Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

• Cat.no: 74321 671609
• Cert: 18
• Running time: 81 minutes
• Year: 1987
• Pressing: 1999
• Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 28 plus extras
• Sound: Linear PCM Mono
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Fullscreen: 1.33:1
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: No
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £15.99
• Extras : Scene index, Film Facts, The Trilogy, Things To Look Out For…

---

Director:

Sam Raimi

(Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead, Crimewave, Evil Dead, The Quick and the Dead, A Simple Plan)

Producers:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Ash: Bruce Campbell (Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead, Blaze of Glory, Evil Dead, Lunatics, Mind Warp, TV: Hercules, Xena: Warrior Princess)
Annie: Sarah Berry
Possessed Henrietta: Ted Raimi
Linda: Denise Bexley
Knight: Sam Raimi (Body Bags)

Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawnis the second part of a trilogy featuring Bruce Campbell as Ash, who findsthere’s no good at all that can come of the Book of the Dead, the pages of whichwere written in blood and its purpose is to cause death and destruction to allwho encounter it.

Ash and his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler) stumble across an old,apparently-deserted cottage in the woods, one not unlike the cottage he almost methis match in the first film. After playing a tape of Professor Raymond Knowby’srevelations of the book’s content, within five minutes, his girlfriend is murdered bythe evil force and he has to bury her. Things go downhill from there. Linda resurrectsherself and Ash has to finish her off with a chainsaw, he then gets paranoid delusionsas he starts to laugh maniacally and all the fixtures and fittings in the rest of theroom start to laugh with him, his hand then takes on a life of its own and he has tosaw it off and then the professor’s daughter Annie (Sarah Berry) arrives withher boyfriend and a couple of locals…

They immediately think that Ash has murdered the professor and his wife, until Annieplays back the tape and all is revealed. Now knowing what has happened to her parents,she is unsurprisingly shocked to find her mother is somewhat alive and kicking andwanting to escape from the basement. Anyone who’s seen this before will never forgetthe following scene in which she loses an eye…

Meet Mother !

The picture has minimal artifacts – certainly not noticeable from the usual viewingdistance – and is presented in an open-matte fullscreen presentation. The American DVDis the same, but an NTSC Laserdisc Special Edition was released in widescreen (mattedto 1.85:1), but to all intents and purposes the picture on this DVD can be zoomed in tofill a widescreen TV with no complaints as to the picture framing, making all theincredibly gory moments that much bigger and better. However, no widescreen versionmeans no chance of an anamorphic picture either which is a shame. The average bitrateis a very good 7.22Mb/s, regularly peaking over 8Mb/s.

The sound is mono and spends most of its time being loud, very loud or excessively loud,occasionally to the point of distortion, with sounds of violence and female screams.Unlike the Region 1 DVD’s Dolby Digital 1.0 sound, we get uncompressed Linear PCM Mono.

The film is in English only, with no subtitles. This seems to be the case forall of the current batch of BMG releases.

Film information :

A few short pages of information about the Evil Dead trilogy with brief castlists, two pages of “Film Facts” and one page detailing a few humourous thingsto look out for during the film.

Menu :

The menu is silent and static, with part of the main menu replicating the coverartwork.

For some reason, there’s no “Play Movie” option. If you’ve already been viewingpart of the film and have come back to the main menu, “Return To Movie” willtake you back, but to start the film from scratch, you’ll either need toselect the first scene yourself, or reboot the DVD altogether since it willbegin after the copyright info has been displayed.

Ash wasn’t feeling himself today…

After the Video Recordings Act of 1984 was passed and every video available for saleand rental had to have a certificate by the BBFC, they were reluctant to pass theoriginal film, simply titled The Evil Dead, uncut as an 18-certificate, so it wentinto video limbo for quite some time, only making an appearance in pirate form untilthe eventual release which was censored for the scene where a girl is raped by a tree.This sequel is essentially a re-hash of the first film but with a bigger budget and hasalso been trimmed, this time by a few seconds, the details of which I do notknow.

If you’re not fussed about extras, then this disc is worth a purchase although thosewith laserdisc players may find it’s worth checking out the aforementioned NTSC Laserdiscwhich also contains a director’s commentary track and a 30-minute behind-the-scenesfeaturette.

The film ends perfectly with a scene that sets it up just right for the 1993 follow-up,Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead.

FILM : *****PICTURE QUALITY : ***SOUND QUALITY: **EXTRAS: *——————————-OVERALL: **½