Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

Groovy...

Wow. Talk about a major difference in tone! The first Evil Dead was a straight up B horror flick (with a tree raping scene). Evil Dead II, however, is such an odd blend of horror and humor that there's literally no movie it can be compared to. Evil Dead is essentially its own genre.

I will say that The Three Stooges inspired most of this movie's humor, BUT...(wait for it)...the comedic scenes were my LEAST favorite parts of the movie. In fact, I found the first forty minutes of the film difficult to watch. We get a fast-forward retelling of the original movie in the first five minutes and then the next half hour is Ash's one man show (Ash trying to escape, Ash fighting a head, Ash fighting a headless body, Ash fighting his own hand, etc.)

The major gripe I have with the first act of the film is that it has absolutely NO direction. A story is almost non-existent until we see Annie and her brother traveling to the cabin. Ash doesn't seem to have any plan for escaping the cabin or surviving the Deadite invasion. In fact, the FIRST time the movie feels like it has any objective is when Ash and Annie need to descend into the cellar to retrieve the pages from the Book of the Dead and that's 20 minutes before the end of the movie.

Of course, this flick is a classic for a reason. The character of Ash has evolved, ladies and gentleman. We no longer have the sopping wet pussy from the first film. No, sir, Ash is a hardcore badass by the time the credits roll at the end of the second movie and yes, I will admit that when Ash attached that chainsaw to his hand and sawed off the barrel of that shotgun, I did sprout a groovy boner right there on the spot. The camera work is still mind-blowing, especially the scene where the Evil chases Ash through the cabin...another boner-inducing moment. And the gore, yes, the gore is absolutely insane. When Jake gets sucked down into the fruit cellar and a torrential spray of blood erupts from the cellar door like he's being shoved into a giant paper shredder, that was an EPIC WIN for horror gore-fans everywhere.

And the ending left me thirsty for Army of Darkness and the conclusion of the series. Hail to the king, baby!

Why It's Awesome: If you tell me to picture the most hardcore badass I could possibly imagine, it's a man with a chainsaw for a hand and armed with a sawed-off shotgun and that's exactly what we get in this movie.

Best Quote: Although I love "Groovy," I'm going to have to go with...

Henrietta: Someone's in my fruit cellar! Someone with a fresh sooooooul!