Things are Slashy in New Zealand
Things are Slashy in New Zealand
by R. C. Murphy
We can’t forget about the bloodiest show currently on television. That’s not an overstatement. I’ve done the math. Last season, Ash vs Evil Dead easily used hundreds of gallons of various fake bloods, including flooding a room with the red stuff with Kelly trapped inside. Judging from the few on-set selfies and videos the show’s star, Bruce Campbell, dropped on his social media pages earlier in June, they’re on-track to make season three of the Starz show just as gruesome.
Filming for AvED began in New Zealand in early March. The super-tight leash the production team is keeping on the plot means we have nothing to go on beyond a few snapshots and quick Instagram videos from the cast. This could be a response to swapping show-runners before the new season began production. After season two, Craig DiGregorio parted ways with AvED, citing severe creative differences with producer Robert Tapert. It boiled down to Tapert’s vision for Ash stifling the more comedy-driven direction DiGregorio preferred for the universe. Mark Verheiden (Daredevil) stepped in to fill the void for season three. It’s safe to say, the laughs may be more subdued from here on out, but I highly doubt they’re going to take a franchise which thrives on its splatstick moniker and turn it into something as serious as The Walking Dead. Campbell says the secrecy is so they’re free to make season three more outlandish than the last. How they’ll accomplish that, I have no clue. Last season was a head-scratcher, what with the Ashy Slashy puppet and all.
The gang will be in New Zealand for a few more months. On May 6th, cast and crew celebrated the halfway point with a party, as one rightly should. That puts them firmly on schedule for the season. However, Starz has yet to announce a release date for the new episodes. Don’t ask Campbell for a release date, either. He’ll direct the question to the Almighty Starz Overlords with some form of biting sarcasm. If they stick to the usual schedule, expect to see the season premiere sometime around Halloween.
There may not be a date for season three, but they just announced that AvED season two will arrive on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD on August 22nd. The boxset includes audio commentaries, an inside look at S2’s production, and featurette’s like “Women who kick Ash” and “How to kill a Deadite.”
Henrietta doesn’t get the satisfaction of killing her idiot, Sumerian-reading husband. After he bolts with the Necronomicon, he’s stopped dead in his tracks in his VW Bug. The Prima Donna isn’t alone on her stage anymore. Enter Ruby. Again. This one is blonde. And very angry. It takes her no time to secure the book. Since it’s a short-format show, they waste no time jumping into the temporal-paradox thing by having Ruby meet herself. Past!Ruby is aghast she’d eventually team with El Jefe, seeing it as a betrayal. Now!Ruby speaks her heart, warning herself about her fall from immortality. But all Ruby has wanted is a family, turning her back on her children when she’s moments from bringing them into the world is impossible. Plus, she’s super evil. Ruby kills Ruby. Before she’s too weak, Now!Ruby does a little magic with the Necronomicon one last time to hurt her past self, then hands the burden off to Kelly. They really did try to send the kinder Ruby off with something resembling grace and compassion, giving her and Ash time to say goodbye in their own, bizarre way.
There is, of course, only one way to settle this beef between El Jefe and Baal—a fist fight. No powers. Man against man, without all that mumbo jumbo. The stakes? The demonic duo and their progeny scoot back south-side if Ash wins. If he loses? Hell on earth. And the spawn get to eat Kelly. The guys fight each other from one end of the cabin to the other. It takes about two or three destroyed rooms for Baal to use his powers. Ash faces off with Chet, who’s amazingly sober, and the fight is as funny as expected. The second ghost of the night appears not as a huge man living in the now, but as Ash’s sister Cheryl. She’s in and out of the scene so quickly, it’s easy to miss it. The Ghost of Christmas Past is Brock. There’s an agonizing moment where it’s impossible to tell if this is a demon trick or if Brock was brought back to life to screw with Ash’s head—I’m still not clear on it. Somehow we go from mourning Brock again to a chainsaw fight. Ultimately, all the fighting is there for the sight gags and cameos. The real fight is one of wits just when it looks like Baal will win. Ash disarms Ball with his crude humor and uses the demon’s own claw to kill him.
Speaking of, Ash’s longtime service to humanity has finally been recognized. Once they return to the present, the town sets up a day just for Ash. Really, it’s a platform for Ash to finally tell the populace how awful they’ve been to him. They don’t mind the blunt outburst. They will probably mind that he’s moving back to town, since he’ll likely be up to his drunken, drugged-out ways sooner rather than later. Ash isn’t the only new person in town, Past!Ruby took her own time stroll. She didn’t perish in the hellfire which destroyed the cabin, and she wants revenge. It’ll be easier than she thinks, seeing as a bunch of kids just stumbled across the Necronomicon at the cabin’s ruins. Here we go again.
How on earth did they go from mourning Pablo to hopping back to the past? A lot of booze, grief, and a joyride, all topped off with an angeldust-laced joint. With that magical mixture, Ash summons Pablo’s smartass spirit—or has a hell of a hallucination—and they work out another plan which is sure to fail, but the gang will try anything to save their fallen buddy. After Ash scares Ruby into compliance by driving erratically, they use the spell on Pablo’s chest to play the time warp again. Ash didn’t travel back to days of old this time. Well, unless you consider 1982 ancient history.
Episode 209 is also the prequel to Evil Dead that everyone has badgered Raimi about for years. We’re dropped into the story not that long before Ash and his sister are supposed to visit the cursed cabin in the woods. Ray Knowby, the man who recovered the Necronomicon in an excavation, is at home with his wife, and a student who’s there to assist translating the book. Seems like a peaceful afternoon at a bookworm’s house. That’s until you see that Henrietta Knowby is leashed to a basement support beam like a rabid Doberman and creeptastic Ray needs more than just translating from his student, Tanya.
Remember Henrietta from the original film? That makeup stuck with fans for a long time—worn by franchise regular Ted Raimi. Fast-forward to now. In order to bring a classic monster like Henrietta to life, it requires an army, and there’s two of her to really drive home the transformation between human and deadite. Now that doesn’t mean they actually attempted to mask Ted’s identity once the swap happened. Nope. Not that anyone would want to hide Ted. He set the tone for the creatures in the franchise, seeing him don Henrietta’s skinsuit again is oddly satisfying and something I didn’t know I needed from the show until the minute I realized they had indeed swapped the “living” actress for the man who created the role for the big fight—which isn’t even done. There’s more to look forward to in the finale!
Campbell’s performance in the episode is pretty stellar, especially in the moments Ash honestly cannot tell which way is up and who is who. He didn’t fall back on the manic crazy we usually see when Campbell’s character’s snap. There’s genuine concern coming from Ash, particularly when it comes to maintaining the safety of the Ghostbeaters while in the grips of Baal’s hallucinations. He’s vulnerable. When Linda comes in to visit, he acts unclean or unworthy of her care, recoiling from her touch. It’s refreshing to see so much depth from the character when the season started with nothing but hedonism.
Then there’s the Ashy Slashy puppet show. The promos were cringe-worthy, practically promising half an hour of Campbell arguing with his hand while alternating with innuendos aplenty. Camp is what the franchise eats for breakfast, but an entire puppet episode for a horror show is too much. Luckily, someone realized that and cut the Ashy Slashy puppet’s bits into two sections. What could’ve been overwhelming is quite palatable, if you’re okay with a foul-mouthed puppet talking about sexual functions. My main beef with the entire gag is the moments when it’s obvious Campbell isn’t operating the puppet. Either that or Campbell has forearms nearly four feet long. While I’m all for giving puppeteers a job, the way they choreographed movement to disguise it only made it that much more obvious.
In the delusion, Ruby is Nurse Ratchet and wants nothing to do with Ash, as Baal would have it in reality. Her scenes are few, usually just a short exchange to drive home how much the demon lord doesn’t want Ash near “his woman.” Pablo gets some revenge, given the job of overbearing orderly in the asylum. He routinely attacks and zaps Ash with a cattle prod—all the abuse is aimed toward driving the wedge deeper between the men so Ash will fulfill Baal’s true purpose for him. The show-stealer is Kelly’s whackjob alter-ego. She’s entrancing the moment she speaks, and more so when peeking through her filthy hair. Honestly, if actors want a quick lesson in acting crazy across a wide range, just pay attention to what Dana DeLorenzo does in her first scene for the episode.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that Baal’s best ally in the war on Ash is Sheriff Emery. The guy’s had it out for Ash for decades, even went so far as to marry the woman Ash had a relationship with before the first encounter with the Necronomicon. Old blood feuds have deep roots, something Baal banks on when he starts his mental manipulation. It takes about two minutes to convince the sheriff to gather a mob to recapture Ash. The demon hops into a new skin-suit for the occasion, a loud-mouthed woman who I think is the mother of one of the Classic’s victims. Could be wrong. The dialog for the mob is often jumbled together and muted as Baal works his mojo on Emery. Elk Grove hasn’t faced anything like Baal before, but they’ve also never come up against Kelly and her pure crazy. She and Linda hold the line, firing warning shots at the mob to buy Ruby time for the spell.
There’s a side-effect of invoking the book of the dead, deadites. Well, in this case, just one in particular. Talk about a shout-out to the source material, Ash’s sister Cheryl comes back to extend the family reunion theme for this season. Ellen Sandweiss returns to the franchise, playing Cheryl as she’d look if she survived the trip to the cabin. The makeup for Cheryl’s deadite look has been morphed to fit the style set for the show, but remains faithful to the original film. Her scenes are amusing, full of atrocious puns referring to her demise by tree. The interaction between the siblings is reminiscent of how the early deadites preferred to play more than just kill.
Unfortunately for Chet, he chose an awful day to break into Ash’s house and, uh, fantasize about Cheryl while alone in her room. Things go from fun and games to bloody mess pretty fast once Cheryl has an innocent bystander to use against her brother. The outcome is heartbreaking. While I’d hoped Chet would stick around to play bigger buffoon to Ash’s moron, he’s no match for the evil in his buddy’s life.
This week, horror fans got their fill of character’s brains on the ground. While the other show took every opportunity to draw out the drama from the character’s deaths, AvED went full splatstick, showing close-ups while Ash attempts to piece his father together again after the Classic mowed him down. It’s no use. There’s not enough skull intact to hold it all in place, plus Brock’s missing an eye—which is neatly embedded in the Delta’s grille. It stares down Pablo and Ash while they discuss a plan of action over Brock’s corpse. The plan, apparently, is for Pablo to charge the possessed car by himself and become its captive alongside the sheriff’s daughter. Pretty sure that’s not how one wins the war against evil.
Pablo’s newfound bravery is a farce. He’s reacting purely from fear and Evil knows it, manipulating Pablo to do what it wants through his bizarre connection to the Necronomicon. Matter of fact, the fallout from one conversation with the book changes everything for Ash and his team. We’ve waited so long for Pablo to finally step up and be the hero, but he’s going about it the wrong way. So now we get to sit and watch him set the world ablaze. Neat. Maybe we’ll get more super-intense visions, like the car crash, along the way. I loved the mild shock from watching Pablo stagger around with a steel bar longer than he is tall through his chest.
The possessed Delta isn’t their only problem. In true men-sense, the guys completely overlook the demonspawn still camped in the crematorium in favor of chasing the Classic to the local demolition derby stadium. Ash even takes a highly intoxicated Chet along for the pursuit. That leaves the ladies on the team to take care of Ruby’s ill-behaved children. What Ruby didn’t take into account is that they’ve spent their time gaining strength in order to fulfill their father’s wishes. The spawn are way stronger than their mother now. Kelly saves Ruby’s bacon a couple times—gratitude is a sensation I’m sure is completely foreign to Ruby. This is the first solid moment the ladies have had where they were just as hardcore as the men without eventually falling back on Ash’s uncanny competence at killing in order to win the day’s battle. They mow through the demonspawn with a couple close-calls on the getting maimed front.
Ash enlists some help to make sure this party rages hard enough to coax the teens who stole the Delta from whatever shadow they’re hiding in. Chet’s introductory scene is the perfect way to bring Ted Raimi onto the show. It’s bizarre, laced with weird inside jokes, and radiates Ted’s unique charm. Not to mention, it gives us a chance to see a sillier side of Kelly for a few moments—we’ll just ignore that two older, pervy men pressure her into drinking a Ketamine-laced cocktail, first. I will note the tongue-in-cheek PSA after the episode urging viewers not to ingest any cocktail mixed with drugs. They know it’s wrong to include laced drinks, but they’d rather apologize than ask permission. It’s pretty much how everything goes on this show, to be honest.
So, where exactly is the Delta while the party planning session commences? Getting high and fraternizing with teenagers. Basically, Ash with even less morals. With the Necronomicon left to work its influence on the Delta, things turn to crap fast for Amber, Tyler, Lacey, and their pals. Tyler gets the worst of it, losing his manhood after Amber reads from the book and becomes a deadite. The sheriff’s daughter, Lacey, has a front row seat for each death caused by the Delta—including the final, and most tragic, murder after the dual showdowns during the most awkward party ever at Chet’s bar.
The Williams men face off twice in this episode. First, to win Amber’s attention for a bathroom fling. Then a mechanical bull-riding challenge to prove who is the better man. Brock wins both. Which is so not a good thing. Pablo kicks Ash’s mopey backside into gear after they discover Amber is a deadite. That’s one fight Ash actually wins. Victory is short-lived. As are Brock’s praises. The Delta arrives at the party just in time to miss the big fight. It doesn’t miss Brock as he’s in the midst of telling Ash something life-changing. Too soon, we’re waving goodbye to Lee Majors and the grumpy charisma oozing from his pores. He made a fun addition to the show and gave them the chance to build Ash’s backstory at last.
The team is all about divide and conquer. They don’t trust Ruby further than Pablo can throw her, which is about a foot. So he stays behind to grill her about the freaky hallucinations he’s had since popping out her hellspawn. Turns out they’re precognitive visions, but only Ruby can translate the jumbled mess vomited into Pablo’s mind through his connection to the book. According to her, the misbehaving hellbrats want to wake daddy dearest, Baal. Judging from the ferocity of Pablo’s vision, the guy is the worst of the worst. Because that’s just what Ash needs when he’s supposed to be retired.
While the gang scrambles to save the world—again—Brock dims the lights and settles in for a romantic night with his current favorite lady. Lillian Pendergrass also happens to be Ash’s ex-lover. Well, technically, she’s an ex-ex-lover. Poor Lillian kicked the bucket and a Deadite took her for a joyride. It finally brings the danger Ash faces daily right into Brock’s living room. The fallout will be astounding with these hard-headed men.
With too many bodies to pick from and no description to work from, Ash reverts to his old ways, using a chainsaw to hack through each body he finds. Should’ve looked, first. The Necromonicon is in the final body, but it’s been there long enough to influence the flesh hiding it. Ash realizes he got the crappy job rather quickly. This scene is by far the most hilarious, graphic, and disgusting gag I’ve seen anyone film. If there was any wonder if this show is okay for children, Ash getting his head rammed up a dead guy’s backside firmly answers the question—no, now quit adding to your kid’s future therapy bill.
Pablo and Kelly sling beer at a dive bar in Jacksonville, FL while Ash makes himself the life of the party. For one of them, life after the deadite invasion is golden. There’s plenty of hot chicks, alcohol, and his little lizard buddy is there to play wingman. Ash’s happiness is hollow and fleeting, like a chocolate bunny left in an oven. Things are amiss with the dark side. They’re gonna need the bumbling savior once again.
There’s no waffling around, when Ash reaches Elk Grove, he stops by the old homestead. Enter Brock Williams—Ash’s cantankerous, unsupportive father, who greets house guests by firing a warning shot past their ear. There’s no love in his heart for his wayward, murdering son or his sidekick, Pablo, but he really wants a date with Kelly. The offer is shot down before he finishes asking her out.