Evil Dead 2's Most Common Misconception Explained By Star Bruce Campbell

In Sam Raimi's 1981 splatter flick "The Evil Dead," a group of five Detroit college kids trek out to a remote cabin in the woods of Tennessee for a quiet vacation. In the basement of the cabin, they find a mysterious reel-to-reel tape recorder left behind by the previous tenant. When they play it, they hear a professor reciting a dark spell from an evil grimoire, summoning demons from the nether-realms. The tape recorder causes the demons to return, and the bulk of the film is the college kids fighting off — unsuccessfully — the wicked Deadites from beyond. The final survivor of "The Evil Dead" attack is the feckless Ash (Bruce Campbell), the luckiest of the lot.

When Sam Raimi made "Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn" in 1987, he repeated the premise, completely without shame. Ash (Campbell) travels to the same cabin in the woods, this time with his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler), for a similar vacation. He once again finds a tape recorder in the basement, once again plays it, and once again summons demons. Like in the first, the bulk of the film involves Ash fighting off monsters, while also being driven slowly insane by their unholy shenanigans. 

Given that the 1987 film is called "Evil Dead 2," one would reasonably assume it's a sequel, but in practice, it's actually a remake. Raimi and his crew had a lot more money to work with the second time, so they essentially re-did their original film in a slicker (and also more comedic) idiom. "The Evil Dead" cost $375,000. "Evil Dead 2" cost $3.5 million. 

Back in a 1992 issue of Cinefantastique Magazine, Bruce Campbell wanted to clear something up explicitly. "Evil Dead 2," he said, is 100% a remake and 0% a sequel.

Plenty of films had been remade when Campbell spoke to Cinefantastique, but they were far less common than they would become in the 2000s. As such, there was a little confusion as to how "Evil Dead 2" functioned on a narrative level. Why, some fans might ask, would Ash return to the same cabin in the woods a second time, given how horribly the first film went? As it so happens, neither Raimi nor Campbell much cared about continuity. Campbell even admitted that Raimi changed everything on purpose, saying: 

"We fudged the beginning and the backstory of part II. [...] In part I, five kids go to a cabin and I die, for all intents and purposes. But, as Sam says, Ash is resurrected by positive box office response. For part II, we couldn't get the rights to footage from part I, because they were made by different companies. So we thought: not that many people saw 'Evil Dead' ... We'll just have Ash go with one girl. But it was misconstrued by a lot of people. They thought Ash was stupid enough to go back to the cabin."

Campbell added that it was wise to update the story anyway, as six years had passed, and he no longer looked like a college student. He explained that, to update the story, they explained that Ash was now a grad student, studying mechanical engineering. It hardly matters once the mayhem begins, but it's nice to hear that Campbell and Raimi put some thought into it. 

But if anyone brings up the quibble in casual conversation — and we all know a few nitpickers — repeat Raimi's words: Ash was resurrected by good box office receipts.