Evil Dead II (also known in publicity materials as Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn)[6] is a 1987 American comedy horror film directed by Sam Raimi, who co-wrote it with Scott Spiegel. The second installment in the Evil Dead film series, it is considered both a remake and sequel (or "re-quel")[7] to The Evil Dead (1981).[8][9][10] It stars Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams, who vacations with his girlfriend to a remote cabin in the woods. He discovers an audio tape of recitations from a book of ancient texts, and when the recording is played, it unleashes a number of demons which possess and torment him.
After the critical and commercial failure of Crimewave (1985), Raimi, producer Robert Tapert, and Campbell began work on a sequel to The Evil Dead at the insistence of their publicist Irvin Shapiro. Having endorsed the original film, author Stephen King brought the project to the attention of producer Dino De Laurentiis, with whom he had been making his directorial debut Maximum Overdrive (1986). De Laurentiis agreed to provide financial backing, and assigned the filmmakers a considerably larger budget than they had worked with on the original film. Although Raimi had devised a premise set in the Middle Ages and involving time travel, De Laurentiis requested that the film be similar to its predecessor.
Evil Dead II was shot in Wadesboro, North Carolina and Detroit, Michigan in 1986, and featured extensive stop-motion animation and prosthetic makeup effects created by a team of artists that included Mark Shostrom, Greg Nicotero, Robert Kurtzman and Tom Sullivan, the latter of whom returned from the original film. The finished film was released in the United States on March 13, 1987; due to its high level of violence, it was released through a pseudonymous distributor to curb an anticipated X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Much like The Evil Dead, it was widely acclaimed by critics, who praised its humor, Raimi's direction, and Campbell's performance; many have considered it superior to its predecessor and similarly as one of the greatest horror films ever made. Despite being given a somewhat limited release, it was a minor box office success, grossing just under $6 million.
Ash Williams and his girlfriend, Linda, take a romantic vacation to a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods. While in the cabin, Ash plays a tape of archaeologist Raymond Knowby, the cabin's previous inhabitant, reciting passages from the "Book of the Dead", Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, which he has discovered during an archaeological dig. The recorded incantation unleashes an evil force (also known as the Kandarian Demon) that kills and later possesses Linda, turning her into a "deadite". Ash is then forced to decapitate her with a shovel and bury her in a shallow grave near the cabin. At dawn, the evil force throws Ash through the woods. He briefly becomes possessed by the demon, but when day breaks, he is inexplicably returned to normal.
He attempts to flee the area but finds that the bridge to the cabin has been destroyed. The spirit chases him back to the cabin, where Linda's revived head attacks him and bites his hand. He runs to the shed, where her headless body attacks him with a chainsaw, but he overpowers and slashes the deadite Linda to death. His right hand becomes possessed and tries to kill him, and he severs it with the chainsaw before attempting to shoot it with a shotgun, but the hand mocks him and ultimately escapes. Meanwhile, Knowby's daughter Annie, and her research partner, Ed Getley, return from the dig with the missing pages of the Necronomicon, only to find the destroyed bridge. They enlist repairman Jake and his girlfriend Bobby Joe to show them another route to the cabin, where they find an embattled Ash covered in blood. Thinking that he murdered Annie's parents, Annie and the others lock him in the cellar.
The four new arrivals listen to the rest of Knowby's recording, detailing how his wife Henrietta was possessed by the Kandarian Demon, and that he killed her and buried her in the cellar. Henrietta, now a deadite, possesses Ed; Ash dismembers him with an axe. Bobby Joe tries to escape, but demonically possessed trees attack and drag her to her death. Annie translates two of the Necronomicon's pages before Jake turns on them and throws the pages into the cellar, forcing them at gunpoint to find Bobby Joe. Ash becomes possessed once again and attacks Jake. Annie retreats to the cabin and accidentally stabs Jake (mistaking him for the possessed Ash) before Henrietta kills him. Deadite Ash tries to kill Annie, but returns to his normal self upon seeing Linda's necklace.
With Annie's help, Ash modifies the chainsaw, attaches it to the stump of his right arm, and cuts the shotgun's barrel. After finding the missing pages of the Necronomicon in the cellar, Ash kills Henrietta. The trees outside begin to destroy the cabin. Annie reveals that she has only read the first half of the incantation and attempts to finish the second half. As she reads it, Ash's severed hand uses a Kandarian dagger to stab her in the back. She manages to complete the incantation before succumbing to her wound. The incantation opens up a whirling temporal vortex which not only draws in the demon, but also Ash and his Oldsmobile Delta 88.
Ash and his Oldsmobile land in the Middle Ages. A group of knights confront him and initially mistake him for a deadite, but are quickly distracted when a real harpy-like deadite appears. Ash blasts it with his shotgun and they hail him as a hero who has come to save them, causing him to break down and scream in anguish.
The concept of a sequel to The Evil Dead was discussed during location shooting on the first film. Irvin Shapiro, the film's publicist, pushed writer/director Sam Raimi to devise a premise for such a film. Working with screenwriter Sheldon Lettich, Raimi settled on a story in which Ash was sucked through a time portal to the Middle Ages, where he would encounter more deadites. Shapiro was enticed by the concept, and took out advertisements in trade magazines to promote the project, then titled Evil Dead II: Evil Dead and the Army of Darkness, in May 1984. After Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox passed on it, the sequel was shelved in favor of Raimi's next film, Crimewave (1985), a comedy/crime film co-written with Joel and Ethan Coen.[12]
While Raimi and Campbell have stated that Evil Dead II was intended as a direct sequel, there are differences between the first installment and the recap at the beginning of the second: for example, the Necronomicon is destroyed in a fire by Ash during the conclusion of The Evil Dead, but remains intact in Evil Dead II. The corpses of Ash's friends from the first are absent, and are never mentioned. The cabin itself remains perfectly intact until the events of this film, despite much of it having been destroyed in the original film.
Mark Shostrom served as the film's makeup effects supervisor, and delegated work to Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger of KNB EFX Group.[14] The shot of undead Henrietta's flying eyeball was accomplished using a ping pong ball provided and painted by KNB EFX.[15] Effects artist Verne Hyde, who joined the North Carolina unit in 1986 after filming had already begun, experimented with various rigs in order to achieve the effect Raimi desired.[15] It was ultimately achieved by mounting the eyeball on a small, spinning motor, attached to a wand bolted directly onto the camera.[15]
For Ash's chainsaw hand, effects artist Verne Hyde modified a real chainsaw, replacing its gasoline engine with a small, 12-volt electric motor, leaving space for Campbell to insert his hand into the body of the saw.[15] The teeth of the saw were filed down for safety purposes, and tobacco smoke was pumped through a plastic tube that ran up Campbell's leg to simulate chainsaw smoke.[15]
The crew sneaked various in-jokes into the film itself, such as the clawed glove of Freddy Krueger (the primary antagonist of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street series of slasher films) which hangs in the cabin's basement and tool shed. This was, at least partially, a reference to a scene in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, where the character Nancy Thompson (portrayed by Heather Langenkamp) dozes off watching the original Evil Dead on a television set in her room. In turn, that scene was a reference to the torn The Hills Have Eyes poster seen in the original Evil Dead film, which was itself a reference to a torn Jaws poster in The Hills Have Eyes.[citation needed] The real life clawed glove appearing in Evil Dead II has been attributed to Shostrom, who was also working on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at around the same time as Evil Dead II, suggesting he borrowed it from the Dream Warriors set for a day.[16] The rat seen in the cellar was nicknamed "Seor Cojones" by the crew ("cojones" is Spanish slang for "testicles").[citation needed]
The score was composed by Joseph LoDuca, who also composed the other two scores in the Evil Dead trilogy. In 2017, Waxwork Records released the soundtrack on vinyl for the film's 30th anniversary.[18]
Like the original film, Evil Dead II had censorship difficulties due to its high level of violence. Because DEG was a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Raimi was contractually obliged to shoot the film with the intention of it earning an R rating. Upon reviewing the completed film, DEG's executives felt that Evil Dead II would almost certainly receive an X rating, which would limit its commercial prospects.[12] Lawrence Gleason, the company's president of marketing and distribution, felt that if it were to be cut for an R, the film "would have been about 62 minutes long" and that both Raimi's vision and the audience's enjoyment would have been sabotaged as a result.[19]
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