The hell with those recent Evil Dead remakes/reboots even though they’re objectively pretty good, because the TRUE follow-up to the trio of Sam Raimi-directed/Bruce Campbell-starring films is Ash vs Evil Dead, which deserves a fresh look now that it’s streaming on Hulu. Launched in 2015, the series lasted three seasons on Starz and put Campbell front and center, resuming his role as Ash Williams, the wisecracking wiseass hero-doofus with a chainsaw for an arm and a macadamia nut for a brain. The story finds Ash older and grayer and more love-handled, but still capable of walloping the splick outta undead Deadite foes – undead Deadite foes that he appears to have accidentally unleashed upon humanity. Oops! Pobody’s nerfect, right?
Opening Shot: Exterior: an Airstream trailer. Those are generally too expensive for a lowly, almost certainly broke retail schmoe like Ash, but they look cool so we’ll let it slide. Maybe he inherited it?
The Gist: Nighttime. Ash is gearing up. We see a closeup of his hand on a leather strap and with a YANK we get a wildly deranged zoom-out that only Sam Raimi could pull off and learn that the strap is on Ash’s girdle. A couple sad-ass decades have passed since Army of Darkness and our boy is showing it a bit here and there. He’s stoked though: Deep Purple’s ‘Space Truckin’’ blasts on the soundtrack as he splashes on rotgut cologne, takes a long pull from a Hi-C juice box, grabs a couple condoms, attaches his wooden prosthetic hand and hops in the ’73 Olds Delta 88 that’s in every stinking Raimi movie. He hits the local gargle-factory, finds a lonely woman and before you know it he’s using one of those condoms as she’s bent over the ladies room sink. Mid-bang, he takes a look at her pretty face and she’s suddenly a Deadite, you know, one of the zombielike subhumans from this franchise. But then she’s not, so was he hallucinating or what? Dunno. But he finishes anyway and it isn’t quite as satisfying as it should be if her face hadn’t morphed from ecstatic to repugnant and back.
Unsettled, Ash returns to the Airstream and opens his cedar chest and there it is: The Book of the Dead. Grim rictus on the cover. Human skin binding. Unmistakable. A bag of old weed falls out of it, triggering a FLASHBACK: Ash had a total babe over and they got high and spoke a little incantation and now… what? I’ll tell you what. Ash f—ed up. Bad. Because we cut to two cops, called to a house on a report of unholy screaming coming from an old house. One is Amanda (Jill Marie Jones) and the other doesn’t deserve a name with the actor name after it in parentheses because soon enough he’ll be possessed by the Deadite curse and he’ll inflict some pain on poor Amanda before she blows his head off in a burst of pus and gloop. Sorry buddy. That’s just the way the skull crumbles.
Ash decides he has to take the Book to a guy, I dunno who it is, probably a Subject Matter Expert of some sort. But first he wants to collect his paycheck from the local Value Mart where he’s a stockboy. He’s in a hurry, but not enough of one that he can’t hit on the new trainee, Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), even knowing that his pal Pablo (Ray Santiago) crushes real hard on her. Ash meanders into the stockroom and is attacked by a possessed doll as doom clouds roll in over the store and perhaps all reality, it’s hard to tell, but it sure seems like All Hell is breaking loose. Before you know it he and Pablo and Kelly are back at the Airstream packing his shit for an adventure, and fending off the Deadites who used to be his neighbors. Meanwhile, officer Amanda is greeted in a diner by an odd woman in white (Lucy Lawless), who surely plays a key part in this plot, because you don’t just hire Lucy Lawless for a quickie cameo, do you? Hell no!
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Raimi finds a winning formula here, drawing on the winking campiness and endearing cheap-o VFX of his ’90s TV productions, Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, stirring in some trademark Evil Dead splatter-comedy to please the gore fiends.
Our Take: FUN. Ash vs Evil Dead is just plain all-caps FUN. Granted, it starts off scorching-hot like a flamethrower’d rump roast and cools off a touch in subsequent episodes, because Raimi helms the pilot and never directs another episode. But he got it wound up, and the first season charges ahead with significant momentum thanks to that initial burst.
Let’s stick with this debut episode though, which is a riot, and sets its hook deep. Campbell is in peak form as the quasi-hero who’s a badass and an asshole and gets more lovable the more of an asshole he is, oh, and by the way, good on Ash for somehow being able to get some on a what appears to be a regular basis (must be some sad, sad females out there if they’re buying his witheringly pathetic pickup lines). These types of things are so much better with a loon like Campbell, who’s a true original, 1/1, a nutball unlike any other nutball, and a gifted physical comedian (especially when working with a gifted physical-comedy director like his old pal Raimi).
Without him, this series would be just another forgettable slab of non-prestige serialized television that’s happy to scratch a genre itch by delivering a save-humanity-as-you-save-yourself zombie plot. And gore, loads of it. Campbell cultivates nifty chemistry with right-hand pals Santiago and DeLorenzo, who are up for being the emotionally sympathetic yin to Campbell’s jerktastic yang. (Note: Santiago and DeLorenzo are also pretty funny on their own.) And yes, I said “right-hand pals” even though I know damn well Ash doesn’t have a right hand anymore; he dishes out a lot of shit in amusing fashion, so he should be able to take it.
Sex and Skin: The aforementioned over-the-sink schtuppery is a first-episode highlight, since Ash slaps his ladyfriend on the buttocks with his prosthetic mitt.
Parting Shot: Ash poses iconically with Pablo one side of him and Kelly on the other and his CHAINSAW attached to his wrist, beeyotch!
Sleeper Star: DeLorenzo shows an acting chop or two, shifting from an irritated eyeroll in the face of Ash’s sleazy sexism, to scream-queen in the face of murderous Deadites, to being impressed in the face of Ash’s heroic ability to so stylishly render the heads of Deadites separate from the rest of their bodies. (That’s pretty much how we all feel about Ash; she just does it really well on-screen.)
Most Pilot-y Line: How about a classic Ash one-liner? Like: “My heart is jackhammering like a quarterback on prom night.”
Our Call: What about all-caps FUN did you not understand? STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.