Horror Special: Joe Garden on Evil Dead II

We ran into each other at the cafe nearby, and I know so funny. I ordered a sandwich. I turned around and you were just lurking there like a slash. Of all the places, I guess it was the closest sandwich place to the New York Studio, which is where we are. Yeah, there's a there's a Starbucks downstairs, but you know, why why go for Starbucks when you can support a little independent, a little big independent bakery. That's right, the Grand Daisy Bakery had a delicious sandwich, a delicious

a pen or chokola. Uh that's a chocolate croissant for those of you that don't speak French, so I know what you're how you're doing, because we caught up and talked a little bit of slasher movie stuff in the in the bakery. Yeah, and I told you have been kind of catching up on some these things I've never seen before, which is super fun. It's always it's like,

it's nice to go and it's still amazing. What how many horror movies there are out there that to catch up on, Like, yeah, you hadn't seen The Burning and I was, I hadn't seen The Burning. Um And this is the first year I've seen Halloween three season of The Witch, which is the one without I've heard that's

really good. It is bad and good. It is like it is like it's it's well, it's interesting because like the there's a there's a romance between a forty eight year old and a twenty two year old that's really kind of gross. So it's like every other movie. Yeah, but the two year old in this case happened to be the inspiration for Manhattan. The real the actress dated what A Allen when she was seventeen. And I know

Manhattan was your favorite movie at one point. It was for a while and now a little bit and it's even a little bit more problematic now that you know that. And he he maintains, Oh, we never had a relation, and she was like, yeah, we totally had a relation. Um. Yeah, so she the real person was the actor in Halloween three. Yeah,

Season of the Witch, Season of the Witch. And it's actually funny because you're like, you know, you watch season Season of the Witch and you're laughing and you're just like kind of rolling your eyes, and but then at like the last like twenty minutes, it just really starts to get uh, it really starts to get to you, and you're just like it's really creepy and effective, and I you know, I think it would be that would be a key That would be a great movie to remake,

where you could just like iron out, smooth out the rough edges and like make it, you know, put better actors in there. And it's a good concept, right, It's a really good concept. It's a fun, you know, fun video drone me almost concept. Um. I look forward to this becoming a regular thing, having you on and doing horror movies. I am happy to do so, and we can do whatever. We don't have to do horror, but it's just you can turn me onto so many new things I am all about. Well, we were, we were

talking about Texas chains on Maska cartoon. Now that you've seen Texas Chainsaw Maska for the first time and had the had the crab scared out of you, now you can see Texas chains on Massacre too and have the crass the crab scared out of you and laugh as well, because it's really right. It is bonkers and it's uh, you know, it's Dennis Hopper versus leather Face and a chainsaw battle. That's all you need to say. And it's

like Chef's Kiss beautiful. So is I don't want to spoil it for myself, but is too because at the end of one we see leather Face just sort of I mean, I guess he cuts his leg, but he's just sort of angrily doing his little chimmy shake the chainsaw and that's the last we see of them. Yeah, So, does to pick up right after one or is it a totally new thing? It picks up ways after one,

and it's just like a little bit more. You know, that was just a very contained that was very contained in a small, you know, group of people, and this is this is sort of them running loose in the Texas countryside or you know, not really countryside, but what seems like it's around Austin. Um, it's I mean, it's really fun. It's like I'm loosened downtown Austin. Yeah, take this emails Congress Street. You shall be mine. But we are here to talk about well, we can talk about whatever.

But Evil Dead Too originally or not originally, but I think in some of the press materials Evil Dead to Dead by Dawn it was like the official title is just Evil Dead Too, but the posters tagline dead by Dawn was such you know, it really kind of became part of the you know part I almost became a de facto part of the title because people thought of it that way. And that's in the movie, you know, Dead by Don, Dead by Don. We are the po we are those who were and shall be again. Um

actually wrote that line down. We might as well say it because it's so great. We are the things that were and shall be again. It's so good. It's really funny how quotable the movie is. It's just like there's just so many little little lines that you know, pop up, Uh, if you listen to Uh you know, I listened to a fair amount of industrial and dance like electronic music in the early nineties, and you know, samples of Evil Dead were just pretty much inescapable. Oh yeah, I already

you know. There was Let's Go Groovy that was in like I'm sure, yeah, it was like you know, Skinny Puppy, the Roleting Cox, the Shaman, Uh you know, uh, all those bands like just decided to build entire songs around Evil Dead samples, and it was you know, it's pretty effective fun, you know. But yeah, so the whole story

behind Evil Dead is pretty interesting. It's like a because this is like this is their Sam Raimi's third movie with Bruce Campbell and third movie and gent well this is the third theatrical release, I should say they Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell and a bunch of other people, uh, Scott Spiegel, the Coen Brothers were the Cohen Brothers were involved with them. But they, like a lot of these guys grew up the Cohen Brothers grew up in Minneapolis.

But there's a core group of people that grew up in Michigan and went to school together, and they made all these eight millimeter movies together, and you know, it's the kind of thing where they would just get more and more complex and then they'd start He's you know, they start with simple, fun movies, and they started to learn little editing tricks and start and so on and

so on. So by the time they're in college, they had figured out a you know, they had figured out how to you know, construct a story, not always very well, but they they figured out a lot of the tricks, and they developed a style for sure. Oh yeah, absolutely, um, Sam raimie, finally, I mean finally, the Rob Tappert, who was the producer, was started researching, like, well, how do we make a movie that we can sell? And then they finally they were like, well, let's do a horror movie.

All these horror movies have made, you know, start out with low budgets with beginning directors and have made a profit. And so Sam Raimi was not really a huge Neither Sam Raimi nor Bruce Campbell were huge fans of the genre. They weren't like a real movie Well, they're probably like better, bigger horror movie fans now, but at the time they're like, whatever, you know, we'll make a horror movie. Why not well,

it's it's funny. It's still that's still the case, and horror movies still stand as a very effective way to do a movie on the cheap um. We were talking about this in one of the round tables. You know, to do a slasher movie, you can you can go camping for a week and shoot a movie these days with a digital camera. As long as you have some attractive youngsters and a couple of knives and a good concept, you can still go out and do and a lot

of corn syrup and red red dye. You can do some really good like it's got to be a good concept or else it's just trash. But you can do it on the cheap. Yeah. And there's like, you know, you don't need a you know, you don't need a giant set, you don't need anything. You can just like in this case, in the case of the First Evil Dad, they just had a cabin and Tennessee that they went to that was not heated, uh, and they had a

house that they were staying in. Then while they were staying overnight at their house, some locals came and stole all the power tools they left behind, all the expensive editing or all the expensive like camera tools, camera equipment, but they stole their power tools, so Sam RAMI ended up spending the night in this freezing cabin to protect everything,

to guard this stuff. Um, I've I've tried to sleep on an on a deflated air mattress and it was like sixty degrees and I was like, this is not Yeah, I never to it. Just again, I don't think we we were talking off Mike and I started screaming say it, even though it was my fault because I brought it up. But but Evil Dead one is the one I'm least that I've seen the least. I know I've seen it and maybe even a couple of times, but I've seen Army of Darkness a lot, probably my favorite. Although Evil

Dead two is right neck and neck. But I remember seeing Evil Dead two for the first time. Uh. This came out in eight seven, and I think I saw it at a midnight screening in I had to have been either eight or eighty nine when I was a junior senior in high school and I wasn't you know, we talked a bit about it. I wasn't horror movie kid and I wasn't midnight movie kid. I just sort of got roped into it with friends. But I remember seeing it and just like not having ever seen anything

like it before in my life. Yeah, I remember the first time I saw it was in like early but it wasn't theatrically. I think the last time I was here, I said, we had one movie theater on me and I just you know, it certainly didn't play Evil Dead too. They certainly did not play Evil Dead too. Um, but they had uh you know, I went to a friend's house and they had rented Evil Dead too. And you know, at the time I was watching horror. I was watching horror movies. But I always like to think I was

smarter than the horror movies. And it's always like this is like so you know, I would watch Retorted Living Dead over and over again, and then Night Living Dead, and but I always thought that it would be like, you know, I was like, if you could see any of the seems, I'd be like, this movie stupid. And so you know, I we stayed interesting because that's so not you now. Oh no, no, no, Now I had to just lovely discussion with my wife who says hello, she By the way, I just like to do a

quick plug for my wife. She's a cartoonist and if you follow her at Hannakey Garden you can see some of her like she just she has diary and autobiographical stuff a in an a h K Garden. Yeah, okay, and she has a Patreon as well. So but you can like get a feel for it, and if you decide you want to throw a buck into the plate, you can just go to Patreon. It's you know, there's

no minimum. There's no minimum. Um. But anyway, we were talking about that and it's like it's very easy to just sort of shoot on something and watch something and thinking you're smarter than it or you're better than it. But it's hard to sit there and watch It's it's a little bit more challenging but ultimately more rewarding. Two watch something and say, well, what were they trying to do? How did this work? And what did it? And you know it's so I mean that's the case with Evil

Dead Too. Like at the time, I was like, I think I we watched probably a Monty Python movie and then they threw on Evil Dead Too, and I think I made it to the dancing corpse scene and I was like, ah, this I I gotta go, and because I was like, it looks so fake, and but it was. You know, now you watch it, it's like, it's so amazing. I respect the you know, should be like so that's

I mean, so that's the thing. I was like eighteen years old and you didn't appreciate stop motion and Jason and the argonaut style stop motion animation at the time. Probably no, not as much as does look fake and corny. It does, but it's also amazing for what it. I mean, you know, I can't imagine being a kid now in watching stop motion because you know, that's all practical effects and with digital with digital effects, you can replicate all

that stuff hand. You can make a realistic looking thanos for example. Um, but yeah, it's such a it it's a fun I mean, it's such I mean I could sort of. I mean, of course I can. Everybody can

look back at their younger selves and kick themselves. Uh, I will forgive myself instead be like, you know what you tried for sure my deal and I talked a little bit about this on what I think one of the round tables or maybe just one of the minis with NOL, But I really maybe more so than any other genre completely just give myself up to it, and I'm all in because I don't see what the point is.

It's no fun at all to to nitpick horror films. Um. I don't see the point because maybe more so than any other genre, they are nick pitable, and uh, it's sure you can always do that, but I don't see the point. I just I give myself up to a horror movie. I buy it all. I'm there for the fun and the ride, and even a movie like A Quiet Place. I'm not sure if you saw that one. I didn't, and I don't. I think i'd like to go.

I'd like to watch it now. I just remember seeing so many ads for like, so many trailers for it, and I was just like it was overhyped, for sure, but a good they call it, like I think horror fans call it like a good starter horror. Or if you're not into horror, watch this and you might like it, but very much a movie you can pick holes in all over the place, uh, as well as things like Midsummer But like just and I had problems with that

that aren't aren't nitpicky. But I give myself up to it when I go into the theater or watch one of these movies at home. I'm just there to have fun. Yeah, And it's like it's so easy, especially if you're I mean, if you go to see a horror movie in a theater. I went to see, Uh what was it? There's two There were two like Facebook themed Facebook style movies that were released Unfriended and Unfriended and maybe friend requests blocked. I can't remember. It was like, but one was like

one they just made a sequel to. It was good. It was the better the two that they made that they ended up making the sequel to. Yeah, one of them was okay, right, Yeah, it was good. And it was like I saw it in a Sunday matinee at noon and I was the only person in the theater and I'm just like scary, right. The only other time I saw a movie alone in the theater was Kangaroo Jack when I well, I snuck in. I had just

I had watched the move one other movie. It just it's a theater in Brooklyn called the Pavilion, uh, And it's like a four like three or four story theater and like nobody's nobody's up there watching, so I just like would watch, you know, I watched Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and then I was listening outside the door having heard Kangaroo Jack or having seen kangaroo Jack once already. Yeah, I saw it twice in the theater. Uh snuck in the second time. Oh, you forgive yourself for that. It

was I that's another story altogether. I do forgive myself for that. But we had so much fun watching that. So Evil Dead Too had a budget of about three and a half million bucks. Um, I have a few tidbits here. I'm sure you know all of this, but for the benefit of the listener, Stephen King basically talked Dino de Laurentis into financing this movie because he loved Evil Dead so much, and he was like, you really should finance this film, like the Sam Raimie guys. Really,

he's he's got it. Yeah. They were having a hard time securing financing because Evil Day was a success but not a huge success. And then their second movie, which Sam Raimi co wrote with the Coen Brothers, Crime Wave, was a pretty massive flowed. Have you seen that? I haven't, But I haven't either. I'm really intrigued by though. I have a friend Pete Mueller, who's a cartoonist in Madison, who stands by that he's a huge fan of Uh. Yeah,

he's a huge fan of crime Waves. Yeah. I need to check that out because I mean, there's so much talent there. There's got to be something there, sure, I mean, Louis Lasser, Bruce Campbo. Uh, it's a you know, yeah, yeah, And I've seen every other Cohen Brothers movie. Why wouldn't I see this? Well, I mean for a long time. It's hard to find. But um, but Scott Spiegel, who

co wrote this, Um, I did not realize. But apparently at the time they he and Raymie shared a house with Joel and Ethan Cohen, Fran McDorman, Holly Hunter, and Kathy Bates. Yeah. That's nuts. That is crazy. It's just like it's like, yeah, in fact that one of the characters, Bobby Joe, was actually written kind of with a Holly

Hunter in mind. I saw that, like there was a there's a great tidbit on the audio commentary where Sam Raymie says, you know, he walked out, you know, he's used to seeing Holly Hunter like hang out wearing sweats and reading scripts, and one day he walks out and he sees she's like sort of dressed up, and he's like, Hall, you look really good. And I'm auditioning for the role of a prostitute. Sam. I not to consider that a compliment.

He's right, I was really wanted to see this movie with Holly Hunter and Fran McDorman and Cathy Bates in it, like they all lived together. Why, Like, yeah, why wouldn't how great with that? I mean, not to knock any of the actors, but they're all pretty yeah second rate. Well, okay, I have I have a rating. Should we talk about plot before we get into the actors, because I do have, like, I do have a very strong opinion about, uh, two of the actors. Well, I mean, I have a strong

opinion about all the actors. But we can jump around, we can do it out of order. It doesn't matter. Okay, Well, this is Reform Radio, so let's talk about Well, let's talk about like, the whole idea of Evil Dad was four uh, four friends go to a cabin or five friends go to a cabin. The first evil, the first evil dead, and an evil force possesses. They find the tape recorded with a an audio recording of the Book

of the Dead. They play it and summon this evil force who apparently you know, I don't know why it ever went away really because it was someone once before enough to be on audio anyway. Nitpicking, Uh, I mean it's kind of It is also fun to nitpick thoughts sometimes it's if it's in jest, it can be fun, but just not one of those guys. It's like sneering at it. Um. But it's uh, you know, the evil force comes and like possesses and kills you know, all

of them except for Bruce Campbell. At the very end is like the evil force breaks through the cabin and like hits him square and that's that's where it ends. You don't know what happens. Yeah, ash this evil then to kind of like recaps everything. It's funny because it is such a taught It's like only eighty seven minutes long. Yeah, it gets started very fast. You get like forty seconds of exposition with a little the sort of swirly yeah,

the swirly background and the yeah, which is beautiful. Legend has it was written by the dark Ones. Necronomicon ex mortis roughly translated the Book of the Dead. It's just so fun. Yeah. Um so it's forty seconds of exposition and then it's like two minutes of credits, and then there it cuts to a couple, Ash and Linda different Linda from the first movie because they couldn't get her

back in apparently, uh, driving to the cabin. Incidentally, they wanted to just use footage from the original, but they had it had been licensed so many territories that they couldn't get her the Yeah, they couldn't get the rights to it. So they're just like, all right, we'll just reshoot with two people instead of five. So they go

the bridge. It's like that car and that bridge is just so iconic now all these years later, it is just like it's so I mean, it looks like a model, but it's so beautiful and it's just like it's and it really what is it? You know they did that. I think that's a model. I think that's just that must that's a model. The second one where the bridges destroyed as a matte painting, but it looks like a giant claw, which is great. Yeah, it's really well done.

Um so, yeah, so they like have another forty seconds of dialogue where they explained that they're going to this cabin and they hope it's the owners don't come back. They go into the cabin, she starts changing. Oh he conserved this man, and you're a woman at least the last time I checked. And it's also this great scene if I'm playing piano. Can we just talk about Bruce Campbell for one second? One of the best um physical actors and face actors like in the history of movies.

I think have you the whole sequence with the hand, which we'll get to in more detail. I think you take it for granted, how well done that is and how great he is. Every time I watch it, I'm amazed. But have you ever Have you ever met Bruce Campbell? I have not. I have an autograph picture that a friend got me many years ago that I cherish. I've never met him. I like myself and some other people co wrote a vampire book about eight years ago, maybe nine ten years ago. What's the name of it, The

New Vampire's Handbook Guide. Uh, you know, basically, it's a it's a how to book by the vampire Miles Proctor. It's still in print. Oddly enough, I don't you can get it right? Yeah, you can't. I'm surprised it's still in print though. UM, but you know it's good for what it is. UM. I'm I stand by it. And we did a lot of research in that UM. But so we were doing I was, we were doing as

much promoting as we could. So we went to some horror conventions and we went to I went with to a horror convention with my friend Janet, and we got up like early morning because we're like, let's go to the gym. Let's just which is sort of a weird not sounds strange for me to do that, but it's like, so we're on the second floor of this hotel. We pushed the button and because it's like we're I mean,

we could have taken the stairs. It would have been so much easier to do that, but we pushed the button and the elevator door opens and Bruce Campbell is in there, and we're just like I just felt really embarrassed because I'm just like, we're just like, I apologize. It's just too early in the morning for us. We

just didn't even think about it. And he was like, well, the good thing is we're we'll still get to where we're going, and he was very gracious about it, and that was my that was my only encounter with him. And you know, I really want to like pick Hodgman brain about his Campbell experience. Yeah, because he's had a couple of things. Well, he wrapped his book, I think, and I'm just that had to be either really fun or just one of those things where it's just uh.

He writes a little bit about it in his new book. Actually I have to read you mean you mean Status available now in bookstores. It's great. I just finished it. It's it's a really wonderful book. Actually excellent. So back to the plot points, I guess, uh they had they got the set up, and we meet to the new Linda right, Menda terrible hair, terrible hair on the Nenda. Pretty good, I mean pretty good actress, not great, but she's she's fine. Um, I mean she's not really doing

a whole lot in it. She like he plays the tape, she gets possessed or she like gets removed the house then gets possessed, and she doesn't even like try to she's like sort of like menacing him, like like sort of like almost Frankenstein style, because arms stretched out and she jumps he grabs a shovel and knocks her Headcaine is in the first five minutes of the movie. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, as they refer to it as recap

the decap. So and we also get our first um look in the early on of the the board cam, which I'm sure you know about this, but for people listening all those shots of with a camera running through the woods, what they did was they just mounted a camera on a board and ran with it, Yeah, to one person on each end, hold it load to the ground. It has a sort of shaky look, so it's not steady cam at all, but man, it's so effective and it and it became such a Ramy staple and then

later a Cohen Brothers staple, like it's all over raising Arizona. Yeah, that same exact, you know technique. It's so it's interesting, I mean, because I think that's the good thing is that Ramy just was playing around with eight millimeter and super eight cameras so long that he's just like, let's try this, let's try this. So it's like the stakes were so low that he just had a good sense

of what would what could be done with them. Yeah, and it's the board cam is all throughout this movie and some of the best stuff when it's you know, one of my favorite sequences is when it starts in the woods and goes all the way through busting through the doors of the cabin and then Bruce Campbell is spinning through the forest and then against the tree and finally into the puddle. That no idea how they did that. I read up on it. They Bruce Campbell was like

mounted to like it's sort of an iron cross. He died for our sins. Uh sorry, sorry Chuck's parents. Uh but uh so he sort of mounted to an iron cross. It was on a crane and it was like spinning. So they really did so they really that they had a It was like they shot this part in South Carolina.

It was eighth North Carolina. No, this one they shot in South that Actually it was like a three quarter mile stretch of road and they shot at the undercrank so like it would speed up twenty minutes to drive this three quarter mile with them spinning it in like he'd be whacked with branches and up. Yeah, and apparently the shoot took all day to do it. So Bruce Campbell's you know was strapped to spinning. Yeah, oh my god, it looks so good though, it does, and then he

like crashes down to the ground. It's just so Yeah, it's so amazing. How like the camera tricks they used and creativity was just off the chart. Yeah, they were inventing stuff on the fly. Sure, and it's easy, you know, it's easy to like set up a camera in front of like a horror action. But they conveyed it with these these great camera tricks and these great like you know, practical effects that were that really sort of like set you a little bit off off kilter. Yeah, and it

was just so original and fresh. Um. A lot of this stuff has been copied UH in a much more slick fashion over the years, but that original stuff, and this is in the eighties, kind of mid to late eighties. I do want to talk about the cabin oral Wick. And again, I'm sure you know this stuff, but they shot UH in Wadesboro, North Carolina, largely so I'm in Michigan. But the Steven Spielberg had shot The Color Purple in Wadesboro, so they used the big farmhouse from The Color Purple

as their production offices. They built the exterior facade of the cabin, not facade, just the you know, the the cabin without an interior, basically uh, in the woods, and then built everything else the interior on a stage, well not a stage inside of a junior high school gymnasium and the jr face on junior high school. But I was, you know, I started to to dig in a little bit about the cabin and like is it still there?

And I'm sure you know this stuff, but you know, it eventually just sort of crumbled, but was just left there. And the homeowner, now uh said he didn't care about it, didn't and he allowed this evil dead fan to go

in and just take what he wanted. And a few years ago this dude got a box truck and salvaged whatever he could from from the cabin and at some point that a lot of it was just rotted and like kind of done and you couldn't do anything with But he did get the the triangular exterior facade and put it on eBay for bucks. And you know, you don't get a follow up on eBay stuff. You could probably track it down. But I have a I have a I have a I'm a subscriber to a service

that allows me to do just that. Actually, we'll find out because all I saw the last I saw was it's up and there's one bid for four. I've never heard anything else. Yeah, well the end and the interesting thing is like, when do you when the force like is chasing Bruce Campbell around the Campbell you know, it's clearly the the interior is not is bigger than it's like a tartist. It looks a lot bigger on the inside than it does on the X on the outside.

But when that like they use a lot a wide angle lens and you can see that there's no you know, there's no ceiling and you can kind of see some lighting rigs and you can cut like I mean, it's only after I watched the like I watched the commentary that I noticed it because I was like, yeah, because it's like you're you you're so sucked into it. Um,

you know. Also I didn't notice anything. Yeah, it's funny that Bruce Campbell is that ash is able to outrun the evil force and it's sort of like quickly duck into the root Celler. Well, I think the fact that they built it on a stage, um, it's sort of lent itself to uh this quality that I really like about the movie, and that it did look kind of fake.

It didn't feel like a real cabin in the woods, which is it works better for some reason, even though it is almost it's not a perfect replica, but it is a very close replica of the cabin they shot, the real cabin they used in the first Evil Dead. Um. So yeah, they did, you know, they did all kinds of like they built it with all kinds of tricked walls and they you know, they built the it was like two levels so you could actually have a root

seller underneath the cab. Yeah, oh gosh, there's so many You can see the money, like it doesn't look slick, but it doesn't look cheap, no, Like you can see the three and a half million bucks, uh in a very sam Raimi way, but you can tell it wasn't a bunch of friends in the woods with five thousand dollars, you know. In Evil Dad. You can kind of see that. But it's still pretty I mean, still works. Yeah, it

still works. It's pretty effective. Um. So yeah. So meanwhile Linda, okay, right, he buries Linda, then he gets possessed, um drives it away because he sees this cheap necklace that he got for for Linda. It's a little magnifying glass. I think that was one of the three original props that made it from Evil Dead. The tape recorder was another right tape recorder, the necklace, and the clock. Right the tape recorder was actually belonged to Sam Raimi's dad. Yeah, Panasonic,

Uh was it? Yeah, I don't know, I know, remember that. That's like one of those extremeiest details. It's just like so it's not like, Okay, file that away and force out some some math that I might need later. Um, So he haulds us out of there. And that's another great sequence is the reverse car Yeah shot when he gets to the bridge that has been destroyed. Yeah, he's like he gets there and there's a there's a blue screen.

That blue screen is so cheesy but works so well where he's like hits him in the foreground and this giant setting sun right behind him. Just so good. Yeah, it does. It looks great. Is he looks terrified. Um, and then they you know, uh cuts to the Then we have like forty more seconds of exposition where they introduced the characters of Ed and uh of Ed and uh Annie no by the professor's daughter, and the professor's daughter sucks. And the cardigan, yeah sweater, it's like right

out of the handbook. Well it's funny too, because like I I think Annie's like, uh, Sarah Berry played Annie. I think she's really good. I think she's well pretty good. Her scream though, is a plus. Yeah. Yeah, she's a good horror movie actor, I think. Yeah. Uh. Meanwhile, Richard dommlermer, I don't think he's not great and it's not great. Um he is. Uh. Yeah. He went on to be a QVC host, and it kind of the whole idea

behind him so perfect. They wanted somebody that seemed like he could uh seemed like he was sort of like this sort of a little bit macho, a little bit like a tough guy that could sort of save the day, you can find an evil force. Yeah, and so when he gets killed almost immediately, it's like it has more of an impact. But he didn't come off that way. He just seemed really dated and you know, uh, he seemed like a QVC host. He seemed like an eighties

high school villain. Yeah, that's the line I wrote down. It's like, what has he found in the Book of the Dead. That's that's more. That's definitely more stilted than he did. So I'm garely Yeah, probably nothing but possibly the away to another world and he has this sort of like nods and yeah he's pretty bad. Yeah. Another thing that really hit me in this film too was how great the sound design is. Uh. And not only the sound, because the sound is amazing, Like his use

of silence contrasting with the sound just so effective. There's so many shots they're completely silent. That one great three and sixty degree shot in silence that looks around the whole scene and then back on his face again. And there's another couple towards the end too, and you're just David Lynch is always someone who's sound design I really love a lot, and I think that he I have a feeling he's influenced a little bit by some of

this stuff. It's amazing how many people are actually like, you know, I have a really weird relationship with with art like music and uh and film like like this is like with a lot of like film, I should say not most, not all of them, not like Star Wars. I'm like I have this quick little INDI it's called Star Wars. But I really love a lot. But you know, you I had this relationship with some movies like Evil Dead to where I'm always like, oh he saw that,

that's so crazy. Um, But apparently James Cameron, when he was in the theaters, pulled up to Bill Packs's house as his car knocked out of the stores, like, come on, we got to go see this movie. It's called Evil Dead too. Yeah, and so that's uh yeah, Bill Paxson told h told him that later when they were working on a Simple Plan together. Um, another movie I loved. Yeah, that was so he's such a good director. Yeah. I read that book too. I was really in a Simple Plan.

I never read the book. Who's do you remember who the author was? Remember? I want to say his name was Scott something. It was good. Um, And I read it after the movie because I like the movie so much. I miss Bridget Fonda. Yeah, what why isn't she doing more? She's probably being a family person and being a mom and and you know she's married to Danny Elfman, so

oh yeah, she didn't she didn't need to work. And there's a lot, you know, there's a lot to be said for Yeah, she's she's not acting, she's rolling annoyingo bleano money. Um. Yeah, that's where he made all this um yeah. But then uh we get the great sequence with Linda coming back from the dead after having coming back once previously where they have that great uh dance like where her her corpse rises out of her like

headless corpse rises out of the grave. This is the first stop motion, right, Yeah, it's like an interesting thing about the stop motion. This whole dance he was choreographed by one of Sam one of Sam Raimi's uh like dancing like you know theater instructors in college, I thought you should say, by Paula abdul Tony Basil worked out here. Um. And then it was the stop motion was done by a man named Doug Beswick, who you might have known from such other stop motion classics as Gumby and David

and Goliath. Yea, which is so weird to think that the guy that made David galizes like he made a you know that he worked on a sort of a nude rotting corpse dancing around. Yeah, I guess it was a pretty short list of people to go to. Yeah. Well, he also worked on Star Wars. It wasn't like he was exclusively working on Christian acclaimation ship, but he you know, he did a lot of other work prior to that. But yeah, and then like she so she comes back.

There's this great scene where she's like her severed head where he actually she grabs him and like dash with me and starts like cashing his head into a board and then he's like, well it zooms out of his like screaming face to reveal like he's just sitting in an armchair. So it was a dream or was it? Because then a severed head falls into his lap, bites him on the hand, and then he's like running around. That's that's one of the great sequences of this movie.

So it's he's got the head on his hand. Yeah, it's like such great physical comedy of him like just smashing and smashing. Man, I have all caps written down on seeing where she bites his hand. And that's where you also get one of the great moments of the movie. Workshe do you know the little uh little tidbit about the workshed line, Well, the Kurt Russell thing. Yeah, we'll tell everyone it's a great story. Uh Kurt Russell. Well, Bruce Campbell became a successful actor, uh as well after

this is what I mean. He was a successful actors so far as I'm concerned. But you know, he worked with Kurt Russell on Escape from l A, which was the watchable but not great sequel to Escape from New Yead, the sequel that's years later that somehow looked worse than the one many years before. Yeah, like the giant surfing,

serving that giant wave. It was bad. Um. But you know, so the first thing that Kurt Russell says to Bruce Cambell on the set is, hey, say workshed because it's just like such a like the sound of it is just boosted so much is a workshed and it's like his lips don't sync up with it. And I mean, if you haven't seen the movie, it is it's a part. Are They clearly just did some uh some a d R, some additional dialogue recording and dubbed in him saying workshed,

which they didn't even really need to do. Uh. I mean the idea was he just wanted to telegraph to the audience he was going to the work she was going to the work shed, which he could have just done. But it's it became known as such a sort of hokey bad dub that you know, years later Kurt Russell kind of gave him, which I love that. You know, it became such a thing that Kurt Russell knew about it, and Kurt Russell also saw and enjoyed Evil Day exactly

and it's fantastic. Um, but it it does. That's where we get to the shed, which is a very key set in this movie. Um, you know, the the shed is amazing. You've got Freddy Krueger's gloves hanging above the door, which is a nice little easter egg. Because in Nightmare on Elm Street, uh, Nancy falls asleep watching The Evil Dead on TV. So I heard this was just a little bit of I don't want to even want to say the words quid pro quel right now, but a

little thank you and return to West Craven. Well, prior to that, in Evil Dead they had a in the basement, they had a torn a poster of the Hills Have Eyes, which is half it started there. But they I think they were sort of doing that as a little bit of an f you to to West Craven because in the Hills Have Eyes there's a torn Jaws poster, like they thought, well they read that is like he's he's saying he's like the new master of horror. Well this is,

you know, better than Spielberg. Well not to that, and then so they did the Torn Hills have Eyes poster and then they're like, yeah, that was just that's probably not even what's Craven meant. No, that was all like ripping Jaws in half. No, it's uh, you know, I think when you're twenty in your early twenties, take I've taken umbrage to so many stupid things, and now I'm looking back and just like, what was I so mad about? Everyone is the enemy? Um works. And then it comes

the other great land line chainsaw. He has Linda's head in the vice and he's like, pulls back the curtain, sees a chalk out chainsaw should be chainsaw, and then all of a sudden, the door bursts open and it's like the headless corpse like going up and down with the chainsaw over its head. I love the chalk outline thing. Just that to me embodies what I love about Sam Ramy's sense of fun and play. Um to have a chalk outline, you know, just to indicate that there was

once a chainsaw. There is so unbelievable and so silly, but just so fun. And it works because you just don't even think about it because you're so wrapped up in the moment. It's like, I mean, I think that's the thing you should all. I mean, if you're making a film, you should always just be like give the audience, like, you know, you should be confident in your ability to make the audiences spend their disbelief, you know, because otherwise

it's like, oh, that's too fake. It's like, well, nobody's gonna care if you're you know, either laughing yourself silly or pooping your pants. Um. But yeah, that The Headless lind It was such a great like they do. It was just a mannic pretty much a mannequin a pole

and uh well well very expensive, well crafted mannequin. They were jiggling up and down out a pole, yeah, and spinning around and uh yeah, and then they he pulls out the you know, he pulls out the chainsaw, pulls off her arm with the chainsaw, and the reverse back. That's an interesting thing because like there's a lot of continuity problems with like the amount of gore that's on ash always it's fine. It is, It's like you don't like if you're looking again, if you're looking to poo

put it, you can find. Are they continuity problems though? Or did did he just not care and it just was part of the thing. Apparently he They did care, but they just they didn't know. They shot it out of order, so they didn't know how much would they really were continuity and the continuity like the what does the continuity it's not the continuity director but the continuity scripty supervisor. She apparently was just constantly mortified. She's like,

we can't do this. That furniture is nobody in some wore. He's like, I know he's getting right. I mean most notably, there's so much blood in some of these scenes, um like shining style coming from the walls, coming from the cellar, the green blood that goes all over everything for black bile blood man so effective. But none of that stuff in subsequent shots is on the walls. And I just

kind of thought that they just didn't care. Yeah, I think it's like after a certain point you don't care, and it's like you can't keep a slicked wet you know twet surface or I don't know if you're going to be acting on it for days and days and weeks and then uh, it cuts, like it cuts, It goes back to her. She she's back to real She goes back to Realinda and begs for her life. And then it got back to possess then and she's like her mouth is covered with bile because he was a

scene where she's spat black viole. But I think it's actually more effective that she didn't spit the black bile in the version we saw. I'm sorry now. It's like there's so many little things that I can just like get into. Well. I think one cool choice in that scene was when he did finally chainsaw the head. It's you just see it in shadow, which was very effective and cool. Yeah, a lot of the there's a lot of real violence, but it's a lot of it that's

implied as well. They were shooting for an R rating, which is why they used like black bio in Green Blood and they had a yellow blood at one point. Uh. But they finally they were like, oh, this is not going to be you know, this is not going to be a an R rated movie, and so they released it. That's and so they set up a fake company called Rosebud releasing it wasn't a fake company, was a real company, um. Because if you were working with the m p a A.

You were forbidden from releasing an unrated movie. So they had to set up a dummy company to release it

in theaters. And of course you know as an unrated yeah, as unrated, and it's you know, if you know much about I don't know how it is now, but at the time, you know, in the eighties and nineties, you could not like a lot of the chains wouldn't touch unrated movies, so you couldn't get it into like the Marcus Amphitheater or the Marcus Theaters or any of those small chains, small or large change because they wouldn't release it.

So it had to be in like independent theaters, which ultimately hurt the you know, hurt their bottom line, right, although it did. Um. I think it ended up grossing about six million bucks, which is, you know, it makes close to double their money, which isn't bad. Um, and then much more and at home video, you know, I mean they kept alive an entire uh, an entire video company for you know, they kept Evil Dead movies kept

Anchor Bay afloat for a Yeah. They were just like because they had like they would just keep releasing different editions of the Evil Dead movies. Here's the Book of the Dead version, here's the single disc, here's a double disk. Um uh so the Linda scene though that also introduces, um, what would become a a repeated thing with Ash and

Bruce Campbell having these great one liners. And I think the first one is right there where he goes You're going down and Ash becomes kind of this superhero throughout the three films like more and more and just gets known for these iconic clients. Especially an Army of Darkness is where it goes, you know, like to eleven you know, yeah, it's like a lot of he's channeling a lot of uh Clint east Wood. It seems like his voice drops down a little bit, like and it gets a little

bit raspy. Um. The blood on the lightbulb shot too, really appreciated, and that when the blood splashes up and hits the light and then you you know they put the red uh th red gel over the lights and everything.

It's really really cool. It's fun. It's and then then they go in and it's like, well, the thing about like the first the first thirty five minutes of the movie, of the first thirty five minutes twenty minutes is just Bruce Campbell, Like it's just him acting with like puppets or acting to him, like with himself, and it's just like h and that includes like the two minutes of credits.

Uh So it was just a really you know, a lot of this is just like little sight gags that they would get that they pulled up, like the rocking chair, the creaking rocking chair, that's just like, you know, a creaking rocking chair just seems so hokey in a ghost movie. But at the same time, it's just like it swivels and just starts creaking. And the sound design is both a like a creek and Sam Raimi's voice below like

that sounds extra creepy. There's like the mirror gag, which you don't expect, where yeah, he's like I'm fine, I'm fine, he's looking in a mirror and then he just like reaches out of the like he he or an evil version of him reaching the meters, like we just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound fine to you. Yeah, it's so good man. This movie just gets more and more bonkers as it goes. Well, then we meet Bobby Joe and who's who's the other guy?

Who's the Jake? Jake? This is where I like to put in my my pitch. The secret sauce of this movie is Bobby Joe played by Cassie Wesley. She is so good in this, Like you're just like she went on to like be a soap actor and really yeah, it's like it's like she knows, like she's one of the people that knows exactly what kind of movie she's making.

She's just like she plays it kind of serious, but she's also like overblown, like first Tobacco spit she does, it's so funny and Corney, what do you want to go there for? Yeah, And she doesn't look I mean, she appears miscast because she doesn't look like anyone who would be with Jake or any you know, she doesn't look like some Woodland redneck. You know, she's kind of dolled up and sort of attractive, and uh, but it works somehow. Yeah, it works so well. I think, like

that's what I mean. It's like, you don't you don't think about her as being out of place in it. I mean it must kind of you know, I've you've spoken it on the show about how Southern accents are often really done and terrible, and so that must kind of like rub you the wrong way a little bit to hear well, but it's so it was so like kind of corny and it didn't bother me. Um. And they also set up a just a really there's also a great line where Jake is like, oh, there's a

there's a trail. I can take you there for forty five and Bobby Joe nudges him a hundred dollars and it just sets up she like, well, i'll tell you what you take my bags, you've got a deal, and he thinks it's just one little bag. It turns out to be this giant trunk. It was introduced. Oh that's like the smoky that's like Chekhov's trunk. It just only so they could have a gag later where Jake is

like hauling it over this trail pretty much. Um. Yeah. Well, then we get to the hands stuff, which is that whole sequence. Like I said, it's so easy to take for granted because you've seen it so many times, but how brilliant Bruce Campbell is in that scene and how he animates his hand in such a way that you forget it's part of his body. It becomes a character. Yeah, it's like the way it's like sort of flopping around, like grabbing at the grabbing at these plates which are

apparently unglazed. They were unglazed pottery, so they would break easily, more easily, So it's like like just smashing plates over his head. And then when he's finally knocked out the he's just like gonna like the hand is gonna like hit him with one more plate and then it's like like and it's like spies in finger quotes, uh of meat cleaver, and like then it starts just like it's like the way his hands and then it just drags him.

It's so good and then like it drives him right when he's about it at the meat cleaver, Bruce Clampbell stabs him in the hand. He's like, who's laughing now, starts a chainsaw, cuts off his own hand. Who's laughing now? It's just like you don't see the violence. We just see the blood splattering in Yeah, I thought the one thing about this movie that I loved was uh and

for some reason doesn't take me out of it. But I love in movies like this where I'm constantly picturing um the manpower offscreen doing doing stuff like in this case, the people, like the two guys that are clearly shoving Bruce Campbell across the floor by edge while the hand appears to move him, or later on when he and I think it's he and Jake are laying on top of the cellar door and somebody like having and someone's

underneath like pushing these guys up. I just love picturing like That's just hands on filmmaking that I just love so much. You know, practical effects someone just off camera, like pulling a body that you never see. It's just some of my favorite stuff in film. Well, it's interesting too because there's a p A. You there's a you

know you're there. A lot of times if you're a p A, I assume you're just they're like, well, this is a job and I gotta do this, and you know, it's hard to be like I can't understand what the vision is, but okay, I'll just shove on this this or but yeah, I'll do some cool stuff. Man, I got to do some really cool ship as a p A. What's the most fun you had? Oh? I mean I got to work on a Michael Bay commercial one time. That was a lot of fun because you are invisible

as a PA to Michael Bay. He doesn't turn his eye on you because you don't exist, So you can be you can have a front row seat to the madness and him screaming at people and getting in like pitching these little baby fits on set. You can be four feet away just watching and he doesn't even see you. He doesn't turn around and go, you know, what are you looking at? Like you just don't exist. So it was great. Um, But I got to do a lot

of cool stuff like that. Like I was oftentimes the guy off screen, you know, playing catch with the pro baseball player or whatever. You know. I got to play catch with Chipper Jones one time. You know, he's one of my baseball heroes. But I guarantee you there's some some dude that's like our age or probably a little bit older right now, that's like, you know what. I was a guy who was shoving Bruce Cambell across the floor and Evil did too, and the way horror conventions work.

That guy probably has a table at those conventions just being like guy and people like twenty bucks to get a signature. All right, Oh that's so good. Then we get the farewell to Arms jokes, which is so on the notes and fun. It is just like, here's your new home, right, I put a bucket over the hand, then puts a stack of books, including a farewell to Arms.

It's just the other thing Campbell does in this movie that's very impressive is he pulls off that amazing feat of acting that's so hard to do, which is talking to yourself realistically, even when it's like ludicrous dialogue like old double barrel here, I gotta blow your what's the kick him? Come see if we don't. It's so good Only Bruce Campbell. I feel like I could have pulled that off, even though he was kind of nobody at

the time. Yeah. I mean, it's like you have to be very self aware and very self unaware at the same time, where you just like, I know what this is gonna look like, and I just have to be like, you know, I just have to not care well. And he was so h he was such a leading man that never became one like so handsome and just and big and broad shouldered, like he had it all. But he chose like to go this other route with his career.

But he did carry to TV shows. You know, he was on Briscoe County, j which I really enjoyed, act and Jack of All Trades. I don't know about that. That was one of the I mean, Sam Rami had a long career after you know, well not after his movies, because he still made movies, but in the like the mid to late nineties, he made like Zeno Warrior Princess, he made Hercules, Cleopative, Jack of all Trades. They were all like trades, like a syndicated action movie and I

are syndicated action series. I don't know. I don't remember anything about it. I just remember it was on and I didn't really watch much of it, which I regret now. But do you watch UM or did you watch the TV show the Ash TV show? I watched most of it. Yeah, I don't know why I didn't. It's good. I think it's really good. Yeah. I think one of the guy from Derrek Comedy writes for it. Derrek Comedy is like I can't remember his name, but there's d C. Pearson

who's a young adult novelist. Now and keep this Donald Glover the Voice of God, thank you, because I was like, I was thinking about it, I was like who, because at first I was like, Corey Glover is like, no, Corey Glovers from Living Color, Crispin Glover. No, it's not Crispin Glover. Uh yeah, Donald Glove, Danny Glover, Danny Glover. Um, yeah, it's funny the most. I need to watch some of that TV show though, I don't know what I didn't.

I think it's really good. It's fun. It's a lot more comedy, and it's a lot you know, it's a lot more comedy horror and less horror than comedy. Um, but it's a fun you know, it's a fun watch. And it's on Netflix right now. What do you think about the transition from horror to comedy as this series progressed. Um, I think this is my favorite. I mean, this is

my favorite of the series. I think this is like the good I think this is my favorite because it's like it's a good bridge between the two between the like the straight horror, uh the straight low budget horror of the first and like the the higher budget stop action mayhem of the Yeah, Darkness, it's fine. I need to watch it again. I think it's like, I think it's good, but it's just like it's also interesting because I think, um, the character of Ash really changed so much.

Like they I can't tell if they really listen to the commentary track. It seems like they kind of hate Ash in a way, like they think he's a They don't mind putting him through all the tortures because they you know, it seems like they all just sort of think he's a dope. But I never get that from from you know, and tell the Army of Darkness. You're like, oh, he's like just a giant blowhard and you know, but you don't get that from like the first two movies.

He's just yeah, I mean they kind of make him into a superhero by the end of it. Yeah, uh, you know, with his his shirt ripped open and the great sequence where he uh and when you know, which we'll get to it here in a second, but when he when he straps the chainsaw to his nub and cuts off the barrel of the shotgun and has everything rigged up, that whole mcdiver sequence it's just like, which is like I would never you know, know how to

do that. I mean if I if I were like, I mean, of course I would never you know, because it can't be done. But it's like, you know, just like having the presence of mind to actually craft a I mean, you know, let's let's just skip that part.

It's like a little bit uh but anyway, um, well, in the timeline of the film though, where the blood from the wall scene when he shoots the hand in the wall and then just the fire hose of blood and several different spots comes out at him, right, And then they did some watch were very like we're in there where they had like literally like hoses of blood

like shooting at him. But then they decided that wasn't enough, and so they they built I think when they went back to Michigan for reshoots, they did one where the was a uh they flipped the set ninety degrees. He was like you just saw him. He was lying on a board or something like that, and they just had a fifty five gallon drum a bag of like blood they just like ripped open. It's just like flooding. I mean, that really had to be hard. On his on his

breathing blood boarding yeah uh. And then we had the laughing Room sequence that was based on it. It was based on a joke that they, you know, they were doing the corner of Scott Spiegel was doing this sort of like he had the goose neck lamp and he's like like just doing that to Sam Raimie just to make him laugh. He's like, we're gonna put that in there, and they did the whole thing. They you know, turned the whole room and it is like both hilarious and

it's really unsettling. It works on both. I mean unsettling, like when the deer head comes alive, but then so silly when Bruce Campbell is doing like the leg bends along with the yeah, and he's like he's laughing, he's laughing, until finally he's just like stops laughing. He's just like starts screaming, and then everything shuts there's a noise outside, everything shuts down. Another use of silence, yea, and he just shoots and then there's like silent silent silent opens

the door and it's tackled by Jake. But there's a great thing where he's like he's clearly, as they pointed out in the director's commentary, Like you can clearly see if you were standing at the door that somebody's charging at you, uh, for like three seconds, you'd be like but he just like even though I mean I never thought about it because it was just like, it's so effectives same as a jump scare. Well, this is when everyone's brought back together though, and they all meet up

or not brought back together, but introduced to each other. Uh, and we get ash locked in the basement with uh Ted Ted Ramy, Henrietta in a suit is in my fruit fresh So you're really good at that stuff. Man, I love I love this movie so much. I've seen it so many times. But yeah, it's funny because but this is the first Like when I started prepping for doing this, I've been watching it. I've watched it with the commentary twice. I've watched it like like with full

attention once. I've watched it in the background three or four times. I don't because I work from home and I don't mind just given it my all, um, but it's such a fun uh. But yeah, I mean this is the first time, this round of watching it was the first time, I was like, oh, yeah, that is obviously ted Ramy. I can see him under there. And the Henrietta suit he wears is like this late text

like and it's not like modern late text. It was like an older super stubby, super heavy and he had like bean bags full of lentils in there to give it like extra weight and like the Bible and uh, you know, it took six hours I think to put it on, and then he couldn't, you know. So it's

like if you're I don't know. I just remember like a friend of mine work, my friend Griffin, was Arthur on The Tick, the New Tick series, and he said that like when that Peter Serafinowitz would have he had his tick suit and even something like that, which seems like it wouldn't be uh, wouldn't be a really difficult suit where was hot as hell. And so it's just like they had to keep the studio really cold and you know, in order to keep him like from passing out.

They didn't have that sort of luxury for ted ray May. I've heard legendary stories about the sweat created. Yeah, it was like there's one scene at the end where it's like he's spinning around like holding Annie and you can see sweat pouring from his ear. It that was sweat. It was sweat. It looks disturbing because you don't know what it is. And there's also a giant rip in the ass that you can point. Yeah, the stud had been through so much. If you look at it, you

can just see like there's a big gap. Well, it's a good place to go. We also get in that scene one of the great uh can't be kind of fun shots, and again just an example of Sam Ramy's sense of fun and play, when the eyeball was popped out and travels across the room into Bobby Joe's mouth. It's great. They ripped that off from the Three Stooges, uh, pretty directly. They're like, there's a lot of three stooges

in this. They're like, the three Stooges are seat watching an opera singer and they decided to like flip grapes at him. So they line up grapes on their elbows and start like flipping them, and one just goes right into his mouth. So that's a but yeah, it's and then they have you have the eyeball point of view. You know, it's so great. It travels along with the eyeball. And and again Bob you know the actor what was her name who played Bobby Joe h The actor was

Cassie Wesley. Yeah, I mean again knowing what type of movie she's in, her reaction and that shot was so spot on in perfect Yeah she doesn't like yeah, and she is also you know, and then when then when Ed? Uh is a lot of the violence in this A lot of the violence you see is just people being thrown against walls. It's like, that's the only time you see actual physical damage happening to people. Is I'm just kind of true because a lot of the chainsaw stuff

you see off screen or in shadow or silhouette or whatever. Um. But when Ed becomes possessed, that's the we are all the things that were and such a great line the creature working it is really fantastic. Yeah, it's a great it's a really good makeup work. It's uh who did that? That would be uh what I haven't written down? Uh, Greg Nicktaro is one of them. I think Mark Oh, Mark Shostrom. I was like, what are they right there?

But they weren't like Jello Legends or anything like no. I think two of them had written a two of them and worked on Dawn of the Dead with George Romero, and uh, you know, I think one of them had actually worked on Evil Dead and they had never all worked together before, so you know, but this was something they started production on it like I think like three or four months beforehand. They just did all the casting.

They did the molds of everybody and uh, you know, they did the molds of the actors and then they like did the casts of the faces and the masks and so on. It really looks good. Yeah, the Evil ad especially looks good. Like it's like he's just got those like multiple rows of teeth and his eyes, the eyes like being whited out. We're a big That was

kind of a big deal. Well not a big deal, but you know, the technology now, I believe, is a lot better where they have some of like soft shells which they're like colored and you can put them in and it's not and you still see. Yeah, back then they had what they called scleral shells, which we're not, which we're basically hard contact lenses, except when they would fit most of the eyeball, it's like putting an eggshell over your eye, ye, except for under your eyelid, and

you couldn't see. So that's why a lot of the times, you know, there's a scene, there's one scene where uh evil Ash has to like grab Jake. There's like an elbow, you know, there's a hand like guiding his his hand because he can't see where it is. You know, you can't see anything. And so when Ted Raymie is doing all that acting with these scuiral shells in, he can't

see anything. So he's like, he's like, I think he's like the like it goes ash uh like as far as like great actors like Bruce Campbell, Uh, Cassie Wexley or Wesley Ted Raymie. In my opinion, those are the three. Like everybody else like gets a passing. It's like a b except for you know, I'm sorry, Richard Dohmler, you get a scene you passed. But I love said Raymie. And I always get the sense that Sam loves kind of fucking with him and putting him through. Oh yeah, yeah,

he's brother. Come on. He would apparently he would just be like, come on, tough en up, you're okay. Yeah he was really, I mean, he also like showed up that he was. His first on screen appearance was in The Evil Dead where he was fake she shemping, which was love that they shemp in their credits and did that on some of my short films. That's tribute, yeah, because it's just such a great word. Yeah shemp. Yeah, yeah, there was like it's the fake Shemp is based on

the three Stuges shorts. Chump was the second Curly. I mean not sure Curly was the Curly, but but he Schump followed Curly. But then they wouldn't shoot every short together. They would shoot them like they would just shoot batches of scenes. And they were shooting batch of scenes for their final and not for their final but for a year, and the actor who played Schump died and so they had to that's when they brought in the fake Shemp.

That the guy who had like sort of bell Lego see you know, like bell Lego see chiropractor his way through the scenes, like just like shoot him from behind, like use old footage, etcetera, etcetera. And so that's what they that's why they call that's why they have fake chemps because they were in the original Evil Dad. Everybody was there for six weeks and like, we can't. We only plan to be here for six weeks, we can't

be here anymore. And they laughed, and so they just had to bring it all these like like stand ins. Always just used it in my credits as a um as a stand in for like, you know, bar shimp or the guy in the background that does the one thing, or you know, would chimp. So I probably didn't even need it correctly, but it was my little nod to Raymie. It's yeah, it's a fun and it's fit. Shemp is

a very fun word in itself. So Bobby Joe is taken at this point she runs out the Uh Professor Raymond Noby uh breaks in, well that's those great secrets of shots which I can't I can't remember if they did it, like with a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens. They just like those really flat so you get those really flat shots where it's just like they

shoot all over the place. Uh something He used a lot in his series gosh, what was it called American Gothic, which was a fun that was fun, and then they canceled it before it got any resolution. But um, yeah, they and then like you know, Professor Raymond. He comes back and says, you have the secret is in the book. You have to read the page passages and get rid of the evil. The severed hand grabs Bobby Joe. She freaks out, runs away into the woods. I'm not holding

your hand him holding your hand? Baby. Um, well that introduces the whole sequence that where Bobby Joe is gone and Jake then is that becomes his driving force to get Bobby Joe back. Yeah, he yeah, he picks up the shotgun. He's like tries to make them go into the woods, grabs the grabs the pages of the book. And it's funny because you watch him walk by right by a blazing fire in the fireplace, and it said he like lifts up the lifts up the trap door

and throws him in there. I didn't even think about that. I did the last time I watched it. I did. I was like, why did he just like but again she was like, yeah, I don't know. I'm not gonna apologize for like picking picking anymore. Yeah, you can make little jokes like that. Yeah, it's fine. Um, So they go out get you know, Ash gets repossessed and more good creature work. Possessed. Ash looks great, yeah, and like grabs Jake, throws him into a tree. She runs like,

and he runs back into the cabin. She hears somebody outside open the door and stabs. It turns out to be Jake, who is still alive. Stabs with a movie prop that's probably a movie prop I might want to own more than any other. The knife that's made out of chicken bone. Yeah, man, it's so good. I wonder where that ended up. I think they might still have of it. I think that according to the commentary, well was recorded in like nineteen, I think they still had it.

Maybe it's like so they had years ago. Yeah, gosh, that is just a long time ago, isn't it. Well anyway, Sat class reunion. I didn't go, but yeah, I I skipped mind as well. Not for any reason, but I was just like, I just didn't have the time, and I was just like, yeah, here's to be here's to all guys, all right. But yeah, she stabs him with that great, great knife um ash. Oh. Well the cellar

blood scene where when they pull in Jake, it's fantastic. Yeah, where Henrietta grabs him by the head pulls him to the cellar, and it's just like and just being bathed in like a like bathe are show showered actually, just just all this blood pouring out so great, just so much blood. Yeah, and then it's like it's Ash comes back possessed. He gets deep possessed because he sees that cheap necklace. Yeah. Yeah, and he's like, that's a great

sequence when she tries to get kill him with the acts. Yeah, I'm all right now, but she keeps coming back, and she keeps coming back right, and then at the end she's like, okay, but for how long? This is a very good point? Um and yeah, and then it sets up that last fifteen minutes of the movie so well though, and that's where he does you know, we get the great chainsaw scene when he's rigging up his system. And

it's one thing I loved about Spiderman too. Um. The one with after Melina and Dot Doc was the surgery scene, which is the one time that Ramy goes full on in that movie. Yeah, because he uses all those same shots, those quick quick zoom like Dutch tilt zooms, and in that one scene he goes full same raymy horror movie just for like a minute when you know, all the nurses are being thrown around the room and it has the p o V shot of the of dock tentacles

going around and looking around. It's like just full on evil dead and this is one little nod. I think I need to watch that again. It's been That was a good one. They were all, I mean, I even the third one, which was like his weakest, because I think I blame I mean, I blame the studio for that, because they I think they were like, well, we've already had one villain, now we gotta up the end and

have two villains. I think he just wanted to do a Sandman one, like we got to introduce uh I want to say spawned, but it wasn't spawn right, which to me, I was out of comic books by that time, so I was just like, I was like, I don't

care about Venom, give me some more Sandman. Those first two were good, though, and especially the second one I thought is still one of the great Spider Man movies, right with a cameo by Bruce Campbell, the Theater Rusher, that's right, and like being it like you can't come into I forgot about that actually, uh So now he's rigged up with the chainsaw, and he's fully become ash the superhero that we will come to know from the

from Army Darkness in the in the TV show. Um, when he's got all the bravado and he's not just being thrown around. He's in charge. And she starts reading

the reading the passages to summon the evil. Ah, but there's also a funny things like the evil manifests itself and he's like, don't look, don't look his like his hair turns white, and it's this giant what they call the rock, the rotten apple head, right, which you don't see as much because apparently it just didn't look as good as they thought it would, so you just get to see a little bit of it. Um and uh. And she, you know, his hair turns white and then

she's like, how do we stop this thing? Shake? I only even say that the first passage, the one that some of the mess makes them evil manifest itself, instead of like reading the second passage. It's like, that's how this works. Uh, And then he you know, she ends up getting stabbed by the hand with the with the chicken with the chicken bone knife, but she does manage to squeak out the last bit of the recitation to

to dispel the evil. The rift opens sucking it in, and then it keeps on sucking, and Bruce Cambell gets sucked into the past and cue the Cue the Knights, which were apparently a such a great ending. Yeah, and apparently I read that Campbell had wanted to do what essentially was Army of Darkness in the second one. He wanted him to get sucked back and to do a time portal to medieval times. But I think the way

it worked out was great. Um, you know, the the perfect way to end this movie, because you so don't see it coming at the time, like upon first viewing, even though out of nowhere. Yeah, even though they show the picture of the guy with the chainsaw on his arm in the in the Book of the Dead. True, but you don't make the connection. Yeah, not at all. Yeah. Um, you just he wakes up and sees those nights around him ted Ramy of course. And Rob Tappert, who was

one of the producers. Really was that who that was? Yeah? Okay, it's funny because you can you can see ted Ramy kind of like he's sort of like has his arms boat out like sort of waddling. I don't know if he chose to do that because he knew it distinguished himself or those if those suits. The rest of the nights were played by a national guard. Uh oh really yeah? Do I call him a troop? It sounds like boy scouts if I say that, but national National guarists yeah,

reservists why? Um? Yeah. And then it's like such a great ending, yeah, that the big winged beast comes out, um, and he takes care of it and then is the god. He is the king. He did he who has come to stave us from the demons from the sky. Hell no now? And it is actually it's good because it's funny, but it's also just like really unsettling because he's like he just clearly does not want to be that guy. He just like he wants to go home to s mart and work. Uh yeah yeah, yeah. He he owns

it in three eventually. Yeah, but he he's he never is the willing um, the willing hero. Yeah. It seems like he's always just sort of roped into it, right. I mean, I also have to consider that he didn't get a whole lot of sleep for the last forty eight hours preceding this, he collapsed and he slept in a puddle for eight hours. That could have been very RESTful, though. Yeah, I didn't even consider that. But you're totally right. Uh did we do it? Do you got anything else? Um?

I just want to say that I don't know how even reviewed this, but I know he really liked The Evil Dead, the first Evil Dead. Um, he was a big fan. I remember watching I think that was another early horror movie memory I have, which was watching him reviewing Evil Dead. It must have it was on like their peat when it was on PBS, uh and not syndicated, and just seeing the scene where the light bulb He's in the basement and the light bulb fills up with

blood and I was just like, oh, that looks cool. Um. But I assume he was so he saw that on at the movies, yes, with it and Roper Oh no, no what Um? Yeah it was at the movie was at the movies or like there was like the PBS version, then there was like the syndicated version. Yeah, I can't remember which the PBS was. Yeah. I used to love

that show so good. It was so fun to watch. Yeah, there's even like you if you go and look at clips, you can find clips where they're just arguing and they just are really genuinely mad at each other about I don't think I even ever knew when that came on. It wasn't like appointment viewing. I just found myself catching it right for some reason. Maybe it's because they were only you know, you know, there are only three channels

or whatever, but that's sort of true. Yeah, there wasn't as much around, so you would happen up on stuff with regularity by accident. PBS is kind of like that's the way it is with PBS shows. It's like everything is like the Antiques Road Show. You're like flipping channels. Oh it's Antique road Show, all right, many hours a day? Do they actually showed this the good stuff? Though? Man?

I love that show and that introduced me to uh, you know, I was the little kid that watched Entertainment Tonight every night and subscribe to Premier magazine, and I was just I was away into it from an early age. It's funny to think about, like a ten year old sitting around and watching Cisco and Ebert. Yeah, but it is like it's true, like you get you know, you get to a point where you're you know, you just are.

I mean, in a lot of cases, this is the only exposure I would have to a lot of too many of these movies too, you know, I didn't see like I also remember similarly watching uh, you know, listening to NPR, and I did not just grow up as an NPRPBS household, by the way, I just want to

make that absolute clear. But you know, when I was fourteen years old, like i'd wake up that was the radio was set to NPR, and I listen to the morning edition and they interviewed Jim Charmish for Strangers than Paradise Interesting, and I was like, this movie sounds crazy but weird. I mean not crazy crazy, but you know, interesting different. So you know that's a lot of the

you know, that was how it was introduced. I mean just clearly, before you could swap around, send around videos ease with ease, and like send people links and be like you know, yeah, there was so much word of mouth. Well before they you could go to iTunes movie trailers and just watch all the trailers. Like I loved movie trailer I still do, but that was I watched Siskel and Ebertt largely too, to see what was coming right and what was worth watching and was worth checking out. Absolutely, yeah,

good stuff. Yeah, and it's like it's interesting because Ebert had you know, he got it. He always he always seemed to get it with with movies like that. Did you see the documentary? I didn't, Ebert. I need to watch it? Really great? Do you know is it streaming anywhere? I think it? I think it still is life itself really really good, very heartwarming. Okay, I will, I will seek it out. Yeah, you should check it out. You'd appreciate it excellent. Uh you got anything else? Uh? I

think that's about it. Do I have any other little tidbits? Uh? I think that's all I have tidbit wise? All right, Yeah, just like if you haven't, I mean, if you've listened this long, I assume you've already seen it, but go watch it again, and it's just it's worth a repeated viewing. Watch it every October. Yeah, watch it every October or you know that holds up? Yeah, get the blue ray and watch it, or the DVD and get get the

newer blue rays. Actually, I think Anchor Bay, Like I said, these movies kept Anchor Bay for a float for a long time. They shouldn't have. Anchor Bay was kind of air. Their transfers was always pretty bad. They did one that was like I did. I got a two discs set of The Evil Dead and it was like letterbox edition and regular edition or the full screen edition. I was like,

I'll watch the letterbox edition. And I was watching it and there's a scene where Bruce Campbell is walking around in the basement and he's in a pool of blood and there's like a band aid box floating in this pool of blood. But in the letter box edition that's cut off because it was shot in sixteen millimeter. It was never meant to be letterbox. It was just like bad way of saying. It was just like a way to sort of get money out of unwary consumers like myself,

Like another edition that leaves stuff out. Yeah, all right, Joe, thanks for being here, buddy, Thank you to look forward to the next one. I am too. Oh boy. Crush is produced, edited, and engineered by Ramsey unt here in our home studio at pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.