Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Fourteen - Ash vs Evil Dead

Happy Halloween Everyone!

So a month later and I finally get to blog about Ash vs Evil Dead, or at least the first season.

The series picks up thirty years after the original trilogy (The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992), with Ash (Bruce Campbell), still working as a stock boy and using made up stories of how he lost his hand to pick up women.  Unfortunately for Ash, the Necronomicon (the book of the dead) is not yet done with him, and the series begins with him realizing evil is once again released on Earth.

As the series (produced by Campbell, original director Sam Raimi, and original producer Robert Tapert) is ten episodes long, it introduces two companions for Ash, Pablo and Kelly, two other employees at Valu-Mart who get swept up in his fight against the deadites (corpses that have been reanimated by the evil released from the book).

As with Evil Dead II, the series is a horror-comedy, putting the characters against all sorts of horrible "out of the frying pan into the fire" scenarios and allowing Ash to come across as just a terrible human being, who has (deep within) the potential to be a great hero.

Separate from the plot, each episode feature hard rock from the 1970s and 1990s (and largely from the Detroit music scene of the time), which is a great throwback to the music of Ash's younger days.

The series is a must for fans of the franchise, but also works as a great leaping on point, assuming you don't mind horror mixed with comedy.

I loved it, and will be waiting for the second season as soon as it's available.

So in the end, I spent the month going through a lot of things I had been meaning to get around to (in some cases for years) and although I didn't keep everything, I'm happier for have experienced it all, and may give this concept another try from the various Science Fiction or Fantasy titles I've got scattered around my house in the future.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Twenty Three

Jack and Delilah Hack in happier days

Family History

Moving through the series I’m hit with a dilemma; either I can give more detailed information on the storyline, potentially spoiling some of the surprises for people who are reading my blog before the series, or I can write about overall themes and concepts, but as the storylines get more complex I end up writing less about the series and more about the Slasher sub-genre in general. So I’m going to compromise.

As the main series is complete (currently there is a six-issue post-series crossover with the Sam Raimi film Army of Darkness (1992)), but featured many stand-alone stories, I’m going to focus on one key story arc from 2008, which has Cassie meeting her father for the first time since her childhood. The story is fairly straight forward, and takes place in the first third of the overall series, so although there are spoilers, keep in mind that the series still goes a long way after this specific arc.

In issues 14-17 of the series Cassie and Vlad become involved in a standard horror convention, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon their sons. It’s important to remember that in the Horror Genre, and especially the Slasher sub-genre is that many of the concepts used are both ancient and primal. Classic Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft began his 1927 essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” by stating “THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” (Lovecraft, 1927), in these four issues, Seeley connects Cassie, her mother, and father with yet another figure from both classic and modern horror; Doctor Herbert West, created by H.P. Lovecraft in 1922 and adapted to film in the 1988 film Re-Ainmator and its sequels, Bride of Re-Animator (1990), and Beyond Re-Animator (2003). The character is a doctor looking to defeat death, which he attepts to do by bringing various corpse and corpse-parts back to life.

In the series Cassie’s father, Dr. Jack Hack is one of the government scientists who have been examining the phenomenon of Slashers, the reanimated killers that Cassie and Vlad spend most of the series tracking down and destroying. In issue 15 Cassie comes into contact with her father for the first time in years and finds he has been on the run from his old job with the government and is now working with Doctor West on a number of strange experients. What neither Jack or Cassie are aware of is that Doctor West has managed to get his hands on the remains of Cassie’s mother, (Delilah, better known as the Slasher The Lunch Lady, who was Cassie’s first kill), and plans to use his reanimating serum to bring her back to life.

The story arc shows through flashbacks that Jack met Delilah through his work in Slasher-research, typing her as a likely candidate for becoming a Slasher later in life – in the world of Hack/Slash Slashers often reappear in the same bloodline, and although their relationship starts out professional, they fall in love, get pregnant and go on the run to protect themselves and later their daughter Cassie.

As I don’t want to explain everything about the storyline I’ll leave it there, but I will bring up the fact that even though explaining exactly how a monster works in a horror story usually damages, rather than helps the story, (as the unknown has become the known), this story arc helps show more of Cassie and Vlad’s world, and works as set up for even bigger things to come.

IMAGES USED

Jack and Delilah Hack in Hack/Slash #16, Retrieved online from http://www.comicvine.com/images/1300-2775222

WORKS CITED

Lovecraft, H.P. (1922) Supernatural Horror in Literature.  Retrieved online from

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

Movie Review: Evil Dead

This weekend I decided to take a small break from my schoolwork and check out the new film Evil Dead.

My opinion is a little mixed.

First the good - the special effects are pretty darn amazing; by staying away from computer generated effects the imagery looks raw, and honestly, much more realistic.  Also it's very gruesome, so maybe not a film for the kids or the faint hearted.  The acting is well done, and a special notice goes to lead Jane Levy as she brings a really great vulnerability to the role.

All right, the questionable - there is a Bruce Campbell cameo, but it's pretty strange.  I'm a huge fan of him, but I wish they had found a more constructive way to put him in the film.

Finally the bad - this movie sort of felt unnecessary.  Last year the film The Cabin in the Woods, covered much of the same territory, and even without the official Evil Dead name to it, it just made a terrific kids at the spooky cabin film.  This movie does everything it needs to do, but in the end, The Evil Dead did all of this back in 1981.

I don't think I'll add this to my DVD collection, but if my local library gets it I may check it out to see the behind the scenes stuff and check out the commentary.