It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
As Season Two of Ash vs Evil Dead kicks off, we discover that Ruby’s (Lucy Lawless) demonic children have all grown up and have turned on her, are hunting her and trying to get their ashy hands on the Necronomicon. Having nowhere else to turn, Ruby reluctantly breaks the truce and summons two Deadites to attack Ash (Bruce Campbell), Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), and Pablo (Ray Santiago) in Jacksonville, where they are living it up and running a bar. During the attack, one of the Deadites calls Ash “Ashy Slashy” and recites a rhyme he was taunted with after killing his girlfriend and sister back in The Evil Dead (1981).
That tips Ash off to where Ruby is, Ash’s hometown, Elk Grove, Michigan.
After dispatching the Deadites, the gang hops into the Delta and drive cross country to Elk Grove, where Ash gets a pretty cold reception by the locals, particularly his own father Brock (Lee Majors) and the town sheriff, Thomas Emery (Stephen Lovatt). The only person genuinely happy to see him is his old flame, Linda (Michelle Hurd) – who is unfortunately now married to the sheriff.
Pablo, after his stint wearing the face of the Necronomicon last season, has started having visions and sees Ruby at the town crematorium, and when our heroes arrive, they discover a wounded Ruby and have to kill her three demonic children. They reestablish their alliance and head to the town morgue, where Ruby has hidden the book.
I’m not gonna lie, “Home” gets off to a kick-ass start with a script by showrunner Craig DiGregorio and features an almost perfect blend of comedy and gross-out horror. There’s so much blood spray that nearly everybody in the cast is drenched at least once. And casting Lee Majors as Ash’s sleazy dad was a brilliant idea and he seems to be having a blast playing a dirty old man. If he got the part just so they could do the Six Million Dollar Man joke about Ash’s robotic hand, that would be justification enough for me.
The second episode, “The Morgue,” might be peak Ash vs Evil Dead for me. Since Ruby hid the Necronomicon in a corpse, Ash and Kelly head there to investigate, while Pablo keeps an eye on Ruby in Ash’s childhood bedroom. Meanwhile, Brock has a lady visitor, Ash’s old high school P.E. teacher, who isn’t what she seems.
In classic fashion, Ash goes in chainsaw first, hacking into body after body until finally discovering the Necronomicon in the last corpse – the only one already opened after an autopsy. It’s gory as hell, and in one of the most inspired pieces of Evil Dead history, Ash is attacked by the corpse’s possessed colon. Blood and feces fly as he ends up with his head pulled up the dead guy’s butt, looking out his opened-up belly and wearing the corpse like a hat.
Or something.
It’s so disgustingly hilarious I can’t believe that DiGregorio had to fight with producer Rob Tapert to get it in the show.
Meanwhile, Pablo has another premonition, and Ruby deduces that her ex-husband Baal is the reason her children turned on her. They were trying to summon him into this world. Ash and Kelly return home just in time to stop the now Deadited-up P.E. teacher from killing Brock. Then, as the episode closes, Ash’s Delta is stolen by some teenagers he and Kelly harassed earlier – and the Necronomicon is still in the car!
What’s the best way to lure out the teenagers who stole the Delta? Throwing a banging party, obviously. In Episode Three, “Last Call,” that’s exactly what Ash and his best buddy Chet (Ted Raimi) do. But while ketamine-infused drinks are passed around to a barfull of out-of-control partiers, the teenagers, including Linda’s daughter Lacy (Pepi Sonuga), are out having their own good time in the Delta.
That’s where Lacy’s friend Amber (Olivia Mahood), finds the Necronomicon, reads from it, and becomes a Deadite. Of course. After biting her boyfriend’s dick off, she splits and heads for Ash’s party, while the now-possessed Delta locks Lacy inside and murders the surviving boys.
At the party, a drunken Kelly tries to convince Ruby that she could be the one she needs to stop Baal, and they set out to get started. Shortly thereafter, Amber arrives and lures Brock to the bathroom for some dirtytime antics, but Ash intervenes just in time to kill the Deadite and prove to his dad that he’s an actual hero, not a disgraced murderer. Unfortunately, nobody else in the bar knows this and when Ash returns carrying Amber’s severed head, the place empties in a panic with Brock following them outside, declaring for all to hear that Ash is a hero.
Then, Brock turns to Ash saying he’s proud of him and is about to reveal a secret, when the Delta runs him down in the street in the most shocking – and disgustingly gorey – moment of the episode. The effects team is working overtime this season, and it seems like whenever there’s an opportunity, they go above and beyond to make this show one of the grossest on television.
That’s a compliment, by the way.
And damn if it isn’t touching, if disturbing, the way Ash sadly tries to scoop Brock’s brains back into his shattered head.
Episodes Four and Five see the return of M.J. Bassett (credited as Michael J. Bassett) to the director’s chair. “DUI” follows Ash and Chet as they follow and try to stop the Delta, now with a captured Pablo alongside Lacey, from killing anybody else. Meanwhile, Kelly and Ruby grab a stash of weapons from Ash’s mobile home and we find out that Baal can get into people’s minds and manipulate them.
They head back to the crematorium to destroy the rest of Ruby’s demonic spawn, while Ash gets dropped off by Chet at the abandoned Shemp’s Demolition Derby Park. The rest of the episode is basically a fight between Ash and the Delta, but it’s gorgeously shot, and once the Delta is defeated, Pablo tries to deface the Necronomicon, but it tells him to read a passage, which opens up a portal to hell in the car’s trunk. Thinking this is the best possible opportunity to destroy the book once and for all, they toss it into the spiraling void of the trunk and suddenly it is returned to normal.
Ruby suddenly senses that the Necronomicon is gone and she and Kelly hurry back. At the same time, Ash and Pablo walk away thinking everything is going to be alright, but as they fade off into the distance, a demon leaps out of the trunk and we cut to black.
“Confinement,” sees Baal (Joel Tobeck) arriving on Earth, seducing and murdering a police officer investigating the bloody, destroyed bathroom of the bar where Ash killed Amber, before removing and wearing her skin as a disguise. Meanwhile, Ash, thinking he’s saved the world, is strolling through town, planning on seducing Linda and taking her to Jacksonville, when he is arrested for Amanda’s murder and taken to the sheriff’s station. A disguised Baal takes Ash’s weapons to the evidence locker then sets Ash free. Linda and Lacey arrive after Lacey was found passed out on the shower floor, and shortly thereafter Kelly, Pablo, and Ruby show up looking for Ash. The lights go out and the lady cop’s skin is tossed onto Ash.
And then the stage is set for an evening of paranoia and violence after Ruby explains that Baal can wear people’s skins and manipulate minds. Ruby collects Ash’s weapons and is confronted by Baal in a gory reveal, and we discover that Ruby is no longer immortal and without the Necronomicon there’s no way to send Baal back to Hell.
Out in the sheriff’s office, Pablo reveals a strange rash, the lights go out, and skinless lady cop drops through the ceiling kills a prostitute and disappears with Linda. This leads to this episode’s blood-and-gore-bath as Ruby blows the skinless demon’s head off and Ash chainsaws her in half.
The episode ends with the discovery that Pablo’s rash is actually the Sumerian language that the Necronomicon was written in. It seems Pablo may be their only chance to send Baal back to Hell, after all.
Season Two of Ash vs Evil Dead has gotten off to a fantastic start, amping up the gore and action from the already stellar Season One. The addition of Lee Majors is an unexpected bonus and forcing the gang to team up with Ruby makes great use of the always amazing Lucy Lawless. I’m not sure about the introduction of Baal as the Big Bad, but I’m definitely ready and willing to give the back half of Season Two a shot. We’ve got weird road ahead.