clownfoot
Posts: 5677
Joined: 26/9/2005
From: The ickle town of Fuck, Austria
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: punchdrunk
quote:
ORIGINAL: clownfoot
quote:
ORIGINAL: MOTH
The supposedly superior Evil Dead II fails to reach the same heights, despite a bigger budget, more gore and some more innovative camera use. You have to credit Raimi for convincing someone to give him a lot of money to make exactly the same film as before, but unlike Evil Dead, this is played more for laughs which diminishes its effect as a horror movie. At the risk of incurring the wrath of some posters on this forum, this is hugely overrated.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong... 
True Clownfoot its only rated highly by a few movie buffs, good call...
A few? Please check last years Forum poll and tell me where Evil Dead 2 finished. One of the Top 30 favourite films of this particular Forum. Methinks that means it's highly rated by a good majority of the Forum...
And for those not in the know, here's a brief reason why...
The majority of films have no aspirations for greatness. They have no delusions of grandeur and lack any pretensions regarding content, simply existing to entertain. It certainly doesn’t help if the title features the dreaded number “2” – uh-oh, a sequel – or if the film is associated with the dire eighties gore-filled horror genre.
Something went wrong with Evil Dead 2.
The words “work of genius” should be guarded and thrown around lightly. But in this instance Evil Dead 2 has so much in its favour there’s little other way to describe the film. More than a cash-in on the critically acclaimed original, Sam Raimi’s flourishing directorial skills take the sequel on an alternative, yet equally bewildering gore fest of a journey.
The plot is pure simplicity. Dim-witted hero Ash (Bruce Campbell) turns on a tape-recording in a secluded cabin that recites passages from “The Book of the Dead” subsequently awakening dark spirits in the wood that possess his girlfriend Linda. With her head swiftly removed (via blunt shovel) Ash barricades himself in the cabin, fending off the spirits armed only with a shotgun, chainsaw and the few wits he has, fighting for survival as the night turns into a bloodbath of outrageous horror and carnage.
Raimi and Campbell combine brilliantly to produce a film that terrifies, excites and makes one laugh, often at the same time. Within the slight running time Raimi fills every frame with a stream of refreshing imagery and kinetic visuals. Frantic, cartoonish, excessive and totally original; all flying cameras, weird point-of-views and dizzying angles - none more so than the camera (representing an unseen force) crashing through numerous doors of the cabin in pursuit of Ash – it’s simply inspired. A technical achievement equally on par with Citizen Kane, rarely is such innovative camerawork seen.
The same can be said of the script. With minimal, yet endlessly quotable dialogue, the film succeeds based on the originality of the situations Ash finds himself coping with. From having his girlfriends decapitated head biting his hand and refusing to let go, to her decomposing body performing a ballet routine before attacking him with a chainsaw, to the greatest scene of self-mutilation ever filmed – all played with an eye to three stooges tomfoolery by the put upon Campbell – Evil Dead 2 just works as an example of how to make a film relentlessly entertaining.
It even goes so far as to defy most horror movie conventions. A biting satire of the over-saturated horror film market of the 1980s, the removal of “teenagers” and a female lead replaced with the mighty Campbell playing the idiot Ash, is somewhat of a masterstroke. Having the audiences entertainment gauged by the amount of pain and humiliation Campbell suffers is borderline genius and makes way for possibly the greatest half-hour of film (where Campbell faces the evil forces alone in the cabin)ever committed to celluloid.
Staying the right side of parody, and featuring the requisite amount of shock, gore and tensely built atmosphere, it's this careful balance between humour and horror that makes Evil Dead 2 so memorable. Having a disembodied hand trying to kill its owner is frighteningly entertaining; using Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms to trap it under a bucket is blackly comic brilliance. As funny as it is horrifying, coupled with a stark intelligence that beggars belief, this is filmmaking at its sharpest.
Did Sam Raimi go out of his way to make a masterpiece of film? I doubt it, but maybe that’s what makes Evil Dead 2 so superb – no delusions of grandeur, no aspirations of greatness. It just is. Perhaps if other films contained enough flying eyeballs, we would be able to appraise movies with the words “work of genius” much more often. This is one of the greatest films you will ever see, for just such a reason.
So, there you go. Easily Raimi's greatest moment and one of the finest films ever created. Here's to it appearing high-up in the next Forum poll... 
_____________________________
Evil Mod 2 - Hail he who has fallen from the sky to deliver us from the terror of the Deadites!
You wanna be a big cop in a small town? Fuck off up the model village.
I REALLY LOVE LOTR. ED SUX.
|
Printable Version
SAM RAIMI - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread