Ash vs Evil Dead: a ‘re-boot’ actually makes good on the source material
by Jay Savage
“And if say, as but one example, you have ever pondered what being sucked through the anal canal of a corpse by a cackling demon from hell would be like (and really, who can say they haven’t at one time or another?) then this is the show for you.”
The series Ash vs Evil Dead which made it to three seasons, is the most deliriously full-on entertainment on TV.
It is that rarest of accomplishments - where the ‘re-boot’ actually makes good on the source material. It is - in almost any other case you can mention - cynically and nostalgically and unimaginatively always tediously regurgitating, updating and chucking at us in complicit knowing joyless ritual… but that’s a whole other thing...
It helps no doubt that the series is from the original creators of the seminal indie schlock original (1981) and its two worthy sequels (not to be confused with and certainly not to be compared to the tedious re-make in 2013), Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.
There is no more gleeful, gasp-worthy and fully realised comic splatter spectacle and, episode after gross-out episode (the 22-minute format turning out to be ideal), the show delivers on (and revisits, if not revives) the primitive, noble and lost pleasures of knockabout, slapstick comedy. In a tradition that predates Punch and Judy, that survived through burlesque, music hall and circus clown acts, early movie shorts, The Three Stooges, Roadrunner cartoons et al but that has become near extinct, or even extinguished by the tyranny of the moving camera, true knockabout comedy (to be distinguished from “physical” comedy) is, at its very rarely achieved best, the collision of craft with demented intention.
In Ash vs Evil Dead the form triumphs gloriously, hilariously over the content and if something like Scooby Doo meets Rick and Morty in live action perfection appeals to you then delight awaits. And if say, as but one example, you have ever pondered what being sucked through the anal canal of a corpse by a cackling demon from hell would be like (and really, who can say they haven't at one time or another?) then this is the show for you. Most zombie shows which are narratively predicated on the undead as swarms of slow moving brainless lunks end up with action sequences that are, little surprise, lifeless, repetitive and laborious. In Ash vs Evil Dead the set pieces are staged with manic gusto and attention to detail, and executed with the thrilling creative flair that is absent elsewhere in the genre. Ash, the chainsaw wielding throwback at the centre of it all, despatches demons and punchlines with equal unflappable ease, overcoming every horror hurled his way with unerring nitwit grace.
Who says "the chosen one" can't be an out of shape, preening, reactionary drug guzzling boomer who revels in the glory days and boozehound antics of aimless defiant rejection of the straight/adult world? For Ash that's where the real undead are. And Bruce Campbell embodies the epically unPC anti-hero with B-movie grandiosity that is wholly his own. He's the perfect imitation of a hero. And inimitable.