Over the course of the last couple of weeks I’ve watched “The Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead 2”, “Army of Darkness”, and “Evil Dead Rise”. I had watch “Ash vs. Evil Dead” many years ago and really enjoyed the show, so I finally wanted to get to know the original.
The first three are considered classics. Movies two and three are definitely entertaining but the first adjective I’d use to describe them is “weird”. Especially with movies one and two I got the impression, though, that everyone was on drugs while filming. At the same time it was great to see how Bruce Campbell as actor and Sam Raimi as director matured over the movies and how much they could do with the limited budget that they had. Looking back at the 1980s, the combination of splatter, comedy, and low budget was innovative and just for that these movies probably deserve the term “classic”, even though I probably simply have a different kind of humour. But as I said: I think they are entertaining!
In 2026 I just couldn’t watch any of them without also having IMDB and Wikipedia open all the time to learn why most of the second movie felt like a remake of the first and what’s up with the ending of “Army of Darkness”. I watched the director’s cut and that had a completely different ending from the theatric release.
In the end I still like the show best. Movies two and three give some nice background information about Ash and The Book of the Dead but I don’t think I’ve missed anything in the show without knowing the original movies.
Now I still want to watch “Evil Dead Burn” 😩
Ah, I nearly forgot about “Evil Dead Rise”. A lot of action, no humour, but also not a single dialog that is not completely weird. Decent but not a classic.
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