Welcome back, goblins and ghouls, to the fourth annual installment of SpookyJawn! Each October, our love of horror fully rises from its slumber and takes over the MovieJawn website for all things spooky! This year, we are looking at ghosts, goblins, ghouls, goths, and grotesqueries, week by week they will march over the falling leaves to leave you with chills, frights, and spooky delights! Read all of the articles here!

by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

Few horror franchises actually have the same hit ratio as Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series. A short film, five feature films, a three season television series, and an off-Broadway musical are among the ways you can encounter Deadites and the Dark Ones after reading from the Necronomicon. Which is a very dumb thing to do—why did you do that?

However, I would argue (and I will, in this very piece) that part of the reason the series remains as good as it is relates to its adaptability and, as Bill Warren argues in his book The Evil Dead Companion (2000), Sam Raimi, himself. In fact, Evil Dead II (1987), specifically, cracked open the gates to the franchise by allowing comedy in—a factor that would only get more exaggerated in the Ash Williams story. And while it wasn’t really present in Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead (2013), it would come back, and be played with interestingly, in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise. The other thing that makes the franchise work is its commitment to horror, even when things get deeply goofy. Even though the television series, Ash vs Evil Dead (2015-2018), is the least successful in the franchise, the horror and gore is still very alive and well. It’s still a part of the puzzle that fits together!

The original incarnation of Evil Dead, a short film Sam Raimi titled Within the Woods (1978). It followed two couples who go to a cabin in the woods—nothing surprising there. The possession in this short film is based around the racist horror trope of the haunted Native American burial ground, which was largely popularized by Jan Anson’s novel The Amityville Horror in 1977, the year before Raimi made Woods. This storyline would be quickly abandoned for the feature The Evil Dead in 1981 and replaced with the Lovecraftian invention of the Necronomicon–the Book of the Dead. However, a major holdover from the original short film is that Bruce Campbell’s character (notably not named Ash) does get his hand cut off, as he does in subsequent films. Not to mention the cellar as a major location at the cabin and the presence, though rudimentary, of cinematography that would become a Sam Raimi special but also an intrinsic part of the visual language in all Evil Dead media.

After they finished the short film, Raimi convinced a local theater to program it with their screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which went shockingly well and piqued interest in it. We love achieving our goals! Raimi had intended for Woods to be a proof of concept, and it did allow him to properly kick start the franchise we know and love today. Armed with the knowledge that at least something was working, Raimi began to scrape together the money he’d end up making The Evil Dead with. The film’s budget is often reported at around $350,000, which is roughly $1.2 million today, calculating for inflation. Basically, no money. But it was certainly more than the $1,600 he made Within the Woods for, a little under $8,000 today.

The Evil Dead debuted in 1981 at the Redford Theatre in Detroit, where Campbell and Raimi saw movies as kids. They did a bunch of gimmicks for the premiere, including calling ambulances to sit outside, which built the atmosphere of the film before it even started. From there, he showed the movie off as much as he could, eventually getting it into the hands of horror producer Irvin Shapiro. Because of Shapiro’s connections with the Cannes Film Festival, The Evil Dead was allowed to play (outside of competition) at the 1982 event. It was there that famed horror writer Stephen King saw the film and praised it. King called it the “most ferociously original film of the year,” a quote which was used in the film’s marketing after, piquing the interest of distributors, including its eventual home of New Line Cinema. Popular, and still very cool, horror magazine Fangoria started writing pieces about the production of the film leading up to its eventual 1983 release in April (on my birthday, actually, which is how I know this was a franchise destined for me).

The Evil Dead follows a group of college students (two guys and three girls) who are going to a cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway. When they’re having dinner on the first night, the cellar door flies open. The guys go down to investigate, eventually finding what would be known as the Necronomicon. There’s also a tape recorder which contains the voice of archaeologist Raymond Knowby reading out incantations from the book, which (unknown to the leads) wakes up the demons who will terrorize them for the rest of their trip. These demons, known as Deadites later in the franchise, eventually possess and kill them all.

The first film really has everything you’d expect in an Evil Dead movie, except for the humor, and proves how well thought through the entire concept was. You’ve got the book, you’ve got someone reading the from the book (this alternates in the franchise between a recording and a main character but works no matter which way it’s done), you’ve got a possessed hand (usually this is Ash’s or the new lead’s), you’ve got the tree rape (a controversial element of the franchise that isn’t in every version but usually gets paid homage to), and you’ve got the chainsaw. Obviously, there are lots of other things, like Linda’s necklace and Ash’s Delta 88, but the building blocks that would be rearranged over and over, for the next almost half-century, are all clearly there.

Which is exactly what Raimi ended up using when he made Evil Dead II. Originally pitched to be much more like what Army of Darkness ended up being, the sequel to his successful, but not very seen (at least in America—it did quite well for itself in Italy, thank you) feature, would end up working as a retelling and retooling of the lore of both Ash Williams and of the power of the Deadites (even getting their name in the second film). This film starts with a very speedy retread of the original, sans the second couple and Ash’s sister. Then, the rest of the cast show up after Ash has done the depressing and dirty work of disposing of Linda, after she’s possessed by Deadites. This includes Annie (Sarah Berry), the daughter of the professor whose cabin it is, her research partner Ed (Richard Domeier), and the couple who helps them get to the cabin when the bridge is out, Jake and Bobby Joe (Dan Hicks and Kassie Wesley). However, they don’t get fates much better than the original college students, and Ash is left alone, again, to fend off the forces of evil before a portal opens and sends him back to the Middle Ages.

Originally, Raimi had intended to include all five of the original characters in the brief speed-run of the events of The Evil Dead at the start of Evil Dead II, but it was too overwhelming. As quoted in Warren’s book, “We’re just trying to get a shorthand look at the thing—we want to get the audience up to speed.” Raimi also notes that it’s things like this that cause the continuity in Evil Dead to be completely wacky, probably not something the audience, present or future, would find overly amusing in their attempt to make sense of it all. However, Warren actually thought it was the perfect thing for Raimi, “...it manages almost perversely to reflect Raimi’s style as a director in a way that a faithful, letter-perfect sequel wouldn’t have.” It’s a sentiment that I think is very true about Raimi’s work generally but also is part of what makes the Evil Dead franchise, even the material that he didn’t work closely with, feel like it all exists as one. The idea of the “re-quel” is fairly new, largely adopted in the late 2010s, but Raimi made one in 1987. It allowed a whole new world to open up for him. The ability to not be precious with continuity and to play wildly with tone, because Evil Dead II is where the franchise starts finding its humor, has allowed Evil Dead to prosper.

Army of Darkness, the third (and final) Raimi film in the franchise, is hardly a horror film. It is, of course, but it’s mostly a fantasy comedy about Ash being stuck in the Middle Ages with Deadites attacking the town he landed in, after getting pulled through the portal at the end of the second film. There are stop-motion skeletons—something I haven’t actually mentioned is how cool all the stop-motion across the original trilogy is—but there are actually very few Deadite creatures, at least in the traditional sense. The third film is really fun, but it feels vastly different. It also does a similar thing where it doesn’t quite care about any continuity. The end of Evil Dead II has a snippet of Ash in the past, blasting a Deadite and saving the people around him the second he falls from the sky. In Army of Darkness, though, Raimi reimagines Ash’s entrance to this medieval world. This was, as is the answer most of the time with the Evil Dead franchise, a rights issue. And a money issue.

For nearly a decade after the release of Army of Darkness, the franchise remained dormant. Then, in 2003 there was something new. With the blessing of Raimi and Campbell, a theater group in Canada began workshopping Evil Dead The Musical. It was a smash in Toronto and Montreal and made its off-Broadway debut in 2006, where it would be co-directed by Tony Award winner Hinton Battle (who readers otherwise might know as the demon Sweet in the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). George Reinblatt and Christopher Bond were the main creative forces behind the musical, and it ran off-Broadway from October of 2006 until February of 2007.

The musical’s plot is only of the first two movies, with the first act adapting The Evil Dead and the second act adapting Evil Dead II. There are references to S-Mart, like Ash vs Evil Dead would do later on but nothing directly tied to Army of Darkness otherwise. In a way, this makes the musical the ultimate showcase for the adaptability of the franchise. The show is as stuffed with comedy as Army of Darkness but is a real blood and gore fest on stage. It’s certainly doing the horror of the original films, but everyone’s singing and dancing to songs like, “Look Who's Evil Now,” “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” and “Do the Necronomicon.” The last of those is an ode to “The Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and even references it directly. It’s nothing if not very weird and super fun. I highly recommend the official cast recording.

Since the off-Broadway run of Evil Dead The Musical, the show (like the movies before it) has become a cult hit. It’s played in South Korea, Japan, Spain, back home in Canada, and has done two North American tours. And, most recently, it was revived in Australia this year! So, I'm hoping for another North American tour because I’d love to catch it. It’s giving Saw: The Musical but if it was actually authorized. I’m obsessed!

The next big Evil Dead development wasn’t until 2013, another decade after the musical. This, however, came in the form of a brand-new movie—just not directed by Raimi. Produced by the original crew, the script was written by Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, with some script doctoring to Americanize the language by Diablo Cody (weird but iconic) and directed by Álvarez. It’s a remake of the original film, where five friends go to a cabin in the woods and get attacked by Deadites. The twist of Evil Dead (2013) is what if Cheryl, Ash’s sister in the original film, was actually the lead. The relationships in the film are the same as The Evil Dead—two couples and the sister of one of the guys. Jane Levy’s Mia even gets possessed first, like Cheryl does. But Álvarez and Sayagues add to the Necronomicon a way to unpossess her… and it works. So, it’s Mia who gets to survive the absolute bloodbath at the end of the film and she does it with a missing hand and some chainsaw action. Classic! 

When the Raimi brothers were trying to come up with a concept for the fourth film in the Evil Dead franchise, they weren’t sure how to get funding for it and eventually decided to turn it into a pilot script for a television show. The success of Evil Dead (2013) and the continued love of the Raimi movies certainly helped it along and in 2015, Ash vs Evil Dead premiered on Starz. There’s a lot of great references, including video and audio, tying the show directly to the first two movies. There’s a lot of blood and gore, some of which is still done practically and looks great, and the show is largely a horror comedy. I would say, specifically, that it’s got Army of Darkness humor, while maintaining the horror of Evil Dead II… sometimes. Which is kind of the biggest problem with Ash vs Evil Dead. This is, in my opinion, the one general miss of the franchise. Which isn’t to say that the show doesn’t have its moments, but, by the end of the three-season run, it feels much more like a show on The CW than something out of the Evil Dead franchise. Even with Campbell there for the ride.

However, to circle back to the rights issues that seemed to always plague Evil Dead, the television series only used footage and audio (which it does throughout the seasons) from the first two films. Army of Darkness was always excluded, with the notable exceptions of S-Mart (which first appears in the third film) and a few references of dialogue from that film—because, if you haven’t seen the original films in a while, most of the truly quotable stuff comes from Army of Darkness. When Campbell was interviewed by JoBlo for season two, he spoke about them not including Army of Darkness directly: “You’ve got to be careful referencing certain movies, because then you have to make deals with certain partners that might own those certain movies.” The industry is a messy business, after all. So, I think this makes sense and in terms of what they do with the plot of the show, I don’t think you really need to reference story points from the third film—especially since Ash does go back in time at the end of Evil Dead II and you can just reference that!

Ash vs Evil Dead was canceled after its third season in 2018. However, in 2022, Campbell confirmed that an animated continuation was in active development and that he’d “do Ash's voice all day long.” Between the ending of the show and the news of the animated version, the most recent Evil Dead film began shooting in mid-2021. It was originally announced as a sequel to the Álvarez film but, in a fashion befitting the story of Necronomicon, it simply wasn’t. Instead, Lee Cronin wrote and directed the 2023 film Evil Dead Rise, which was the first film to take place outside of the woods (other than Army of Darkness, technically) and was set in an apartment building in Los Angeles.

It was revealed that Cronin was picked specifically by Raimi to write and direct after they’d worked together on the (cursed) Quibi anthology series 50 States of Fright. The film does still have woods, including perhaps one of the best title cards in recent memory, and it does reference three copies of the Necronomicon, an idea that was introduced in Army of Darkness. Plus, the phonograph that Danny (Morgan Davies) plays, unleashing the Deadites, includes the voice of Campbell as a time traveling Ash. How does that fit into the timeline? Who cares! It’s Evil Dead, it doesn’t really matter.

And ultimately, that’s kind of the great joy of Evil Dead. If you’re into horror (specifically possession and demons), then there’s something for you in this franchise. You have very serious and more classic horror movies (The Evil Dead & Evil Dead (2013)), you have horror that has a bit of comedy (Evil Dead II & Evil Dead Rise), and you have fantasy comedy with a touch of horror (Army of Darkness). Not to mention you have options for an equal amount of horror and comedy in Ash vs Evil Dead and Evil Dead The Musical.

If this could even possibly be your jam, then there’s something for you to make a sandwich out of—on top of the fact that you simply don’t need to watch any other movie than the one that interests you. There are some callbacks, but largely the Evil Dead franchise is so adaptable because it can be anything. Like, at this point it doesn’t even need Ash Williams to feel authentically within the franchise. Obviously, I love him, but the two newest films prove that his presence doesn’t make or break the idea. It used to be that all you needed was Ash, the chainsaw, his shotgun, and the Book of the Dead. Now? You kind of just need the Necronomicon. Oh, and lots and lots of blood.

Evil never really dies, it's just waiting to be summoned again.