Evil Dead Marathon? Groovy.

Yesterday while visiting Guelph, in a feat of spontaneous geekiness and incredible financial irresponsibility, I bought the Evil Dead trilogy on DVD and held a marathon with my housemate. Before yesterday, I had not seen a single frame of any Evil Dead movie, although I did know the classic "This is my boomstick!" line from Army of Darkness. My housemate had only seen bits and pieces of Army of Darkness, and he vouched for it being one of the best things he's ever watched.

Now, I enjoyed the series so much that not only am I incredibly happy I now own physical copies of them, but I don't want to really spoil any of the plot (there really isn't much, if any). So I will say this:

Evil Dead is a well done gore-filled horror movie, a classic "kids rent out a cabin in the woods and shit goes down" scenario. Evil is unleashed, bodies are dismembered, and things are actually kind of scary (for a movie made in '81). It sets up Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness and introduces our protagonist, Ash.

Almost.

Evil Dead 2 is pretty similar in concept to it's predecessor, except the writers and directors decided to ease up on the seriousness. Evil Dead 2 shows Ash going fucking nuts, and in the last third of the movie, the writers though "Fuck logic. Let's have him graft a motherfucking chainsaw to his arm stump and grind the hell out of some demons". So. Yeah. It's pretty fucking sweet.

This is probably one of the best ways to spend 5 hours.

Army of Darkness is when the writers for Evil Dead 2 had a meeting and decided "Yeah, remember all that chainsaw grafting and demon slicing. That. More of it. But like, let's toss in some time travel, too. And an evil undead army. And like, an evil twin. How about we only have Ash speak in one liners? YES. BRILLIANT. GET ME MORE HEROIN."

Pictured: Army of Darkness DVD cover. Not Pictured: Any sort of  logic, restraint, or sobriety on the writers' behalf.

Needless to say, it topped the other two movies by a landslide.

So if there's a point to this post, it'll be, go out and see these god damned movies. Buy 'em if you can. They're worth the money. They'll have you and your friends laughing and reeling in disgust all night long. Evil Dead stands as a pretty solid horror movie, Evil Dead 2 straddles the line of horror and dark comedy, and Army of Darkness is one of those movies you watch because of how unpredictable and over-the-top-ridiculous is it.

That's all for now, folks! Hail to the king, baby.