Monday, June 22, 2020

Episode 53: Hail to the King, Baby


via GIPHY

All right you primitive screwheads...this episode is devoted to our friend Ashley Williams! Yes, we're taking a trip through the Evil Dead films and TV series. When the original Evil Dead movie first came out, it really shook things up. The camera angles and movements, the strange sound effects, the story, and of course, the charismatic Bruce Campbell, all added up to a hit with horror audiences.


The later entries would add more than a little humor to the horror, and that's where it seemed to really take off. Campbell had a gift for playing Ash as a lovable jerk, who was maybe more lucky than good. And he certainly delivered a number of notable one-liners!

Your Planet 8 crew will talk about the origins of the Evil Dead film series, how Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell got the idea for the first film and financed it, and was it connected at all to an older film called Equinox? All this and more!


We all like the third film, Army of Darkness, the best. It's an odd mix of fantasy, horror, and comedy, but it works really well. Ash pulls a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court act, but despite his technological know-how, he still screws up and conjures up an army of deadites, including his own undead counterpart. There were two different endings and we talk about both the theatrical and director's cut versions.



Finally we take a look at the Ash vs. Evil Dead TV show. It only lasted three seasons, but it was well done and really expanded the Evil Dead universe. Will there be more Evil Dead? Perhaps the truth is hidden in the pages of the Necronomicon...


Starting with this episode's Sensor Sweep, Chief Engineer Bob will be throwing the spotlight on different artists who normally appear at the Godzilla and anime shows Bob puts on in the Bay Area, but Covid-19 has shut all that down right now. This time we are featuring artist Nick Shev. You can find his work at https://nickshev.bigcartel.com/. Nick does a lot of Godzilla art, but also aliens, mummies, original Halloween art, and more. He also does black light art -he takes a printed lithograph and hand draws details with a luminous marker. You can get lenticular stickers from him too. Take a look, there's a lot of very cool stuff on his site!

That's all this time, friends and neighbors. Be sure to share your thoughts on Ash and the Evil Dead. Do you enjoy this film/TV series? Can you see it going on without Bruce Campbell as Ash? We want to know! And you know the drill by now...
Thanks for listening!

3 comments:

  1. Great episode. It's been a while, but I've seen all three of the original movies (the first one in high school), the other two - which I agree are much better - later.
    The best part of the first movie is opening sequences, with the main characters going to that cabin in the woods, accompanied by the grumbling of the malevolent entity we never see. Suitably creepy, and it resonated with me in particular because I grew up in a pretty rural part of Oregon. Lots of farms in the area, but with interspersed patches of woods that often had old abandoned barns or wood sheds in them. We used to horse around those as kids and speculate that ghosts or monsters lived there...

    I've only seen a few episodes of Ash, but I really like the show. Generally, I'm a fan of Bruce Campbell and like it whenever he shows up in anything, whether TV shows like Brisco County or even Burn Notice, in which he plays a supporting character, or movies liked the excellent Bubba Ho-Tep or My Name is Bruce-.
    Edo Bosnar

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  2. Love Bubba Ho-Tep! I could do a whole episode just on that. 😉

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    1. Oh, man. I'd love a Bubba Ho-Tep episode! You can call me as a guest if Larry & Karen aren't as well-versed about it.
      -Edo Bosnar

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