Thursday, May 04, 2006

Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

Long lay-off. I’ve been extremely busier than usual and just haven’t had the time to write anything about anything for the past couple of weeks. That’s going to change for the next month at the very least, as I plan on reviewing or discussing every single film I see (like I used to do in Kinetoscope if you remember those days). Might be long, might be short, but all will be covered.

We screened a pristine print of Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn a few nights ago at the Circle as apart of the Midnight series. I hadn’t seen it in so long, at least a decade. I was completely blown away by how fun this movie is. It’s not really that gory and violent, it’s just an explosion of kinetic energy and over the top comedy from director Sam Raimi.

It was the comedy that surprised me the most. I remember it being funny but I didn’t remember all the elements of physical comedy that Raimi employs throughout the film. And one of my long-time favorites, Bruce Campbell gets to let loose some killer lines (the “Groovy” in the woodshed being the most enjoyable) and great “b-film” acting.

Plus, I have to say seeing this at a nearly packed theatre full of Deadites cheering, laughing and hollering out encouragement to Ash to kill is the absolute perfect environment to watch Evil Dead 2. It’s one of those films made for midnight. Great, great fun.

2 comments:

Joshua Blevins Peck said...

That is a great month of Midnight movie watching. We'll screen ARMY OF DARKNESS in 6 or 7 months and I'm already excited to see it.

I love DEAD-ALIVE! I have very fond memories of watching a chunk of it once with my 70 something year old grandma and her laughing at the sheer over the top blood spewing sight of it. For sheer levels of blood on display, DEAD-ALIVE is really hard to top.

Joshua Blevins Peck said...

yeah--one of the all-time horror moments is when that lawn mower gets into the zombie killing action.

am i the only one who really misses the b-film peter jackson v. the blockbuster peter jackson?