The Three Stooges and Their Influence on Evil Dead 2 Anonymous College

In 1986, Sam Raimi released Evil Dead 2, which became the quintessential shock and gore movie. News shows like 20/20 would use the movie to scare parents with visions of their teenage children renting it from the local video store. Even though horror movies were popular in the 1980s, most movies seemed too polished. The heyday of low budget exploitation films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had passed. Horror movies had lost their audacity when they had large budgets and studios depending on their success.

Evil Dead 2 was an exception to the trend. Both a sequel and a remake to Raimi’s 1981 low budget demon possession in a cabin movie, Evil Dead 2 brought back Bruce Campbell as Ash, the lone survivor. In the first fifteen minutes, the first movie is recapped with notable differences such as Ash’s girlfriend being played by a different actress and an absence of the second couple from the first movie. There is also a notable shift in tone from the first movie which was a serious movie. By contrast, Evil Dead 2 uses excessive gore and violence for the purposes of humor, in the tradition of the Three Stooges. The movie is 90 minutes of gore, violence and physical comedy.

Many of the gags are morbidly violent. Ash cuts off his...