Box Art Review #2 - Evil Dead 2

Box Art Review # 2

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Directed by Sam Raimi

Starring Bruce Campbell

The Movie

As classic as Evil Dead is, Evil Dead 2 is twice as classic. Everything great about the first film is twice as great here; there’s more gore, more comedy, and more Bruce Campbell. The one iconic moment from the first film that gets the shaft here is the tree rape scene, which is less of a tree rape and more of a tree molestation in this one.

There’s a lot of confusion over whether Evil Dead 2 is a sequel or a remake. According to the DVD and Blu-ray, the producers of Evil Dead 2 were unable to secure the rights to Evil Dead 1 (their own fucking movie) and so were unable to show a (not quite necessary) recap of the previous film. Instead, they decided to re-film those parts, this time with less stupid people fucking around in the cabin, and then add on the sequel stuff. What we ended up with is a movie that not only stands on its own, but surpasses the original.

The story is basically a more fleshed out version of the original film. This time, Ash and his girlfriend are the sole couple en route to the cabin in the woods. When they get there, it doesn’t take long for shit to hit the fan. With his girlfriend dead and his hand chainsawed off, Ash is none too pleased when two girls and a redneck show up and make shit worse. One of the girls proves to be semi-useful when she helps out with the reverse demon summoning, but ultimately Ash turns out to be the film’s only survivor just before he gets transported to Medieval times to set up the third movie in the trilogy.

The Cover

Everything about Evil Dead 2 screams iconic. This cover image is one of the best, most evocative covers/posters for any horror film to date. A pre-photoshop skull with eyeballs and visible eyelashes on the right stares down at us as the cheesy 80s tagline reads, “2 TERRIFYING, 2 FRIGHTENING, 2 MUCH!” It’s so fucking great man, 2 MUCH indeed. That font totally rules too, it’s sort of a hybrid of splattered blood dripping and crude incisions. Last, but not least, it must be said that DEAD BY DAWN is probably the greatest title known to man, and it’s a shame it doesn’t always follow the words Evil Dead 2.

The back is host to three quotes that provide apt and witty descriptions of the film, but aren’t necessarily indicative of a glowing review. Take, for instance, “It’s the sort of film that fans of ‘Freddy,’ and ‘Texas Chainsaw’ will flock to.” While this is an absolutely true statement, it’s not necessarily endorsing the movie. I mean, at the time of its release, movies like Evil Dead 2 were considered filth, the kind of garbage that was corrupting the minds of children along with Dungeons and Dragons and Heavy Metal records. Clearly the distributors cherrypicked that review for a line that would sell the movie regardless of the overall content of the review itself.

Movie: 5/5

Cover: 5/5

Evil Dead 2 (25th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray]

Stephen King’s Gramma becomes Peter Cornwall’s Mercy

I wasn’t aware they were making a feature film version of Stephen King’s awesome short story Gramma until just now, but according to Lilja’s Library Universal is producing and it’s called Mercy.

Stars include Mark Duplass, Dylan McDermott, Frances O’Connor, Chandler Riggs, Joel Courtney, Shirley Knight and Chris Browning. Peter Cornwall is directing and while A Haunting In Connecticut wasn’t groundbreaking or anything, I was surprised by how much I liked it. I certainly think Cornwall has an eye for creepy sets and knows how to build a tense atmosphere so I’m absolutely looking forward to this.

The story, if you don’t know, is about a boy who is left home alone with his terminally ill grandmother. As the night wares on he begins to suspect that she might be more malevolent than the average grandma.

If you wanna see this right now, you’re in luck. The cruelly under-appreciated 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone aired an excellent adaptation of the story already.

Evil Dead gets cut from NC-17 to R

So all the big movie news sites are reporting today that Fede Alverez’s upcoming Evil Dead remake was initially slapped with an NC-17 rating by the MPAA before it was cut down to achieve an R rating.
Here’s the thing: Why does anyone give a fuck what the MPAA rates a movie? If you’ve got kids or delicate sensibilities, sure, but if you’re an adult you should know whether or not your kids are old enough to see a movie as well as whether or not a movie called Evil Dead is palatable for you in particular.
What I wanna know is, why can’t they just do late night screenings without a rating? These days you see the words “Unrated” or “Unrated Director’s Cut” or even old-timey schlock like “The Version They Wouldn’t Let You See in Theaters.” Presumably this is a winning strategy, because it persists even now. A lot of people at this point are completely aware that the movie they’re seeing at the theater has had scenes cut out, usually because the trailer advertised stuff that didn’t make it. So people are aware that if they like a movie in theaters, the DVD/Blu Ray will most likely have a bunch of stuff that got cut out in the special features, or even better, assembled back into the film via an extended cut.
So why not use the same strategy to sell tickets? The movie industry loves to bitch about how people aren’t paying to see movies in theaters anymore, and yet they push 3D movies on the public and wonder why people wait for the home video release. If you can have multiple 3D and 2D showings scheduled in the same day, why not rated/unrated showings too? Another big trend these days is Midnight screenings. There you go man, show unrated movies at midnight, even just once a week. You can’t tell me that people wouldn’t specifically wait til late at night to see a movie with other adults without anything left on the cutting room floor.

Box Art Review #1 - The Evil Dead

Box Art Review #1

The Evil Dead (1981)

Directed by Sam Raimi

Starring Bruce Campbell

The Movie

A lot of people seem to forget that the first Evil Dead movie even exists. Most nerds, like the kind you’d find at Comic-Con or the kind who won’t stop pestering you to watch Doctor Who, tend to claim that Army of Darkness is the superior film in the trilogy. Most horror fans tend to latch onto Evil Dead 2 (my personal fav) because of the gore effects, the chainsaw arm, and the slapstick comedy. But poor Evil Dead part the first can’t get no respect. Evil Dead is totally worth your time if you skipped over it bro, it’s got some great special effects, though not quite as many as Evil Dead 2, and some fantastic scenery porn for those of you who can’t get enough of the wilderness, and most of all it maintains a genuinely eerie atmosphere that, honestly, rivals the feel of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

 Oh yeah, and a girl totally gets raped by a tree; like, you’d think that would be enough to make Evil Dead more better than the sequels, but Evil Dead 2 is just so great man.

The Cover

So you got Ash front and center covered in hard to distinguish blood and wielding a chainsaw in a way that not only looks nonthreatening but appears as if it poses more danger to the wielder than the spindly skeleton fingers gripping vaguely in his direction. This image is mostly pretty rad, but that blood man, that needs to stand out a bit more, as is this looks like a distressed t-shirt; like something a fourteen year old would buy off the rack at Target, or JC Penny’s if his parents have a bit more money than mine did. Also, the girl behind Ash is clearly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. It’s been a while, but the only thing I remember about Ash’s girlfriend is that he gave her that really shitty looking necklace and she fucking loved it. Also, is that even Ash’s girlfriend behind him in this picture? Once again, I can’t tell because of the poor image quality on the cover; it’s almost like these dudes had no idea they had a classic on their hands when designing this cover.

If I remember correctly, there’s a part in Bruce Campbell’s excellent autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, where he talks about the photo-shoot for this image, and I’m pretty sure there’s like multiple takes and alternate angles up in that piece.

Checkout Uncle Steve up top handing out a marketable one-liner like a true horror bro. I always find it funny that they have to explain what he is the author of, as if the words Stephen King aren’t a recognizable brand in their own right, and he was more relevant as a pop culture icon at the time of this movie’s release anyway.

One last thing, it’s worth noting that the scene depicted on the cover doesn’t actually happen verbatim in the movie.

Movie: 5/5

Cover: 3/5

The Evil Dead [Blu-ray]