It's been about 24 hours since I first watched Sam Raimi's now famously cult classic follow-up to his breakout film and the movie that cemented him as a horror king. EVIL DEAD 2 was a movie I had long been anticipating my first viewing of, going back to years before I had ever seen a frame of Raimi's work outside of the Spider-Man movies and Darkman. I had heard about the legend of Ashley J. Williams through countless internet praises and friends who had grown up with the gutsy gorefests that made Bruce Campbell a household name, but as far as my exposure to the actual Evil Dead brand went, I was pretty scarce. The only film of the three that I had seen in full was ARMY OF DARKNESS, and that was definitely not the film to start off on. Not because it was lacking anything - quite the opposite, Army of Darkness is immensely entertaining and one of the best horror comedies ever made - but because in that movie, Ash was already established as the badass that he inevitably became. He'd gone through the hurdle of two entire movies that built him up to be the face (or chin) of demon slaying debauchery and the best cheesy one-liners imaginable. So as a film, Army gave me great entertainment, but it did nothing to improve my experience with the Evil Dead franchise. It was simply the spark.
