Jolly japes

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2002)

Bruce Campbell, the man with the Superman jaw, stars as the hapless Ash, beset on all sides by the zombie versions of his best friends. Stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, in a forest thick with dry ice, his situation may seem hopeless. And it is. One by one his zombie friends must be destroyed, before they destroy him. Needless to say, this is accomplished with the maximum of gore. Blood flies in all directions. At one point the lightbulb in the cellar fills up with the stuff. His friends mutate into grotesque, giggling, demonic ghouls. The first one to undergo this drastic change in her fortunes is locked in the cellar from where she provides witty comment on the action, while staring into space through milky contact lenses. Ash tries hard, grappling with the undead humans and the half-dead dialogue. Bruce Campbell is at his best when most of his face is covered by a zombie's hand, or a zombie's blood, or both. Luckily, there are few pauses between bouts of violence and screaming and running around. The horror film clichÃ©s are all present and correct: randy teenagers, cabin in the woods, mysterious book plus tape plus incantations, bad acting, bad dialogue, over-active camera work, women wandering off in the woods alone.
The film works, though, in its own sleazy way. It aims no higher than scaring the s*** out of you, which, at times, it does. Sam Raimi, who has managed to carve out a successfully eclectic Hollywood career, keeps things moving, tossing in horror movie jokes (the ripped fragment of a poster for "The Hills Have Eyes") with the confidence of one who knows that the whole thing is a joke, really. Here is your pal, chopped into several pieces, all of which are still writhing around on the floor. Laugh? I nearly died.