Sam Raimi is The Evil Dead.
Make no mistake — square-jawed leading man Bruce Campbell is its public face, its swagger-filled voice and Raimi's perpetual muse, but the sensibility behind the Evil Dead franchise is Raimi's and Raimi's alone.
Fede Alvarez's 2013 remake-type-thing may have had the frenetic pace, the blood-gushing excess and some of the free-wheeling camera moves, but without Raimi's zany humor, without his anarchic zeal, it ended up sharing a font and some props with the franchise, but not a lot more.
That's why it's both the best and worst thing possible that Starz was able to secure Raimi to co-write and direct the premiere of its new half-hour horror-comedy Ash vs Evil Dead.
Ash vs Evil Dead is set some 30 years after the original movie, taking both Evil Dead and Evil Dead II as canon, but perhaps ignoring the events of Army of Darkness, or at least excluding them from a cheeky catch-up clip package that takes place 25 minutes in. Ash Williams (Campbell) is living in a trailer park, working in a big-box store, drinking and screwing a lot to dull the pain from what he and his deceased friends experienced in the cabin in the woods back in the day. He's also keeping the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in a locker in this trailer, which is a bad idea given the troubles this Book of the Dead unleashed in the past. It takes no time for a few ill-fated words to be uttered and for Deadites to rise and for Ash to remove his craftsman wooden hand and replace it with his old faithful chainsaw.
Read More "Ash vs Evil Dead' To Get...res Abroad
With demonic possessions running rampant, Ash has to team up with his ValueStop co-worker Pablo (Ray Santiago), a seemingly naive Honduran immigrant whose shaman uncle actually prepared him well for these circumstances, and Pablo's crush Kelly (Dana Delorenzo), who gets pulled unwillingly into these adventures. With undead infiltration into a big-box store backdrop, Ash vs Evil Dead feels a bit like a mash-up with The CW's short-lived Reaper, which makes sense with Reaper veteran Tom Spezialy co-writing the pilot with Ivan and Sam Raimi and with Reaper veteran Craig DiGregorio as showrunner.
Off on the side, Michigan state trooper Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones) is investigating some Necronomicon-related deaths and she meets a strange woman named Ruby, who has served no instant purpose and done nothing of interest through the first two episodes, but is introduced in the pilot because she's played by Lucy Lawless and if you want to get your fans jazzed about your pilot and Sam Raimi isn't enough, 30 seconds of Xena will sometimes suffice.
Premiering on Halloween night, the pilot is everything that fans will want in an Evil Dead TV show. It's drenched in spouting, dripping, viscous bodily fluids and loaded with Bruce Campbell attitude. Since Raimi is no stranger to operating within spartan financial limitations, the director's trademark mix of knowingly primitive and innovative practical effects work is on full display. The one-liners frequently hit and the scenes of heightened carnage also have the cartoonish audacity that keeps you giggling and watching through your fingers at even the most harrowing of moments. In a TV landscape that's past Peak Zombie, it's enjoyable to get reaccustomed to Raimi's ghouls and the rules that do and don't apply to them.
It's no surprise that the pilot as already played well to Raimi-friendly audiences and critics, and I'd expect audiences to respond well on Halloween.
Read More "Ash vs Evil Dead" Debuts... Comic-Con
The Ash vs Evil Dead pilot is great and it is also, to put it simply, a bait-and-switch.
It's common for networks to recruit big-name directors for high-priced pilots to lure viewers in for shows which will subsequently be helmed by directors who won't have the money, won't have the shooting days and won't have the freedom to recreate the pilot aesthetic subsequently. Sam Raimi doesn't direct the second episode of Ash vs Evil Dead and, according to press notes, he doesn't return behind the camera for the remainder of the 10-episode first season.
It shows.
Solomon Kane director Michael J. Bassett, who took over from Raimi for the second and third episodes, is not without horror-action bona fides, but when Evil Dead ceases to have the soaring, probing demon-cam, when it ceases to have the Looney Tunes-flavored gory dementia, when its cinematic restlessness is replaced by a conventional TV aesthetic, it's just not Evil Dead anymore.
The second episode isn't just flat and uninspired, it also pushes Ash vs Evil Dead into a half-hour box that didn't apply to executive producer Raimi, who got 40+ minutes for the pilot, mostly proving that it's hard to establish both comedic and horror rhythms in under 30 minutes and make either tone pay off satisfactorily. In the premiere, the tones blend nicely, but in the second episode any scene in which a creature isn't scurrying up walls, spinning their heads or grasping at our heroes with grimy claws and mindless desperation feels like a pointless imposition. And stranding Jones' in-the-dark trooper in a strictly dramatic procedural investigation disconnected from Ash and his new partners is the fastest way to make viewers resent a character who feels like she's in a different show.
With Jones a distraction and Lawless an early non-factor, Ash vs Evil Dead struggles to introduce its new characters in these opening installments. DeLorenzo has a little backbone, but makes only a limited impression, while Santiago does well as the wide-eyed proxy for the audience, alternating between shell-shocked and shameless Ash-worship. And who wouldn't worship Ash? Even in the less engaging second episode, Campbell is having a hoot playing this gone-to-seed version of the perpetually unreconstructed Ash. Cinching himself into a corset every morning so that he can still preen like a one-handed peacock, Ash is defined by the events he survived in the movies, events that both haunt him, but still give him a confidence he hasn't justified for decades. Campbell certainly hasn't lost a step.
The struggle with Ash vs Evil Dead is reconciling the giddy, maniacal pleasure that Raimi brings to the pilot with the by-the-numbers disappointment that the second episode delivers and knowing that that is more likely to be the series going forward. The second episode has properly gross effects and it has Ash making boorish comments and generally not giving a darn, and maybe with readjusted standards that'll be enough going forward. It's just less than the pilot promises and less than the Evil Dead name perhaps deserves.
November 09, 2015 8:21pm PT by Daniel Fienberg
'Fargo' Guest Bruce Campbell on the "Terror" of Playing Ronald Reagan, Shared B-Movie Background
Bruce Campbell of 'Fargo' Chris Large/FX
The actor also talks with THR about why he wanted to avoid Johnny Carson's "over-the-top" version of Reagan and 'Ash vs. Evil Dead's' early renewal.
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Monday's episode of Fargo, "The Gift of the Magi."]
Ronald Reagan has been all over FX's Fargo this season.
With the 1980 election on the horizon, posters of the actor-turned-politician have been in the background of many shots, while a couple fictionalized Reagan films have served as the backdrop for both the season's black-and-white cold open and for the movie theater shootout that brought Michael Hogan's Otto Gerhardt to power.
The former California governor and upstart presidential candidate made his first in-person appearance on Fargo in Monday's episode, as a campaign jaunt took him through Minnesota and earned him an escort courtesy of State Trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson). The episode captured Reagan's almost hypnotic power over the disenchanted electorate, but a men's room conversation with Lou also proved Reagan's limitations.
Fans have been eagerly anticipating Reagan's presence since it was announced that Evil Dead and Burn Notice star Bruce Campbell would be playing the role, reuniting him with Fargo executive producer John Cameron, a friend dating back to their high school days in Michigan.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Campbell, a busy man after Starz's early renewal of Ash vs. Evil Dead, about tapping into his inner Reagan and the challenges of making this a performance rather than an impersonation.
I know that you and producer John Cameron go way, way, way back. Was that how this opportunity made its way to you?
My buddy John and I go back to high school and had always imitated Reagan shamelessly, like a lot of my contemporaries. My kids grew up in a Reagan Era, they were young during that decade, so we mocked him good! So that must've been how that came in, that John was like, "OK. I've seen Bruce do Reagan for years" and I'm sure Noah Hawley was at least intrigued.
But then this opportunity comes to you. What is your reaction to being asked to actually play Reagan on-screen?
Terror. And fear. Mostly because this is a show that has won some Emmys. I don't usually do the Emmy. That's not really my bag. I do B-television and B-movies. I got nervous. I shot it in advance and sent it to them to see what they thought. Like, "If you want to fire me, do it now, because this what I'm going to do."
From your point-of-view, what is the key to playing Ronald Reagan as a character, rather than just doing a Ronald Reagan impression?
For sure! You have to think about what he was up to at that particular time, which was campaigning. He changed his philosophy. He was much more liberal. He solidified some of his opinions and beliefs when he worked for GE for five years as a spokesman. That got him really good at speaking and he became good at extemporaneous speaking and that got him into the whole corporate thing. I think mostly with Reagan, you've got to believe what you say. He believed what he said. He was a true believer in himself. I don't think he was a bullshit artist.
How important is it for you to remember that this was 1979 Reagan and not the 1980s Reagan who comes to mind first for many of us now?
Yeah, he wasn't the jelly bean Reagan. This guy was on the move. He hadn't been shot yet and he was still a very vital guy. … We wanted to make sure that the hair was right. I've got enough hair left so we just beefed up what I had. But Reagan, boy that guy had hair. And the other thing is that he told jokes a lot before his speech. It was really crazy. There's a lot of footage. He's a modern president, so a lot of his stuff is available to watch and he'd start with a Russian joke. He was always taking cheap shots at the Russians. He wanted to impress upon the American people that Russians were really just a bunch of backwater schmos run by an idiot and that we shouldn't worry about them like, "This is what these people are up against over there. They need to revolt."
I don't know how he did it, but boy he sure made life simple. "Things can be good again. Things can be great again." And it was amazing how the '80s became the '50s again in a weird way. But the one thing I noticed about his cabinet, even at that time, is they were all old men, they were all doddering old men. That's fine. They had a lot of experience. But I just felt, even then, that they were completely out of touch.
You were a young man at this point. What are your memories of the 1979 that Reagan was rising in?
I'll tell you what, 1979 sucked, aside from us making Evil Dead. The investment climate was gnarly. Interest rates were bad. I remember the lines at the gas pumps very specifically. … It wasn't a very happy time. People weren't happy with Carter. They thought he was weak. And Reagan, it's pretty telling that literally like the day after he was inaugurated they freed the hostages and that was something Carter had really been working on and I think basically he was sending a message of, "You'd better f---ing release those hostages now that I'm running the show or it's over." It was reminiscent of the George W. [Bush] approach: "We are still the superpower. You will listen to us. And if you f--- with us, you're really going to regret it." It's just different approaches.
Carter, aside from the fact that he's a very caring man who obviously cares about humans, but I don't think the impression of him was that good at that time. So '79 was kind of crappy. I can see why a guy could come in and rally everybody out of their stupor and who better than an actor? And I have to say this: I also have stuff in common with him. I've done plenty of B-movies, so I kind of get that. We're both from the Midwest. He's from Illinois. I'm from Michigan. So it wasn't a big stretch like coming up with a "Hahvahd accent." I didn't have to do anything silly like that.
Reagan does, however, have that very distinctive voice and cadence and you're doing the quieter version, as opposed to like the Phil Hartman SNL version. How did you decide when you had enough Reagan that people would recognize it, but not too much Reagan?
I just think he has a cadence whether it's loud or small. He was a good speaker! Some people don't remember, but he did radio forever. All these old-timers did radio. So I think that was mostly just how he spoke. And I also wanted to avoid the Johnny Carson version of Ronald Reagan, too. (Shifts to Carson-Reagan) "Mmm-hmm." That was just completely over-the-top. But you still pick out mannerisms in each of those. Whether it's Phil Hartman or me or Johnny Carson, there's still aspects that are always going to be there about him. The way he shook his head, a little bit. Everybody, when they speak, they have a certain thing they do with their body language, so it was really that. It wasn't anything over-the-top. And my suits had to fit. I had to make sure they fit, because that's important.
I love the scene with Reagan and Lou at the urinal, because that scene seems to capture both Reagan's believable empathy, but also how superficial and empty he could come across. How did you approach that scene?
(Laughs.) He doesn't have an answer! He doesn't have all the answers. We can say that we have all the answers. We can get up there and give speeches and tell people, "You know if you want a great country again, here's what we have to do," but it doesn't stop people from getting cancer. It doesn't stop their lives from being discarded. Speeches aren't going to stop anything. So yes, the theory is great. "Let's pick ourselves up by our bootstraps" and he honestly believes that as an American you can overcome anything, even your wife who's dying. He couldn't abandon his approach, but it does show a little bit of the fallibility of it, that it is a pie in the sky theory. Instead of being the president goes, "I feel your pain, all you poor people, we're going to help you right now," that was not the approach. If you were poor, that was your fault. Americans can do anything. Why are you poor? "You just have to work a little harder." He's still stuck with the attitude at the time, "Well, if you just roll up your sleeves and sweat a bit..."
What was it like rolling into a show like this as the special guest star of the week? And not just the special guest star, but playing freaking Ronald Reagan?
It's all about the material when you get on shows like that. It's not about blowing up cars. It's about acting and directing and storytelling. It was great. Look, I've done the TV shuffle for years, so I get it. When you're on somebody else's conveyor belt, just be ready. It's the same thing with television, you've just got to be ready. If they're moving quick, you've got to be moving quick, too. If they're moving a little slower, "Fine, I'll slow down." But that's TV. That's the beauty of TV. No one dicks around in television.
And before you go, congrats on the early renewal for Ash vs. Evil Dead.
Yeah!
I assume y'all had to see that renewal coming, that it wasn't a surprise?
Honestly, as you prep for season two of anything, we had to get a writers' room going again right away, we had warehouse spaces locked down, the same crap you have to do for any TV show. I think they saw the enthusiasm for the show. Every show will have to prove itself over time if they can sustain it, but I think they saw how big the fan base was. They saw it at San Diego Comic-Con and they got a taste of it when they showed the first episode at New York Comic-Con. These are people who light their hair on fire when they like something. These are great fans and I think they got it.
What didn't hurt is the fact that Evil Dead started overseas. It couldn't get released in the States until we made money overseas in England, with Palace Pictures. I think they went, "Oh, we can sell this foreign, too." Not every show can translate across The Big Ditch. So we had a couple distinct advantages. Starz wants to do shows that people don't like a little bit. They want to do shows that people like a lot. That's their current current mantra and I think we fit into that.
Fargo airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on FX. Ash vs. Evil Dead airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Starz.
Ash vs. Evil Dead Premiere Review (Spoiler-Free)
We caught the groovy world premiere of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and we're happy to say the violence and comedy is back. Grab an axe.
This Ash vs. Evil Dead review is spoiler-free.
It's been 23 years since Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Rob Tapert depicted horror's greatest loudmouth, Ash Williams, mugging before cameras in between bouts of gore and groan-inducing one-liners. And for the last 22 years, fans have been asking the filmmakers about when there was going to be another adventure featuring the braggart and his trusty chainsaw.
That wait came to an end at New York Comic Con when Starz's Ash vs. Evil Dead premiered before a ballroom full of primitive screwheads. The sea of chainsaw-shaped foam fingers was greeted by Bruce Campbell who ostensibly came onstage to introduce a clip while telling a story about his parents. But before he could finish the second sentence, out walked Sam Raimi who gladly belittled and bullied his grade school chum: shut up and play the whole pilot for the fans.
Obviously this was rehearsed. But much like the actual series premiere episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, that playfully mean-spirited cruelty is what fuels your enjoyment in its best moments and helps buoy an exposition-heavy introduction into something eminently gory and entertaining. In short, this is definitely Evil Dead, baby. Grab an axe.
The pilot seems structured like the first act of Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi’s long bandied about Evil Dead 4 treatment. The opening scene of the episode is also what has appeared in all the trailers: Ash Williams still prepares for battle in the morning with severe intensity and the rapid-fire editing of extreme close-ups. Except instead of donning boomsticks, plates of armor, and that elusive chainsaw, he is popping on a man-girdle and dentures with a smile: the war is now with middle age and he is losing it. Badly.
Raimi, who also directed the pilot, uses his famously efficient style of storytelling to develop a world that has not changed much for Ash since the end of Army of Darkness, which is perhaps the most pathetic thing about the character. He is still a boozing womanizer who uses his missing hand to pick up chicks at the bar, and he still works at a massive retail store—now “Value Stop” instead of “S-Mart”—where depending on who you ask of his colleagues, he is either the coolest or lamest thing about the place.
It is also those co-workers who represent the pilot’s first of two major transitions for television. Unlike any of the previous Evil Dead films, there is a true supporting cast here dominated by Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo). Pablo idolizes Ash as a wise man, and Kelly sees him for the sad sack piece of trailer trash he has become (or perhaps always has been?). But both find renewed purpose for him when the Deadites come calling.
How the Deadites actually return is one of the best jokes of the premiere that is too good to give away. Simply rest assured that the strained logic for the evil spirits in the woods to once again rise all but guarantees that Ash is already television’s greatest fool, and he isn't even on episode two.
But perhaps at first glance, the episode would seem to spend too much time underlining that point. In setting the tone of the series, the 30-minute pilot spends time aplenty with Ash behaving as ever the scoundrel while holding back on some of the visual flourishes fans tend to expect. There is the definite sense that Raimi is restraining himself behind-the-camera from the kind of elaborate forced, cant angles and inventive filmmaking that elevated the Evil Dead trilogy from mere schlock and into the realm of something deviously special.
... That is until the last 10 minutes or so of the 30-minute pilot. Ash vs. Evil Dead might appear stilted by relying on that familiar B-horror shorthand of archetypal characters and traditional horror set-ups, and the sudden inclusion of CGI, as opposed to stop-motion animation and the gallons of blood, for the pilot's most elaborate effects can at times feel like a concession. Still... just wait for those last 10 minutes.
To quibble about storytelling tropes or the hue of blood in an Evil Dead project is missing the forest for the demonically possessed raping trees. And to be certain, the Ash vs. Evil Dead pilot is holding back almost all of its best stuff for a kidney punch of fun for the diehards (and just a kidney punch for Campbell).
While much of the first half of the episode seems poised to set-up how the storyline can work weekly with Ash interacting with other characters in far less elaborate situations—wherein the best stuff is some classic sight gags that would not be out of place in an Abbott and Costello or Three Stooges routine—the second half is delayed wish fulfillment and fan satisfaction. Raimi lets loose when the Deadites come after Ash in force, and every single beloved weapon, one-liner, and aggressive “Force” shot with Dutch angles is delivered in a bountiful gush of crimson red.
By the premiere's end, most of one's doubts are put to bed and Bruce Campbell is allowed to strike a pose that you might have forgotten you missed. And unlike other resuscitated TV series stars who aired a sleepy pilot premiere at NYCC this weekend, Campbell both on stage and on the screen in Ash vs. Evil Dead looks ecstatic to be here. After 30 years, he knows this character and he fits into the role as comfortably as a steel-iron glove. His comedic timing might have even improved since we last saw that Chin cracking wise to soul-sucking hellions of the pit.
As a bit of narrative storytelling, fans will have to wait to see how this works as a week-to-week series. Raimi only filmed the first episode, and a character as hammy as Ash Williams interacting with people who aren’t dead five minutes later might remain a challenge. However, there are some interesting story threads sown away from the boomstick.
The most promising of which is Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones), who participates in the other great set-piece of the episode. The best Deadite attack of the night occurs when showrunner Craig DiGregorio and Raimi pay tribute to Linda Blair in The Exorcist and do her one better by showcasing an entire demonic attack with a head screwed on backwards (there is also even a horror-junkie-delight homage to one of the better scares in The Exorcist III).
It is also in this story thread where Lucy Lawless’ Ruby Knowby is introduced in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo—a down payment on presumably good things to come. These two women represent the living humans Ash’s idiocy leaves behind in its narcissistic wake. That might be the very best reason to rationalize a weekly serial with this guy.
Well, that plus the groovy blood-letting and one-liners. The pilot offers all of that by the end in a delayed satisfaction of violence that is a rush to behold. Whatever else can be said about the episode, there is no denying that when it is over, Evil Dead fans will be chomping at the bit to slice through another one.
Welcome back, Ash Williams, you magnificent bastard.
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