Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (1987)

Episode 458, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Craig. I think 2025 is gonna go down as the summer of tributes. Yeah, I mean, of course this is just our excuses for ways to pick movies. ’cause after you’ve done God close to 500 of these episodes though, we just, uh, don’t know where to begin when we decide what’s going to, what are we gonna do next week.

So it’s real easy when we notice that a person has passed away and be like, oh, they associate with any horror movies. And sure enough, on September 1st of this month, Scott Spiegel passed away and, uh, made, made bigger news than I would’ve expected. Scott Spiegel to make, you know, I don’t think a lot of people know who he is, but he was so instrumental in some of the biggest movies in horror.

That we’ve seen as well as some of the biggest directors, uh, that we’ve seen in Hollywood nowadays. Right? He was a childhood friend of Bruce Campbell and Sam Ramey as they were growing up through school. They used to get a Super eight camera out and shoot lots of, uh, silly movies. Usually three Stooges es type things where they would run around and be silly.

And, uh, that is what got Sam Raey into filmmaking. And it was that crew that got together and made Evil Dead, which we know launched the careers of quite a few people and they remained friends And, uh. Cohorts throughout all this. He co-wrote the screenplay, I guess you could say, for, uh, evil Dead Two. Evil Dead Two is the movie that we’re going to be talking about today, and it’s taken us a while to get to this one just because it is so popular and iconic and you know how we shy away from those things quite a bit, right?

Yeah. Spiegel, actually, I, there are a few things about him I didn’t realize. I know that he and Ramey early on when they got to Hollywood, were close collaborators and friends of Joel and Ethan Cohen. Uh, they worked on the first movie together and what I didn’t realize is that when they all moved to Los Angeles after that they were housemates with Holly Hunter, Francis McDormand and Kathy Bates.

I know. Crazy, right? It’s always 

Craig: crazy. I know. Group of people. Yeah. And it’s always crazy to me and I always, these stories fascinate me and I get jealous. Because it seems like it happens all the time. These famous people who are all kind of famous at the same time, you find out that they’ve known each other forever, like since before they were famous, and I, I just get jealous how cool that is to not only be friends with all of those people, but to.

You have your friendship established even before the fame, like, that’s so cool. 

Todd: Yeah, and I guess it kind of makes sense. You know, you’re all looking, you’re all in the same industry, you’re all looking to make it big, and so one of you gets successful and you kinda helped the other out, and I’m sure that you know it.

It’s not just a coincidence that these people all kind of turned out to be famous. I’m sure that they helped each other out and and made connections. Sure. I was surprised to find out that Scott Spiegel introduced Producer Lo Bender to Quentin Tarantino. Right. Which got him his first movie made a Reservoir Dogs.

Right. ’cause Tarantino had just been like crashing on his couch or something. Right? Yeah. So, you know, even though he’s not a name on the top of everybody’s head, he has, uh, made a serious impact in Hollywood and, and as an actor in his own right. You know, he didn’t have big roles. Right. Usually bit rolls in a lot of movies, but like.

Probably 60 or 70 of them. So, you know, I think he was having a good time and, uh, that’s why we’re doing Evil Dead too today is just a paid tribute to him and of course, to cover this movie that we should have covered a long time ago. 

Craig: I know. 

Todd: When was the last time you saw this? 

Craig: Oh, man, I was telling you when we decided to do this, that there was a time that I feel like I could have basically, you know, recited the, the movie or, or given you a very detailed plot.

Synopsis from beginning to end because I loved it so much and I watched it a lot, especially in college, but starting when I was a kid and then I guess I probably haven’t seen it in like 15 years. It’s been a really long time. So it was kind of cool to go back. What about you? Oh 

Todd: God, I think I rewatched it a year or two ago with Liz because she may or may not have seen it.

We just wanted to re refresh ourselves on it because we had done what the, the new evil Dead right. And it kind of inspired us to go back and watch the originals. But beyond that, yeah, God decades really, I really enjoyed the movie. I don’t think I saw it until maybe a late high school or college, but I do remember when I was much younger there being a whole.

A bunch of series of news pieces on TV about the rise of splatter movies and about how kids who were too young to be seeing these things were renting them and watching them at home, and is this good? Is this ethical? What are the parents thinking? Do they even know what their kids are watching kind of things.

And they really focused on this movie. I don’t know if it’s because it was contemporaneous at the time, or it was really popular in video at the time, or just because it was an easy target, because the Gore level in this movie is insane. So insane that it. It was released Unrated. 

Craig: I know. Which is so strange how things change over time because by today’s standards it’s silly and cute.

Like Yeah. I mean it’s just a lot of, I guess it’s just a lot of blood. They, they even went out of their way to try to use, not red blood, to use different colors and stuff to avoid the X rating. I get it. It is very violent, you know, violence. And Gore is a big part of the point. But I did see it when I was a kid.

I don’t know how, and I don’t mean little, but probably like adolescent. Wow. And I don’t remember how I got my hands on it. We pro, my dad probably just rented it for me. Didn’t think anything of it. And I remember really, really liking it. But I remember thinking it was hilarious. Yeah. So funny. 

Todd: That’s what shocked me about it when I saw it, is just, it’s a goofball movie.

Craig: Yeah. It’s really silly and it really is a showcase for. Bruce Campbell. Oh my God. He does so much physicality work in this movie. It’s crazy. I don’t think a lot of people know how difficult that is, the stuff that he’s doing right, and he does it so well. It’s so, uh, believable. I’m just so impressed with him.

Plus, he’s just got excellent comic timing. He’s got a great character face, like he does so much face work. That’s not easy either. Yeah, that’s a special talent. This is his favorite of the original trilogy, and I get why, because he really gets. To showcase his talent in this movie. 

Todd: It’s really all about him, isn’t it?

I mean, all the movies kind of are, but this one especially, he’s just front and center for almost all of it. And I think, you know, when you think about the process of making a movie, this is the thing that I, that kind of kills me, is that shot for shot gets set up. It’s not like you just run around with a camera for 10 minutes while this guy does this thing.

So not only the physicality, but you have to bring that energy. Into every shot after you’ve had a break. I couldn’t help but think as I was watching it this time because I’m so familiar with it. You know, I was, my mind was just wandering all sorts of places. I was thinking, God, he had to begin this shot.

Looking the way he does out of breath, the way he is with this same energy that he had just with the shot before, knowing that this is probably a totally different day. Right. You know, and it flows so well. Like this guy just gets punished and beaten up and paranoid and insane and it all happens within the course of a day or less, you know, in this movie.

And, uh, at night really, I guess. But the process of making this movie takes months, you know, or weeks. And, and he really brought the same energy to it the whole time. And boy does this guy get punished. 

Craig: Yeah. Well, and I, I also heard that I, I, because it was so physical, he had a physical trainer. Like on location, they were, oh, he was getting trained all the time.

Makes sense. You would have to, you would have to be in good shape to do the stuff that he does in this. You and I have talked about this briefly before. I think it was on a mini, so I think we, uh, we just kind of discussed the evil dead universe in general and, and we kind of breezed over each of the movies and I said that basically evil dead too.

Is a remake of the first one. And you got really mad and you’re like, no, it isn’t. That’s right. That’s right. It isn’t. Do you still stand by that or were you corrected? I, I stand corrected. I stand corrected, but I can see why people would think that because the stories are very similar and evil Dead too is my favorite of.

All of them, I think. But I think a large part of that is because I saw it first, and I had seen it many times before I saw the first one, and I think this one is better. I mean, it makes more, it has a bigger budget. They were able to do a lot more with it, so, so nostalgia probably plays a large part in.

Todd: Why I like this one so much, but to address that, I, I think what irritated me so much when you said that I wasn’t irritated at you, by the way, but you know, just in general, that’s not the first time I’ve heard it. A lot of people have said that to me and I’m like, look, they just needed to catch people up on the original story because it was kind of this.

Cult movie. And also they needed to simplify it, the plot a little bit. You know, the original story had all these people dead and buried in all these places, and it looks like for the sequel they wanted to go, they didn’t want that baggage of all that weighing them down. And so they just simplified the original kind of recon, I guess is what you say.

Yeah. To. Him and just his girlfriend in the cabin, which I think gives it more focus as well, because now it’s just his girlfriend kind of continuing to pop up and cause the trouble instead of, oh, he also had all these other friends and there was a certain element of destruction in the cabin that had already been there, and his friends were also kind of buried or dropped and left in other places.

And so, you know, this just like allowed them to go in a different direction with the story. By starting from a simpler base. It was interesting. As I read later, it seems like, uh, there was another reason for that as well, 

Craig: right? Just it was because of rights, right? Like I think that’s another reason why I was maybe initially a little bit confused and others may have been too because it feels like a remake in that it’s not footage from the first movie.

Right. It’s total reshoots. Uh, because I guess they had the right to the characters and things, but they didn’t have Right. To film from the original, so they had to reshoot everything. So it feels like a remake for the first seven minutes. It’s a great first seven minutes. I love it. Yeah, it’s a long flashback, 

Todd: I 

Craig: guess you could say.

Todd: It doesn’t, yeah. But the, it doesn’t call itself a flashback, so you’re right. It feels like a, the movie starting, 

Craig: but, but it then does continue. It eventually leads up to where the first. Movie ends, which is the evil presence, whatever it is, like, you know, smashing into ash or going into him or something, and that’s where it picks up.

But in, in between there, there’s also that great Linda footage. Like that’s some of, that’s one of my very favorite scenes is in the still, like the. The ketchup, like, 

Todd: no, you’re right. And, and I mean, it’s an interesting choice, right? Like you could have just made this like flashback, you know, you could have said, you could have shot it new, of course, new footage.

But it could have been, you know, yesterday I had the most terrible day, you know, my girlfriend and I went to the cabin and did this thing, and, you know, but he really chose to do it as, as the movie’s kind of starting and take time. With it. Like really take time with it. And like you said, it does lead to some real iconic moments.

I love that bit where he’s got her head in the vice and they’re going back and forth. 

Craig: I love, I love the, I assume stop motion Corpse Ballet. Oh my God. She’s. When she’s all decayed, 

Todd: she does a whole ballet dance routine. They spent some money on that. I mean, I, it’s certainly, it’s stop motion, but it, it’s hilarious.

Craig: Yeah. And the effects, the effects are, you know, all practical, everything. Gosh, it’s, it’s diff, it’s weird to look back at it. From so many decades away removed because I, I just remember thinking it was so cool back then. Like now, I think unless you were talking to a young person who was like a horror fanatic or a horror nerd, if you’re just talking about your regular young person today, you would show them this and they would think it was awful.

Like they would just think it was, you know what I, yeah, because you think so. I do just because it, it’s not smooth, shiny, and clean. It’s, it, it, it shows, 

Todd: shows its, its its age. It shows cracks a little bit. You Yeah, that’s, 

Craig: yeah. And, and when I was a kid and even as a young adult, I didn’t care. I un, I understand the context of the time and I like it and I appreciate the aesthetic and I miss it.

Sometimes I just don’t know if it would be appealing to modern audiences and I don’t know, you know, they’re still making them. I think there are two more. Coming out sometime. Yeah. And they’re taking a more modern approach to it. There are definitely like callbacks, evil Dead Rice had tons of callbacks to both Evil Dead and Evil Dead too.

And they were fun, but it’s taking a much darker, more modern approach. And this is, it’s definitely of its time. You know what I mean? Well, are you talking 

Todd: about the story? Are you talking about like the, the tone? No, I’m talking about the effects. I’m talking about Oh, okay. Just the effects. No, yeah, the effects.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. Like, it’s, it’s definitely, I mean, it’s really impressive actually the amount of money that probably went into this in order to, to get the effects that they did for the time. I think that the effects show their age the most when they’re putting together these mat scenes, you know, like that scene where he’s standing at the bridge and the bridge is broken.

Yeah. You know, you can tell. Clearly that’s a composite of like three or four different pieces. And it’s not, some of the matte painting is a little cartoony, you know, so like, things like that, things like the stop motion, where the stop motion is combined with the live action. It has that. Yeah. Look, uh, but you know, also, I, I would be curious to know how people watch that today because, uh, obviously I don’t have the, a proper perspective on it.

’cause I grew up with movies like this. Right. Like you said, we have more tolerance for it. Well, an appreciation for it. I like it. Oh yeah. Like just the artistry of it. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. But, but I can go back and watch like an old king. I, I still love the original King Kong. I think it’s That’s fair. It’s lovely, you know, and, and I think I’m able to put it in its place.

So I would hope that maybe not young kids who would just be more puzzled than anything, but, uh, yeah. Older adults, you know, who they might appreciate this a little bit more, and young kids probably shouldn’t be seeing this anyway. So the other thing that, you know, you kind of touched on. Is that you said that the more modern movies take a more modern and kind of more scary approach, and that’s fair.

You know, I think that back then Bruce Campbell and Sam Ramey were doing something kind of new. Not that horror comedies didn’t exist, but just this mad cap silliness combined with this extreme violence and gore. It tones down. I mean, I still think the movie’s scary, but it’s not. Scary. Scary. You know?

It’s not like, oh my God, what’s gonna happen to them? I hope they don’t die. It’s just like, God, these images are freaky. God, this is a crazy situation. You know? Yeah. Guy gets pulled into the cellar and then blood just like fountains of blood comes spraying out. You know, there’s, you can kind of put yourself in that role and be like, oh, that’s a horrible thing that happened to him.

But also like there’s so much silliness that’s come before that. It’s toned down a little bit, and I feel like this movie strikes a great. Balance at that. And we’ve seen a lot of movies since then that have taken that and run with it. You know, Shauna The Dead is the obvious example. Oh, there have been tons.

Yeah. Oh, oh yeah. I mean, I was, that’s just the first one on the top of my head, but there have been, there have been hundreds of them since, but I’m not sure if there were too many before this. There were a lot of spoofs. Yeah, right. Not too much that was going quite this direction, quite this extreme. I don’t know, am I wrong?

Craig: No, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really know the history, but I don’t, this felt different and fun. I mean, there were other gory splatter movies, but you’re right, it was a different balance. I think it leaned heavier into the silliness, and I like the silliness. Maybe I’ve just seen it. Maybe I’m too familiar with it to say that.

I think that it’s scary, but I just feel like my experience with it from beginning to now is it’s. It’s just so fun. Like, yeah, I’m not scared. Like this is fun. This is like the effects, like the monsters and, and the deadites. Like they are scary looking. They are very scary looking and I love them and I love the design and I love the, you know, prosthetics and all of that stuff.

I think it’s amazing and it, I guess. I don’t know. Well, I guess it’s scary to, to me it’s just more like, oh, look at 

Clip: that. Oh, look at that. Yeah. 

Todd: No, I agree. That’s fair. And it also, it just moves too fast to be scary. You know? There’s very little suspense in here. Right. I think this is why I, if you ask me, which is my favorite, I still tend to go back to the original, because the original had its moments of silliness, but it was definitely intended to be a little more scary.

Right, right. And I think I liked that, that it, it’s a little grittier, you know, because it was more of a low budget film and there’s just darkness and there’s moments of tension where you don’t know what’s going on. But it does establish the deadites as a bit playful, and that just gets amped up to the hundredth degree in this movie.

So it doesn’t, there’s a definite contrast in between the original and this one, even though they have that same through line of being. Quite silly at times. This one just embraces that side of it. And then, and then army of darkness, I feel is the ultimate culmination army of darkness is just kind of a wacky comedy, and I find it not scary at all.

So, yeah, you know, it’s almost like a trajectory that these three movies went in, which makes it more interesting than, like you said now they’re kind of, it’s like they crested the hill and now they’re kind of turning around and going back down into scary territory. 

Craig: It’s funny ’cause I do think that army of darkness is really funny too, but I think it’s scarier than this one.

Yeah. I think that that dead eye that he has to fight down. In that pit. Yeah. Is really scary. I think the, the big evil demony ash is hilarious, but kind of scary. And then his girlfriend, when she becomes a dead eye is scary. I think those things, I think those things are, I mean, they’re all hilarious and played for comedy too, but I actually think those are scarier than this.

But whatever. There’s great, great stuff in this. I don’t, I don’t really know how to co, you know, how do you talk about the plot? Because we’ve, we’ve built up to the point where the first movie ends where. We, at the end of the first movie, we don’t know what happens to him, but as we see now, he becomes possessed for a little bit, right?

Yep, yep. But then the sun rises and drives the evil away, which is interesting because I don’t think that’s ever the case again. I don’t think, I don’t think the sunlight ever drives the deadites away. In the rest of the franchise. But no, whatever it does here, 

Todd: that’s a powerful scene because you know where they ended it at the first one.

You know, you don’t really know what happens. It’s just kind of one of those endings where it just, whoa, probably everybody died. Yeah. But here they had to contend with that in order to make it a direct continuation of the original. And I guess that that made sense. I remember that scene talking about scary, that scene where he emerges immediately from the water with the dead eye face.

I think that’s scary. 

Craig: Yeah, it is. It is. You’re right. Great, great prosthetic mask and God, you know, the, the fogged out contact lenses and oh yeah. Uh, it looks fantastic. All, all of the practical effects and makeup effects look. They’re so good. Are there’s a reason. There are, there are many reasons that this movie is a classic oc cult classic.

It’s, it’s fantastic. 

Todd: Well, and you know, this isn’t the first time that Ash becomes a dead eye for a while. You know, it’s interesting that he kind of has to fight that too. And he just lucks out better than everybody else, for some reason or another, Uhhuh because later in the movie, he becomes a dead eye as well.

And, and does he in the army of darkness? I don’t, I don’t think so. I think he’s, I know an 

Craig: army of darkness. I think he like grows a second head or maybe splits into two different ashes, I think. I don’t remember. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that one too. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. But there’s, you know, I, I, I just, I took my notes on my phone just ’cause I didn’t wanna get my laptop out and so I just have this big long list and I’m like, house, face.

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: And.

Todd: Like, oh, God. So classic. 

Craig: Honestly, like every, yeah, every scene I’m like, oh yeah, this classic scene like, oh, oh, the, the bridge out scene that you already talked about and Uhhuh. Yeah. 

Todd: It’s all, it’s all so good. I see it gets, at that point, doesn’t he come back to the cabin and he’s just becomes tormented for a while?

I mean, this is the Bruce Campbell show for the next, what, half hour, I suppose? 20 minutes? Yeah. Where now we’ve gotten through the whole prequel type stuff and you know, he’s not a dead eye anymore. He comes back into the cabin, there’s the join us bit and then. It’s just a series of him just being tormented and slowly going crazy.

I mean, why would this guy go back to the cabin? I guess it’s the only place he can find shelter because it’s daytime. I guess it’s daytime now, but then it, it very quickly becomes night again after he left the bridge. But he looks at himself in the mirror and that’s a cool sequence where he leaps out at himself and the mirror ash strangles the real ash, and then we turn to him being strangled.

And then the camera pulls out. And he’s got his own hands around his neck. And then he’s kind of doing that classic gag with the mirror where he looks at the mirror and then looks away and then looks back at the mirror again. And, yeah. And then isn’t that just about the time when the house just starts laughing at him?

I mean, at this time, you know, he’s just going through a lot of physical comedy and crazy stuff happening where you’re not sure what’s gonna happen. 

Craig: There’s the whole thing with Linda. Linda comes back and does her dance, and he has to fight her for a while, and that. They end up in the work shed and there’s her head in the vice and all, most of this is happening to him, like you said, but we also get filled in with this other little side story periodically.

Apparently the people who lived in this cabin, it was an older scientist and his wife, or they don’t live there, but they’re, it’s their cabin. They found the necronomicon. And their daughter or something was with them, their adult daughter, and th they brought it to the cabin so he could study it or whatever.

But he read it aloud and he recorded it. That’s how. The evil came. We heard the recording in the first movie. I don’t remember if we got all that backstory, but anyway, the point is we see that the daughter and her boyfriend, fiance, I don’t know who cares, blonde guy, arrive and she’s got new pages and then the stuff happens with Linda and the Mirror and and yes, I thought that was a great part.

With the two of them fighting one another, the two hymns or whatever. And then we come back to the girl with the pages and her boyfriend and they get to the broken down bridge, I think, and they find tow truck driver and his girlfriend Bobby Jo. Yeah. There I was just waiting. I was just waiting to get to them because I remembered they were in it and I couldn’t wait to get to them.

And. They’re hilarious. 

Todd: Oh 

Craig: my God. I think his name is Randy is his name. I don’t remember. 

Todd: I never really quite remembered his name. Jake, the tow truck driver? Yeah. Yeah. I think his name was Jake. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Is it am am I wrong? Was he the bad guy and intruder. He was right. I don’t know. I think he was, I don’t 

Craig: know.

I’ve 

Todd: seen that movie exactly once when we did it like 10 years ago. Yeah. I think he’s the one who, I just love this store. Oh, that’s funny. Intruder, which was also written by, co-written by Scott Spiegel actually. 

Craig: Oh yeah, that’s right. I knew that. Yeah, so they’re trying to make their way to the cabin.

Meanwhile, Ash is beating himself up, how his hand got possessed because. He stuck it in a ghost? 

Todd: No, I think his hand got possessed because Linda bit him there. Right. Okay. Well yeah, but then there was that whole part ’cause he’s fighting the Linda Head for a while. 

Craig: Yeah. There was that whole part though, where there was like a rocking chair moving on its own and he reached up and he like put his hand in it and then he reacted like, oh, right.

I didn’t know if that had anything to do with it. 

Todd: I always imagined it was, uh, Linda’s ’cause He goes through that extended hilarious sequence where Linda’s just clamped onto his right hand and he, she won’t let go. And he’s like slamming her head against everything, going outside, slamming it against the, you know, the stuff before he ends up getting it in the vice.

Right. 

Craig: Yes. All, all very funny, all physical comedy as is when his hand does become possessed. This is his work here with the hand. Oh my God. Is insane. So good. So good to make it look believably as though the hand has a will of its own is amazing. And he does like, I totally believe that he’s fighting.

Yeah. This hand. 

Todd: Ugh. So good. It’s so good. And apparently he, this one scene in the kitchen where he’s smashing plates on his head and going all over the place, it’s kind of a one shot thing. He improvised all that and REI ended up using the first take, like that’s how good this guy is with his physicality.

I especially love that bit where he’s knocked out on the floor uhhuh, and the hand wakes up and turns over and the hand can see apparently, and the hand can see this knife. And what a great sequence of shots. And this is classic Ramey where he uses all these interesting camera angles to. Tell this, this sequence very well and interesting, and this hand manages to pull a knocked out unconscious ash across the floor almost to the knife.

Mm-hmm. The butcher knife, when he suddenly wakes up and stabs at himself, it’s like stabs his own hand into the, into the floor so that it stopped and he turns and he says to it.

Craig: Because the hands does like laugh and chirp and make noises. It’s, it’s really funny. Yeah. That shot of his fingers pulling his whole body. Uh, I love that. That’s insane. And then he, he has to, he saws off his hand with the chainsaw and puts it under a bucket and puts a stack of books, the top one being a farewell to arms on the top of it.

Hilarious. 

Todd: This is your new home. 

Craig: Hilarious. 

Todd: Sliding across the floor behind him. I mean, it’s a gag you can see coming from a mile away. It’s so hilarious. 

Craig: Oh, and they have so much fun. Yeah, they have so much fun with the whole hand bit for a, a while now, and then it, and then it keeps coming back later. 

Todd: The hand gets loose and goes nuts.

And now he’s got a shotgun and he’s like trying to bla it’s Looney Tunes, you know, the hand goes into like, yes. Mouse holes in the wall for God’s sake, right? And he’s trying to shoot it through the wall, and when he finally blasts, he blasts one hole and some blood starts dripping out of it. He thinks he’s got it, but it’s just becomes a fountain of blood coming out at him.

This is just like typical Bruce Campbell torture. Any excuse that they could get to blast blood in his face throughout all these movies they’ve used. I read, I Got The Evil Dead Companion. It’s a really great book if you’re into these movies. Mm-hmm. And I, I don’t have it on me, but I had read it cover to cover several times years ago, and I do remember them talking ’cause it’s a lot of interview back and forth between them and these guys who worked on these movies.

Sam Ramey, Bruce Campbell, Bob Tapert, because they grew up together. They’re really playful with each other and they kind of like torturing. Bruce Campbell in these movies and secretly off camera, they really enjoyed putting him in these moments and seeing, seeing him deal with all the literal stuff they were throwing at him.

And he almo, he felt like he was drowning in this sequence, though. I was gonna say 

Craig: it sounded awful. Yeah, it Oh yeah. Sounded like being waterboarded because they, you know, he was laying on the floor and they shot it at a 90 degree angle or whatever, so it appeared that he was standing up and they just dumped all this karo syrup.

Stuff on him. And God, it sounds that would be tor, it’d 

Todd: be tortured. It does sound horrible. I mean, it’s kind of the, it was the classic nightmare on Elm Street. 

Craig: Yeah, yeah. 

Todd: Move too as well. Right. But there wa a nightmare on Elm Street. There wasn’t a person’s face at the other end of that. Uh, right, right. 

Craig: It look, it looks great.

Yeah. Don’t get me me wrong at all. It looks, it looks amazing. It looks fantastic. And then that’s when the house started laughing at him. And I, oh. For some reason, for some reason, that image, the image of that thing on the wall, taxidermied deer head, laughing at him is seared in my mind. Oh yeah. And I find it both.

Horrifying and hilarious. Yeah, it’s comical. I mean, the laughing, it’s not like sinister laughing, it’s like cartoon cackling and everything. The books on the shelves, the dishes on the table are laughing at him and it is just this cacophony of laughter that’s, and he’s laughing with it, but it’s driving him crazy and he does a great job of playing crazy.

So you talked before about how his performance would’ve required so many shots because the angle. On that scene changes every second. Yeah. And it’s shot from a bazillion different wonky angles, and he’s looking directly up into camera, or it’s shooting from below or from the side. Like I can’t imagine the technicality behind putting something like that together at choreographing something like that.

Really cool. 

Todd: But at the end of all this, you know, he’s, he’s been shooting at the hand. We don’t really know what happened to the hand. Maybe he shot him, maybe he didn’t, but he swings around and he blasts at the door because at it’s at this point that the rest of the party come and show up and right. By this time, I think, God, the movie’s gotta be half over by now because so much has happened.

It’s just felt really long. Not in a bad way, but just like, you know, there’s just so much stuff. I think we’re only 40 minutes in. To this hour and a half long movie. We’re, we’re not even halfway done by the time these guys show up. So they show up at the door and it’s what this couple, she, her father was the one, right?

Did you already say that? Yeah. Her fa Yeah, her father was the one. So they show up to the party and. And they see him and at some point they just, he he shot at them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they subdue him. Yeah. They subdue him. Yeah. And, and dump him in the cellar. 

Craig: Yeah. They beat the crap out of him and, and dump him in the cellar.

This poor guy. Right. His 

Todd: rescuers come and Yeah, 

Clip: I know. 

Todd: And he gets beat up and thrown in the cellar, which it turns out is the last place you wanna be in this house, which is 

Craig: hilarious. This is so funny because they, she immediately like, turns on the tape recorder and it, the dad starts talking again and she’s like, listen, it’s the voice of my father.

And then it, it starts telling the story of how he read the thing and his wife changed and she tried to kill him. And he’s like, it’s 

Clip: now October 1st, 4:33 PM. Henrietta is dead. I could not bring myself to dismember, her co-ops, but I dragged her down the steps and.

I buried her in the cellar. 

Craig: Bruce Campbell, Bruce Campbell hearing all of this in the basement, and of course immediately Henrietta is the mom. And I like all of these movies. I like all of the monsters. Henrietta is my favorite. Oh God. Of all of the evil dead deadites. She’s so disgusting. Yeah, and she’s played by.

The other Ramey brother, Ted. Ted, 

Clip: mm-hmm. 

Craig: Yeah. In a huge. Like rubber prosthetic suit. That’s so gross. And apparently that also was a nightmare for him. Like I, I guess it was a big heat wave while they were shooting it. And I don’t know, people on set, whoever it was, had to like drain the sweat out of the suit between takes like into.

Styrofoam cups and stuff. 

Todd: Gross. So nasty. Well then they shot this movie on a sound, you know, the original was actually shot pretty much on location. Just two locations, the actual cabin and um, I think it was maybe even Sam Rainey’s basement or something for the other bit. But, uh, this one was shot. On, uh, in a junior high school gymnasium.

And they deliberately did that because Dino de Laurenti, who ended up financing the film, had offered a studio of his, but they didn’t wanna be too close to him. They were afraid that they would get studio interference. So they ended up way back over in North Carolina, I think, doing this. 

Craig: Yeah, I think in the same town where the best little house in Texas was filmed.

Todd: Oh, is that right? Something like that. 

Craig: Oh, maybe it wasn’t Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Maybe it was. No, it wasn’t. It was The Color Purple, which is another one of my favorite movies. Yeah. Oh yeah. And I guess one of the farmhouses that featured prominently in that movie was kind of their headquarters.

That was interesting. Yeah, 

Clip: for 

Todd: sure. I, I, I can just imagine, you know, how much easier it would be to shoot this movie when you’ve constructed a set for it. Right. You know, and you have all this. The, the original was a nightmare to shoot for everybody, and I think this, this shoot went a lot more smoothly just because of it, because of that alone.

But you’re still inside this gymnasium. You got this heat wave going on. Whereas I think they were dealing with freezing cold temperatures in the, in the original one. This one was quite the opposite with the heat 

Craig: and poor Ted Ramey in that big, horrible suit. And he’s great. He’s, he’s taunting and disgusting and threatening ’cause he’s.

She, Henrietta is huge and I don’t know, they get him out just in time. She’s reaching out from the cellar. It’s the, the, it’s a door in the floor cellar, like it lifts up and they can chain it, but she’s like reaching out and to get her to go back down there, I think somebody jumps on it and it kind of squashes her head and her eyeball pops out and goes into Bobby Joe’s mouth.

Bobby Joe is the truck 

Todd: driver’s girlfriend. Oh my God. Now, you know it’s funny. I expected that to have an effect on her. I thought, oh, she swallowed this thing. Now she’s gonna be the next person to turn me too. And it doesn’t at all. She just swallowed this thing’s eyeball. It’s gross. And this head of Henrietta’s by now has morphed into something else, right?

It’s, it’s big and it’s got these huge teeth eventually, like she’s got this extendable neck. Henrietta transforms quite a bit. Back and forth from this, this big rubber prosthetic suit. And it’s a huge combination throughout the movie of Stop motion and puppetry and Whew. She is a character and uh, she’s the most relentless one in this whole thing.

She just won’t die 

Craig: and she distracts them while. Blonde boyfriend guy gets possessed and then he starts, his face Makeup is great too. Oh yeah. 

Todd: The rows of teeth. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s so, it’s so good. And he like floats and talks and we get dead by Don and which is. A great tagline. 

Todd: Yep. And Henrietta, his tagline, I’ll swallow your soul.

I’ll swallow your soul. 

Craig: I love it. 

Todd: Every horror fan knows these 

Craig: Ash. I think Ax is the blonde guy dead I, and gets like fluorescent green blood sprayed all over him. Mm-hmm. And then there’s a scene that I had completely forgotten about and I thought it was such a cool scene where it’s just. Sharp, tight closeups on the character’s faces, and it keeps shooting from different angles, but it’s still on their faces and their heads are all very close together and the house starts messing with them.

With sound. Yeah. Like really loud sounds. And every time there’s a new sound, it’s coming from a different space. And we know that because all of their heads move. Quickly in perfect unison. 

Clip: Mm. Ah, 

Craig: I just thought that was such a cool scene to get the time. I, I would be so interested to know how they got the timing of that.

Like, were they really just reacting to sounds? Was it cor I I can only assume that they at least knew, you know, it’s gonna be. Left, right down, up, 

Todd: left, left. You know, like, yeah, well, they’re probably like off camera instruction. Shout, shouted out at them. 3, 2, 1, down, 3, 2, 1. Right. Maybe something like that. 

Craig: I was just really impressed by how in sync it was.

It felt like they were all genuinely reacting to something scary and crazy that was going on. 

Todd: That’s a good point because, you know, it really just emphasizes how Ramey had a vision for this. You cannot put together something like this, this madcap just by improvising everything and running around and trying out different things.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that, you know, you have, of course you have a ideas on set in the editing room. You find out this works, this doesn’t, oh we, there’s this happy accident that we can put these two shots together. Or, you know, something happened here we weren’t expecting, but we can kind of use that.

But ultimately. This script that Spiegel put together didn’t have this degree of detail in it. You know, this visual stuff, like they stand there and the house makes noises. You know, it was probably what’s in the script, right? But you’ve gotta flesh all that out in your head. You have to figure out how to shoot it.

And this is, this guy’s. Third movie at this point. Mm-hmm. You know, and he’s all very self-taught. Just growing up, making these super eights, I, I shouldn’t say, I don’t think he gets enough credit. I think Ramey gets all the credit for being this innovative filmmaker who very quickly figured out. A visual style that works for him.

And it’s evident in the first movie. I remember reading in that book that people were just shocked on set. Campbell was like, it was like a different person in front of me. All of a sudden. I was just shocked at all these ideas he was coming up with. Like, we’re gonna slide the camera along on the floor.

Clip: Mm-hmm. You know, 

Todd: we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that. He’s like, man, the creativity coming outta this dude that he grew up with, you know, was shocking even to him. So. All these little things, like you mentioned, they might not seem big, but they’re hard to pull off. You have to have a real vision and idea for it in order to make it happen.

Craig: Right. You one could argue that he kind of throws everything but the kitchen sink in the movie too. ’cause then there’s a scene where, I guess it’s the ghost of. The science 

Clip: dad. 

Craig: Yeah. Shows up and he looks like Pazuzu. Yes. From The Exorcist. He looks exactly like Pazuzu and he talks to her and I still don’t know if that was really supposed to be her dad.

Right. Or if it was just the house messing with them. But he’s like, 

Clip: save my soul. 

Todd: Like I think in retrospect. It is the house messing with them because ultimately I think the house wants them to read the passages from the book. Right. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. They think that they’re gonna save her father by reading the passages from the book, but actually ultimately that’s gonna be a bad thing for them to do.

It always is actually, you don’t read out loud from the necronomicon. That is the one thing that all of us should take away from all these movies. 

Craig: It’s a cautionary tale. Yeah, and it’s a hilarious through line because they should know after the first movie, never do it. And then Ash continues to do it throughout the whole rest of the of his story.

It’s pretty funny, 

Todd: I have to admit, seeing that floating ghost face of Pazuzu. The second thing I thought of was the evil. You remember that one? 

Craig: Uh, vaguely. 

Todd: Those people are in that big, that big mansion. And, uh, suddenly there’s these like classic ghostly characters walking around it. It’s a little 

Craig: vaguely.

She runs out well. Yeah. Uh, well she runs out. Yeah. Uh, uh, Bobby Jo, the hand reappears, you know, after that sound. I, I think it’s after that sound scene. They’re all just kind of standing there in shock or, or after the ghost scene, I guess. And she says, truck driver, you’re. Holding my hand too tight. And he’s like, I’m not holding your hand.

And she looks down and it’s the evil ash hand. Is it? 

Todd: Yeah, because it doesn’t look like his, it’s a little like the stump is a little longer. I thought either they, the prosthetics not the same, or did he chop off one of Henrietta’s hands at some point? Oh, has he yet? He does. Eventually. I mean, there was so much going on there.

I’m not quite sure, but the arm, it almost looks like a half an arm, more than a hand. I don’t know. Yeah, I think 

Craig: it was supposed to be his hand because Henrietta is still around. She’s still in the cell. She is. I don’t think she’s gotten chopped up yet. She does eventually. I think it’s his hand anyway, whatever.

It doesn’t matter. The lights go out for a second and she, Bobby Jo is so scared by this that she runs into the woods and I was nervous about this part. Right, ’cause of the original. Well, yeah, and because whenever I think of it in my head, it’s called the tree rape scene. Yeah, and the first thing that I noticed was that, wait a minute, she’s wearing pants and I don’t remember them like ripping her clothes off.

Maybe they do. I don’t know. I was just remembering the similar scene from the first one, which is much darker and I. Prefer this one. I, yeah. The, the one, the one in the original is a little much for me, 

Todd: it’s proba. I think everybody feels like that’s a bit of a problematic scene, uh, in, in an otherwise, in a series that doesn’t tend to go there, right?

Like we don’t, there’s generally no nudity in these movies. There’s not a lot of those trappings of horror that you expect with the nude, nude scenes and, uh, some, some serious brutality and sexual stuff getting thrown in. And so that tree, the tree thing from the original. Always felt, feels a little off.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s fine. I’m, I’m not offended by it or anything. It’s just, oh, yeah. I don’t care for it. 

Todd: Well, it just feels off. Yeah, 

Craig: yeah, yeah. The girl, I don’t know her name, the daughter reads from something, her dad’s notes or something, and reads that the first, there are two passages and the first passage makes a physical manifestation of the evil or whatever.

And Ash is like, well, that’s, let’s not do that then. But then the second one opens a portal that’ll. Take it away. I don’t know. Yeah, it’ll, it just opens a portal. I don’t know, something like that. So they’ve got these pages that they can read or whatever, but Randy is worried about Randy, I don’t know if that’s his name.

Truck driver is, the Jake truck driver is worried about Bobby Joe, and so he makes them go outside to look for her, and they really just basically. Get outside and he stands out there shouting her name and we see the, you know, evil point of view fast through the woods coming at them. And right before it gets them he knocks out ash.

’cause I, Ash is trying to get him to shut up or something and he pushes the woman to the ground and you think that the evil’s gonna hit him and something happens. ’cause that’s what it looks like’s gonna happen. But just as it should get to him, everything just goes quiet and he’s just standing there for a second until dead eye ash pops up behind him.

Yeah. Ugh. And then he chases them around the cabin for a while. 

Todd: I mean, there’s a lot that goes on. I mean, I think in the original, and there just don’t seem to be reasons why people get possessed anymore. Like what? What is the thing? Like I don’t know how the boyfriend suddenly got possessed except the dead ice just decided he was next.

Yeah. The same thing with evil ash. There’s really no inciting incident where you, that you can point to that’s like, okay, now Ash is gonna turn evil. He just does, unless I missed something. Did I? I don’t think so. 

Craig: Well, I don’t know. I’m trying to think about how they carry the mythology moving forward.

’cause I do. I don’t think like you have to die to become one of them or anything. 

Todd: No, no. Because even in the first one, that girl, you know, when they’re playing cards, when they’re flipping the cards, the one girl suddenly is possessed. I guess 

Craig: it’s just kind of, if they get a hold of you, I don’t know. Yeah, I guess.

I don’t know. There’s, yeah, like he’s, so, he’s chasing them around the cabin. She has a huge bone dagger from somewhere. I, I missed where that came from. Where did, from, did that come 

Todd: from? It was on the table maybe. I mean, it was a big pa part of the original, but, uh, this one is, it’s retooled in this one as well.

It looks more like a spine than a dagger. 

Craig: Yeah. And it just shows up and she accidentally stabs Randy through the chest with it, and then slams his body in the door. He’s still alive. After, I mean it, it goes, it’s poor guy, a good foot into his. Chest, but he’s okay. Wait, he can’t breathe, but he’s all right.

But she drags him into the house and Henrietta in a great jump scare, I thought, pops up her cellar door and grabs him and pulls him down into the cellar and the girl tries to grab his legs and pull him out. But blood just starts spraying out of the whole thing. 

Todd: It’s a great 

Craig: scene. 

Todd: It is a great scene.

Poor, I know you keep calling him Randy. Poor Jake. This guy, this guy really got a bum deal in this whole thing. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: But then I think Bruce shows back up again and he’s normal and I just love this 

Craig: bit. ’cause Well, the way he, I was just gonna say the way that he, so he attacks her, the evil ash comes in and attacks her and then this is, it’s corny, but I don’t care.

I, I, I, like I said, I like the silliness. He sees Linda’s necklace. That he had given her. Right. And it’s, it’s, it seems like it’s kind of implied. And this happens again, I think in army of darkness and later, sometimes something can inspire him, the good ash in him to like fight his way out. Right. And that kind of seems like that’s what happened here.

I think that there was a deleted scene where we saw more of that, like his face transformation going back, but it’s cut. Gone forever. So anyway, 

Todd: you’re right. He’s back. He’s good now. He’s good now, but he’s gotta convince her. And I don’t blame her. You know, she’s freaking out. And I just, I, I think there’s, this scene is so funny because he’s, he’s just yelling at her.

Clip: No, no. Wait,

listen to me. I’m all right. Now that thing is gone.

Damn it. I said I was alright. Are you listening to me? Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m all right. 

Todd: And he almost sounds crazy when he is yelling it. I, I don’t know if I would believe him either if I were her, but she does. It’s just she attacks him like two or three times though. It’s pretty funny. Yeah.

Wouldn’t you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. She’s scared. It’s very funny. He’s frustrated. It’s so funny how the dead eyes just turn people on each other and create these situations. I, I love it. I love it 

Craig: when he, yeah, when he finally does convince her, she says, we need the pages from the seller because. Randy threw him down there and uh, and so Ash goes out to the shed or whatever and clamps the chainsaw to his arm and arms himself with the big shotgun and yeah.

You know, close up on his face. Groovy. Oh, iconic. It’s great. It’s fantastic. And he goes down into the cellar and he fights Henrietta, and he gets the pages and then Henrietta gets out and she attacks her daughter and she turns into that weird. Snake bird thing. Yep, yep. And Ash cuts her up. And this is the part, like he chops up her, he chops her head off, but he also, I think, chops off her arms and legs, like limbs are flying.

Todd: It’s a huge mess. This whole place is a mess. By this time. Oh, and then, and then at the end, like he’s got henrietta’s head is still talking on the ground. I’ll swallow your soul, I’ll swallow your soul. And he puts his head on it, aims the gun, and it’s like, swallow this. I love it. It’s so great. So good.

It’s such a good movie. But at that point, this is where finally Ash has transformed into badass ash, 

Craig: right? 

Todd: As soon as he blasts her head, there’s just this scene that pulls back and it’s looking up at him and he’s got his no nonsense face and a hero pose, and you’re like, okay, this guy is new. Yeah, he’s in control now.

Or at least he thinks he is. 

Craig: Right. Well, he’s had a little bit of experience. Yeah, he’s, he’s good, um, at this, but at this point, a tree that has uprooted itself from the front yard now attacks the cabin. It’s 

Todd: so crazy. 

Craig: It’s crazy, but it looks really good. I mean, I, it really does. I love it. It looks good. Oh my God, the exterior shots look good.

Mm-hmm. I, I, I have no idea what’s going on there. What, what do you think that is? Models a stop motion? Probably. 

Todd: Oh, man. I think some of it’s models, maybe not stop motion because it’s a little too smooth, but there might be some mixed in there. But then when you get inside, you know, they’re literally these giant arms and limbs and things coming in.

It’s big practical stuff, including that giant face that ends up showing up, right? Yeah. And the 

Craig: whole, the whole set appears to be shaking and Yeah, so the, so the girl starts reading from the passage, but then she gets attacked by her mom or somebody, I don’t know, and she’s like, I only read the first passage.

So the, uh, big evil face. Comes through the front door and it’s huge. It’s enormous. And of course, it’s all practical and real. I mean, this thing was so big that they couldn’t even take it with them when they left, like,

man, and it looks, it looks great and it’s shot. Well, I, I think he does a really good job of shooting it so that you never. See too much of it all at the same time. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. It’s a little obscured sometimes by other things, but Yeah. Right. It, it, it holds up. I think. 

Craig: I think so too. This 

Todd: is one of those things that I think holds up.

Yeah. And the camera also, he’s, he’s doing that warped thing with the, with the lens. So the image itself is kind of compressing and expanding. Mm-hmm. A little bit at from shot to shot almost. It preparing us for this whole portal thing. 

Craig: Right. Oh, it’s so 

Todd: good 

Craig: because with her dying breath. She reads the second incantation or whatever it is, and the portal opens and it’s just a big vortex.

That sucks everything in, but for some reason this is, why do the deadites start chanting? We’ve won. We’ve won. Is it because the big evil is about to eat ash? Is that, I don’t know. I didn’t, I don’t remember that bit. 

Todd: They were chant, chanting that, 

Craig: yeah, anyway, whatever. But the portal opens and it sucks the evil thing out and ash is like, woo.

That was close. And, and then the front door gets sucked away and the portal’s still a sucking and it sucks him in there. It’s still a sucking. Yeah. 

Clip: Him and his car, 

Craig: uh, gets sucked in there and they land in what appears to be. Medieval times not, yeah, the restaurant, but the actual, and he’s surrounded by nights and at first they think he’s a dead eye and they’re gonna kill him.

But then a flying dead eye flies in and they all cower in fear and he gets up and blows his head off with his shotgun. And they’re all like our hero. You know, they all start cheering for him or whatever, and he just looks around at this, you know, desert Castle is like, 

Todd: no. Yeah. Our hero who’s here to vanquish us, vanquish the deadites and save our land.

Right, right, right. I’m like, no. I think this is Sam Ramey who says that, right. Who pops his, uh, his thing up and, and cheers Maybe. I don’t know. It is, yeah, it is him. It was cool because I think when they originally. The original sequel plan was to do Evil dead, the Evil Dead, and the, and the army of darkness.

And this was mostly gonna be the medieval thing, but yeah, they didn’t really have the budget for that. And so they had to shelve that and make this a transition movie to take us into that. And I think the success of this movie then made army of darkness more likely to happen, although it didn’t happen for a little while, 

Craig: for a while.

Todd: Because the careers, you know, got big, I think. Yeah. Mm-hmm. For the people involved. So yeah, I think that was a good choice though. I love this as a transition movie, and I think this movie is just wonderful. And like I said, it really sets up the badass ash because what we get in the third movie is a fully transformed cock.

Ash, and that would’ve been a jarring switch if it weren’t for what he goes through in this movie and the transformation that he, that he makes. That’s true. Yeah. So it, you know, it, it really made, I think, the third movie probably better than it would’ve been otherwise. Well, what, what more can you say?

There’s a lot more you could say about these movies, but, uh, you know, they’ve already been said. And I just love them. I, I love Evil Dead too. I can’t believe we still haven’t done the first one on this show, and, and we haven’t done Army of Darkness. We’ll eventually get to it. The series was great too. It wasn’t, I haven’t really seen it.

I, I saw one or two episodes and I thought, this is something I’m gonna want to, you know, sit down and binge and I never got around to it. 

Craig: It’s available again. It disappeared. You couldn’t stream it, you couldn’t buy it anywhere for a while, but I saw recently that it is available again somewhere. I’m sure you could find it if you wanted to, but other people out there, it is available somewhere for streaming, but no.

Yeah, I, I love this movie too. This one, especially this one is my favorite one. Nostalgia plays a big part, but even watching it again, it’s, I, I was still laughing out loud at gags and jokes that I’d seen a million times. I was still reveling in the. Fun 

Clip: of 

Craig: it. It’s just, to me, it’s just so much fun. And that of course.

I like the horror elements of it and, and that’s what brought me to the movie. But I think my favorite part of it is the humor, and specifically Bruce Campbell, but it takes a whole team to put something. Like this together. And this is a team of people who clearly respected one another, respected one another’s vision, you know, had a good time and played with one another and tried things.

And it’s just cool that they were friends and that Scott Spiegel was part of that. And that though. You know, like he, you said he did bit parts in movies all the time and he was in probably most, if not all, of Sam Rainey’s movies and worked with Ted Raey and all of the rest of them too, and, and remained friends with all of those guys.

And I remember when he passed. Seeing comments and things from, from these folks, uh, I I think that they had a genuine friendship and it’s what a gift to be able to do what you love and, and create with your friends and, and be successful and be able to watch your friends enjoy. Tremendous success. It’s really cool.

And he, he was part of something really special. 

Todd: Yeah, he really was. Thank you guys for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us online, chainsaw horror.com, or Google Two Guys and Chainsaw podcast, and you’ll find all of our socials out there. Drop us a note, let us know what your favorite movie in the Evil Dead series.

And if you’ve seen the TV show, you can also join our patron page at patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. And, uh, we have a lot of good conversations back there. We have a book club. We have access to our complete unedited episodes. We do minisodes. As Craig referenced earlier, only five bucks a month gets you access to all that’s.

Stuff, please consider joining. We, we love hearing from you. Whether you’re a patron or not. Send us your requests, please. Until next time. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.