Starz could have hit with hip, funny spinoff
If Ash vs. Evil Dead weren’t already premiering on Halloween, someone would have to invent the holiday just to showcase the latest installment of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise on Starz.
More than 35 years ago, Raimi and two of his Michigan State University buddies, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, set out to make a horror film about college friends who share a remote cabin for the weekend and, after discovering the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, or the Book of the Dead, become possessed by demons and end up dead — except Ash, who avoids possession by cutting off his hand.
The first Evil Dead movie, considered one of the greatest cult films of all time, spawned two sequels, video games, comic books and a stage musical.
And, given the film’s potent mix of over-the-top horror and comedy, it makes sense for the three colleagues who made it to take The Evil Dead to the next level: a TV horror sitcom.
Ash (Campbell) is the world’s most unlikely hero. He’s full of hot air but no ambition.
As the series begins, he is working as a stock clerk at a store called Value Stop, going nowhere but mostly just hoping that the Deadites don’t return from wherever Deadites go between Evil Dead movies.
He actually has a friend — Pablo Simon Bolivar (Ray Santiago) — who covers up every time Ash makes a mistake and, for reasons completely unclear, blindly believes in Ash, far more than Ash believes in himself.
Pablo is completely smitten with co-worker Kelly Maxwell (Dana DeLorenzo), who has no interest in Pablo or anyone else because she has been permanently scarred by what the Deadites have done to people she cared about.
It doesn’t take long for the Book of the Dead to resurface and for the Deadites to come back to, well, not life exactly but murderous mobility.
It’s impossible to tell who has been possessed. It could be the sweet old lady (Sian Davis) who is Ash’s neighbor at the Mossy Haven Trailer Park, or maybe it’s Kelly’s mom, Suzy (Mimi Rogers), long thought to be dead but now back.
The gore and the laughs begin almost at once and never let up. The only way to kill a Deadite is to dismember it.
Decapitation is especially effective, especially when Ash removes the rosewood replica he uses in place of the hand he chopped off and screws in a chain saw.
Contrary to what viewers might initially think, horror and comedy work well together. In fact, comedy can be a useful tool to counterbalance even the goriest horror scenes.
The gore in Ash vs. Evil Dead might be omnipresent, but it can’t be taken seriously. The three unlikely heroes are so soaked in fake blood that viewers can barely make out their facial features — and yet it’s difficult not to laugh even harder.
The Deadites aren’t Ash’s only foes. He is already being pursued by police detective Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones), who thinks he is responsible for her partner’s death, and he’ll soon have to deal with Ruby (Lucy Lawless), who is out to avenge the Deadite murder of her family 30 years before.
Starz has carefully built the variety of its content base through the years, with bloodsex-and-sand epics such as Spartacus; the swashbuckling Black Sails; and the bodiceripping Outlander.
With Ash vs. Evil Dead, it earns a label that it hasn’t had before: hip.