12 Things You Didn't Know About The Evil Dead Movies
He's met his share of Deadites, but Ash has hung with Freddy, Jason, and Spider-Man too...
“Klaatu barada nikto” is the phrase that starts off all the trouble in the Evil Dead franchise. It's also lifted word-for-word from the classic 1951 science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Sam Raimi's series of darkly comedic horror films are cult prospects for a reason, and dorky little in-jokes like that is just one explanation for their success.
Beginning with The Evil Dead in 1981, made on an incredibly low budget by Raimi and a group of mostly unknown actors – amongst them Bruce Campbell, who became a B-movie star thanks to his later collaborations with the director – and continuing with a slapstick sequel, medieval threequel and 2013 remake, the series has been summoned again.
Campbell's put-upon hero is going to be fighting the force of darkness again in Ash Vs Evil Dead, a TV series picking up the struggle against Deadites with just a boomstick and chainsaw hand. A trailer at Comic-Con 2015 was more than enough to get the franchise's obsessive fans hailing to the king once more, baby.
From those who watch the trilogy obsessively to the viewers who caught a bootlegged VHS of the original, banned film back in the eighties, there's a significant fan base for the Army Of Darkness out there. But even they may be ignorant to why there's multi-coloured blood in the second film, how different the third is in Japan, or when Ash met Spider-Man...
12. Evil Dead II Has Barely Any Red Blood
There are buckets of gore splattered across all the Evil Dead films, but the slapstick sequel might have the most viscera-per-minute. There's plenty of blood and guts in the original, but somehow – despite Evil Dead II nominally being a funnier, lighter riposte to its predecessor – the follow up lays on the Karo syrup even thicker.
Here's the thing though: film censors don't smile all that fondly on that much claret being traumatically spurted over the screen. A lot of the success of the first Evil Dead was down to its notoriety, being branded a Video Nasty in the UK and all. But the second film was funded by the legit De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. They wanted a wide release.
So, Sam Raimi found an ingenious way of getting around this Motion Picture Association of America edict: barely any of the blood in the film is actually, well, blood-coloured. If you pay attention, you'll see Bruce Campbell slipping over in oily expulsions, green slime, and occasionally splattered with bright red blood; but nothing realistic-looking.