo splashing, and the ribs tickling and never let up.

The incessancy is another point. Once the action starts rolling, it just does not stop. The audience is never given a chance to breathe. The most effective proponent of this is the film’s downright inventive sound design. The tension is skillfully manipulated through the precise, meticulous placement of noises and sound effects. Moments range from impressively long and loud action pieces, to dead silent instances where the only thing audible is Bruce Campbell’s labored breathing. In most horror films, loud stings and jump scares are often considered cop-outs or just trying too hard. In The Evil Dead, these devices are legitimately terrifying because of this aggressive and original sound design.

But even the most original film would fall flat if it was a one-trick-pony. The Evil Dead supplements the horror with a viciously unique brand of humor. Even the truly disgusting gore effects are in on the joke, such as the moment when Ash pulls a stick lodged in his zombie-fied friend’s leg and the result is the *pop* of a cork and a torrent of blood gushing as if being drained from a jug.

The film also seems to thrive on little, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments of dialogue – “WE CAN’T BURY SHELLY; SHE’S A FRIEND OF OURS!!!” – and sight gags like the ‘eyes open-eyes closed’ interplay between Ash and his girlfriend Linda.

The glee the filmmakers take in manipulating the audience is so apparent, that we absolutely must laugh along with them. Where most films’ self-awareness has a tendency to become pretentious, here it is genuine and infectious. The picture itself seems to know there is no rhyme or reason behind what is happening and takes absolute, nonsensical pleasure in that fact. This is never better shown than when Ash screams, “Why are you torturing me like this? WHY?!!!” As the audience, we just continue to scream in fear and laugh in delight.

All of these things have combined to create one of the most entertaining experiences one will ever have in the horror genre. The Evil Dead is one of the few films that lives up to its grandiose tagline –“The ULTIMATE Experience in GRUELING TERROR!”

Watch it if you dare!

The Green Inferno: Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust

            What to say about Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980)? What to say, at least, that hasn’t already been said? VILE! DEPRAVED! SICKENING! Masterpiece? It is certainly true that no viewer new to the film is ever prepared for what awaits in the following hour and a half. Might it even be appropriate to say that those who have seen it are still unprepared upon their second viewing, or third… or fourth? There must be something truly special about a film that has that power. Whatever else Cannibal Holocaust is, it is a masterpiece.

           

            The premise is astonishingly simple (the best plots are). Four documentary filmmakers head down to the Amazon jungle intent on capturing on camera the fabled cannibal tribes. Of course, they disappear. An anthropologist investigates the disappearance. He makes contact with the tribe and discovers the canisters of film the team shot. As the audience, we then view the footage and discover their fates. And with that comes the self-proclaimed “Most controversial movie ever made!”

            But first, a little background. Contrary to legend, Cannibal Holocaust is not the first of its kind. In fact, by the time it was released in the summer of 1980, the ‘Cannibal Exploitation’ subgenre had been going strong for eight years. The films in this niche were predominantly Italian to start. This makes perfect sense, considering the propensity for the ‘spaghetti’ filmmakers to include an extraordinary amount of brutality in their films. Of the 39 titles on Britain’s famous ‘Video Nasties’ list, 29 hail from Italy!

            The film often deemed to be the first entry in the cannibal canon is Umberto Lenzi’s Man From Deep River (1972) (aka Sacrifice!, Deep River Savages, and Il paeso dell sesso selvaggio). The film centers round a man captured by a tribe in the Amazon who eventually becomes one of them. Dances with Wolves eat your heart out, literally. It is curious that Lenzi’s later works Eaten Alive! (Mangiati Vivi! [1980]) and Cannibal Ferox (Make Them Die Slowly [1981]) are considered to be imitations of Cannibal Holocaust when the director is credited with starting the trend in the first place.

            Indeed, not only was Ruggero Deodato’s incredible work of ‘cinema verité’ not the first cannibal film, it wasn’t even his first. In addition to director Sergio Martino’s adventure opus Mountain of the Cannibal God (La montagna del dio cannibale [1978]), Deodato made his own cannibal adventure with Jungle Holocaust (Last Cannibal World; Ultimo mondo cannibale [1977]). Surprisingly, we find that the infamous Cannibal Holocaust is in fact a follow-up!

            What’s more, the tropes the film follows are well-worn in the genre. There is plenty of jungle, natural native nudity, actual animal slayings, and very gory, brutal violence. None of this is new, all of it tried and true. Even the concept of hand-held documentary footage can be lifted from Deodato’s contemporaries Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, whose films Mondo Cane (1961), Africa Addio (1966), and Goodbye, Uncle Tom (Addio zio Tom [1971]) ushered in a new era of cinematographic realism.

            With all of this pointing towards the film as unoriginal, one must ask “What makes it so special?” To turn a well-worn cultural maxim on its head, ‘Cannibal Holocaust may not be the first, but it certainly is the best’. So, perhaps the more appropriate question is, “Why is Cannibal Holocaust the best of its kind?”

            Ironically, many of the characteristics that make the film so great are also the ones that have made it so controversial. Due to the depictions of violence, Cannibal Holocaust was initially banned in nearly sixty countries, from Great Britain (as a Video Nasty) to its home country of Italy, where it was seized in Milan and the filmmakers arrested for obscenity. The courts, in fact, at first charged director Ruggero Deodato with murder, in the belief that the actors in the film had actually been killed. Deodato was forced to contact them and produce them alive to exonerate himself.

            Even today, while it is not under widespread ban, the work is still heavily censored in many countries. This is mainly to cut out the numerous scenes of violence towards animals, which were not simulated- animals were harmed in the making of this picture. These parts of the film are a main source of controversy, but also necessary to the success of the film (as horrid as that sounds).

            The realism portrayed is unlike any other film in existence. The fallacy of modern ‘found-footage’ films, such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008) is that they still aspire to the theatricality of Hollywood. This is the very media that Cannibal Holocaust wishes to indict. Just as the TV Executive points out to Dr. Monroe (played with surprising naturalism by Robert Kerman), “Today people want sensationalism!” The onscreen slaughter of animals, especially one rather unlucky yellow-spotted river turtle, plays right into this. ‘You want sensationalism?’ Deodato seems to say, ‘you’ve got it!’ Happy now? This very social condemnation blatantly stands contrary to the label of exploitation given the film by those who decry it.

            But the real service the killings perform for the film is to set a tone for the audience.  We are duly shocked by this sort of snuff film á la National Geographic, and when the axe comes down, so to speak, we are prepared to believe that everything we are seeing is real. It is a magnificent cinematic magic trick. Many aspire to making their films believable, contending it is that holy grail of attributes that ultimately makes a great work of cinema. But few ever achieve it. Why is this, we must wonder?  Perhaps Cannibal Holocaust holds the answer. We cannot handle it. Is it too real? When a film finally convinces us to believe all that we see, we cannot escape the mortality of ourselves. The film challenges us to reconsider what we label ‘entertainment’. Our morality kicks in. Instead of condemning a filmmaker for showing human depravity (rationalizing that it was unnecessary), we finally acquiesce to condemning the evil of humanity itself. When we see the final ten minutes of Cannibal Holocaust, we cannot help but give ourselves over to the images before us. Logic says that is just a movie and it couldn’t have really happened. But on some level, we believe it is. And anything that can make us believe so unquestionably what we are being shown is real can make us reevaluate the standards we so blindly accept in everyday life. Standards of morality, of entertainment, of art.

            That is the power of Cannibal Holocaust.