Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films are a huge part of my horror lifeblood. Without them, I wouldn’t even be writing this article. And even though some of the originals have lost their muster (sorry, I don’t love Army of Darkness anymore), they’re truly special films that warm my cockles.
While I really enjoy Fede Alvarez’s 2013 remake, it was a bummer to see the progression of the franchise die, and it return to its straight horror roots (Raimi’s The Evil Dead was not funny). Not only that, but it was like having a new A Nightmare On Elm Street movie made without Freddy Krueger. How the hell do you make Evil Dead without Ash? Well, they did it.
Thankfully, Raimi and Robert Tapert had something up their sleeves – a television series, “Ash vs Evil Dead”, now in its second season (with a third already announced!) on Starz. The series, which is in-canon with the original trilogy, brought Bruce Campbell back to the franchise, along with the same slapstick evolution. The first episode, directed by Raimi, was basically the Evil Dead 4 we’ve been dreaming of. Only, moving further through the season, I didn’t love it. It was okay, I guess, but something was missing. It felt as if Raimi approved the scripts and went off and did something else. I have no idea how involved he was in the production, but the first season of “Ash vs Evil Dead” felt more like fan fiction than a legit followup to Army of Darkness.
I think history has proven that the first season of shows are typically weaker than its successors. Usually the showrunners and writers take a season to find a groove and begin to gel, allowing a series to thrive for a few years (before high contract negotiations eventually derail it). The second episode of the second season of “Ash vs Evil Dead” aired the other night and it was a huge step in the right direction; I would go as far as to say it’s the first time the show felt authentic.
While I’ll refrain from talking about the whole episode, there’s one sequence in particular that had me gushing. In the episode, Ash heads to the morgue to retrieve the Necronomicon from a dead body. There, in classic Ash fashion, shit hits the fan. The above photo makes absolutely no sense out of context – but when you see what’s actually happening, you’re going to lose your mind. As Ash screams in the opening of this exclusive look, “Oh God! Oh God! I’m in the butt!” Yup, Ash gets his head stuck up a corpse’s ass and runs around screaming while the slapstick nature of the show makes things go even worse for him.
But the gem in this scene isn’t just the absolutely revolting, yet hilarious sequence, it’s the one-liner. It’s the “Ash moment” that’s been missing, that’s been forced into many other scenes. Here, he finally breaks free, grabs his double-barrel shotgun and proclaims, “This town is only big enough for one asshole, and that asshole…is me.”
It was a hugely entertaining episode that made me clammer for more, and gave me hope that this season truly is going to get groovy. If the following clip doesn’t win you over, I don’t think we can be friends…
All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
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