Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

“Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn,” released in 1987, is a comedy disguised as Roger Ebert puts it, “a blood-soaked shock-a-rama. It looks superficially like a routine horror movie, a vomitorium designed to separate callow teenagers from their lunch.” However, if you look a little closer and you’ll see that the movie is a properly stylish satire. Level One viewers will say it’s not their type. Level Two viewers, like Ebert, will see that it is about not being your type.

The plot: Visitors (Bruce Campbell and Denise Bixler) to a cottage in the Michigan woods discover a rare copy of the Book of the Dead and accidentally summon evil spirits. Ebert mentioned, “The spirits run amok, disemboweling and vivisecting their victims.” The hero fights like a man with the terror supernatural forces, in the woods and behind every door.

This story is told with wall-to-wall special effects. Skeletons dance in the moonlight. Heads spin on top of bodies. Hands go crazy and start attacking their owners. After they are chopped off, they have a life of their own. Ebert mentioned, “Heads are clamped into vises and squashed.” Blood sprays all over the place. Guts spill. Slime pukes. If disgusting images of horrific blood are not, as they say, up your alley, the odds are good you will not have a great time watching this movie.

On the other hand, if you know it’s all special effects, and if you’ve seen a lot of other movies and have a sense of humor, you might have a great time with “Evil Dead 2.” Ebert said, “I did - up to a point.” The movie demolishes ideas at such a phenomenal rate that it begins to repeat itself toward the end, but the first 45 minutes have a kind of hyper, inspired genius to them.

For example, look at the scene where the hero cuts his hand from his body and the hand takes on a life of its own, attacking him. Leave out the blood and the gore and few of the details, and this entire scene builds like a honor to the Three Stooges. Look at the scene where the hero attaches a chain saw to what’s left of his hand that he cut off. Disgusting, right? However, Sam Raimi styles it as a clever shot at the way Robert De Niro suited himself in “Taxi Driver.”

Ebert admitted, “I'm not suggesting that "Evil Dead 2" is fun merely because you can spot the references to other movies. It is because (a) the violence and gore are carried to such an extreme that they stop being disgusting and become surrealistic; (b) the movie's timing aims for comedy, not shocks, and (c) the grubby, low-budget intensity of the film gives it a lovable quality that high-tech movies wouldn't have.”

There is one shot in the film that must be a masterpiece. There is a force outside in the woods. We never see it, but we see things from its point of view. In one long and very difficult continuous point-of-view shot, this force rages through the woods, crushes everything, crashes through the cabin door, and goes through room after room with invincible violence, chasing the hero until…I would be going into spoilers if I said anything else.

My advice is that I would recommend this movie to everyone, especially if you liked the first movie. It’s really good, I think it would be better than the first one. More comedy is put into the movie and that’s where the enjoyment really kicks in. It might be one of my favorite horror comedies. So if this movie is up your alley, then you will have a dashingly good time watching it.

Now we are going to talk about the third in the “Evil Dead series,” but that won’t be until tomorrow. I know that movie is the one people are mixed about, but I will not say what I think about it until I get to it tomorrow. See you then, in my lighthearted, comedic post for this year’s “Halloween Month.”