Focusing now on the original horror movie series, we take another look at the Deadites of The Evil Dead. However, they are never called Deadites in this first film, nor any name really. The best we get is Kandarian Demons, which better applies to what possesses them than what they are.
Basement Cheryl
Evil Linda
Demon Hands
A movie focused almost entirely on body horror, The Evil Dead has the 5 friends, Ash, Scott, Linda, Shelly, and Cheryl, going to a small cabin for a weekend vacation. While there, they stumble upon the Book of the Dead, and a recording from what must be the old owner of the home. This recording speaks the magic words required to raise ancient demons from death, wreaking havoc on the party.
First, we have Cheryl, who is both the first to become possessed, and the one to last the longest. After being called into the woods by these undead demons, she is attacked by the trees and vines, and a rather disturbing sex scene occurs, where it seems the trees are raping Cheryl. It seems to me now that I should never be surprised by the use of sex in horror like I was with Freddy Krueger. Cheryl is eventually able to free herself from the attack, and rushes back to the cabin, the demons who had been pursuing her now retreating back into the forest.
The party comforts Cheryl, and Ash is eventually asked to bring Cheryl to a place in town to sleep for the night, no one really taking Cheryl seriously, until the bridge they took over is completely destroyed. Returning to the cabin, Cheryl is possessed for a moment, levitating in the air, and a disembodied voice speaking through her. These demon spirits angry at their reawakening it seems.
Next, Cheryl is fully possessed, attacking the group, delivering a deep ankle wound to Linda using a pencil. She then throws the group around, until she is overpowered by Scott, locking her in the basement of the cabin. We again see these possessed people gaining immense strength at the cost of their speed. These possessed seem much less agile than the ones in Ash V.S. Evil Dead.
The group is then possessed one by one, until only Ash remains, defeating them only through burning the Book of the Dead, causing disturbing demon arms to protrude from the surrounding possessed adversaries before their flesh falls apart. completely, the movie ending with Ash stepping out into the sunlight, before being attacked by another spirit.
So what differences do we have with this undead in comparison to Ash V.S. Evil Dead? Well for starters we have their lack of agility we went over. These are slow-moving, zombie-like undead, retaining still the memories of their hosts, and able to fake a cure. Their strength is still very high, however, their combat abilities are very weak, simply rushing at or grabbing at their victims. They are much less a deformed person as they are a rotten person, and they seem much more susceptible to pain, it confusing them and causing them to act erratically in some cases, such as when possessed Shelly bit her own hand off when it was cut.
Their spook remains. These demon-possessed bodies find much glee in attacking the group, and still being rotted disturbing husks of their original form.
Their danger goes down a bit. They are slow, they have more weaknesses it seems with that skull sword that puffs smoke when stabbing them, and they are extremely distracted by the pain inflicted on their bodies.
Transform is also slightly lower, not having any real deformities when in their natural form, just rotten flesh and glazed over eyes.
Their name must be Kandarian Demons. It is the only source given within the movie, and we will have to stick with it. However, don't let my apprehension be confused with dislike. Kandarian Demon is a very cool name, and much better than Deadites.
I feel this time that the Kandarian Demons deserve a ranking for their spirit form as well. Their spook is obviously hard to determine, never seeing these creatures, only seeing through them. I originally imagined them as invisible, however, this is certainly not the case, Ash screaming at their approach at the end, Shelly at her attack. I am going to give them a 5 in this case. They obviously scare the group, but I cannot give them a ranking based on my sight.
Their danger is more apparent. They can possess some people, I feel like their willpower has something to do with this, only being able to directly possess Shelly and Cheryl after scaring them. They are also strong poltergeists, opening hatches, and controlling plant life? I don't consider this a poltergeist ability, but it certainly is useful. They have either illusion or reality-bending abilities, causing blood to pour onto Ash from a pipe, and cause a mirror to act as a pool of water. Decently strong.
Their transformation is another tricky spot, it is clear to me the hands that emerge from Scott and Cheryl at the end of the movie are of these demon's true forms, but all we see are these hands. I will give them another 5, not able to properly decide at this time.
Once again, they will be ranked as Kandarian Demons, and receive an 8.
With a few quick changes to the story of the first movie, Evil Dead 2 begins just where we left off, Ash attacked by a Kandarian Demon, and his girlfriend Linda dead.
Ash's Severed Hand
Ghost Dad
Possessed Tree
Kandarian Demon / Deadite
Much like Freddy's Revenge, Evil Dead 2 takes some liberties changing up the previously established lore to bring a new twist to the series, however, unlike Freddy's Revenge, it improves with this change.
Evil Dead 2 asks you to forget about the details of the first movie and stick with these facts. 1. Linda and Ash went to the cottage. 2. Ash fought Deadite Linda and decapitated her with a shovel. 3. Deadites keep their abilities from the first movie but are now even more powerful, and 4. The recordings, book, and sword all still exist. Now the second movie really starts, with Ash being flung through the air by the Kandarian Demon, and becoming Evil Ash.
Evil Ash is not undead, only being possessed by the demon considering this is the same as Ash V.S. Evil Dead, he will not be given a unique ranking. We now learn that these demons have a weakness to sunlight, and when possessing Ash during the day, it is removed from his body when the sun hits his face. Ash returns to the cabin to find Linda's body is still alive and attacks him. Now the movie becomes funnier.
This movie made me laugh quite a few times. Ash's hand, Ash going crazy, Ash thinking he suddenly understands everything that is going on, lots of Ash, but some not Ash stuff. Linda's body coming in with the chainsaw just to be immediately cut open by it is pretty great. Or the adventuring daughter of the man from the recordings (Annie maybe?) holding a lantern SO HIGH. Nobody holds a lantern that high. It was the funniest scene in the movie for me. She just jumps out from around a corner with this lantern all the way up beside her head because it wouldn't have fit in the frame if she didn't.
Besides that, we get quite the amount of new undead to rank here. Ash's hand gets the undead stamp of approval from me because it is completely severed from his body and still lives on, able to hear and see. We get Ghost Dad, the man from the recordings comes back as a ghost to help out his daughter. We have the possessed trees which also count for me and give a better understanding of Deadites abilities, these plant attacks not being an ability of the "spirit" Demon but a possession of their own, and finally, we get to actually see a Kandarian Demon, which is now known as Deadites to the medieval people.
Nobody holds lanterns at head height. You extend the arm outward to illuminate what is ahead. This single frame makes me laugh. She is just too short for the scene to hold a lantern properly. I can imagine her entering the scene, lantern in hand, and Sam Raimi going, "Hold it higher we can't see the lantern." So then she does it again but holds the lantern like this. I can't stop laughing at this frame.
How spooky is a severed hand you might ask? Well, a younger Nick McKay would say enough to stay away from The Adams Family, however today I would say not very. A severed hand can only do so much, and doesn't elicit enough fear from me to be considered spooky.
The danger of a severed hand? For Ash, it is actually pretty strong. It is able to stab Annie in the back, which means it has enough force to hold a sword, and throw itself into the back of a woman. Pretty strong! But only when able to attack sneakily. A 2 is all the hand gets.
There is no transformation seen besides some black lines. 1 for transformation.
The hand seems known best as "Ash's Severed Hand" which is not very exciting or fear inducing. Pretty boring in all honesty, but isn't enough to be considered offensively bad. A 3 for the hand.
Ghost Dad got me. It spooked me. Looking back at him now, he doesn't seem that spooky, but something about him coming out of nowhere completely unexpected from me made him a strong spook. He seems tormented. Like his soul is in pain. That scares me. A 7 for Ghost Dad.
He never interacts with anything physically and I doubt he could. No danger from Ghost Dad here.
We see the character in the flesh in this movie, and having this funhouse mirror spirit to look at beside him, this is just a little bit stronger of a transformation than a basic ghost.
His name is actually Professor Raymond Knowby, but I wish it was Ghost Dad. Professor Raymond Knowby gets a 1. Just one of the most boring names ever. Knowby. His name literally has the word "know" in it. Wow. Very creative for a professor, someone who knows a lot.
II apologize in advance as I know the picture is of poor quality, but it is the best one I could get.
This possessed tree is somewhat frightening. They have eyes and a mouth with sharp teeth, we learn these are the perpetrators of the disturbing tree scene of the first movie and had me frightened there would be a second of the same nature. One creepy tree scene is acceptable, but if you make it happen twice we are getting into fetish territory. Anyway. These are mid-range spooks. A 5 I would say, however they crawl like spiders from their roots and are advanced to a 6 because of it.
Their danger is commendable. They kill a character in each movie on their own and are only defeated through being sucked into the time rift. They uproot themselves and crawl on, well their roots. So they are mobile, and create full tree arms in this film, picking up Ash and shoving him toward the giant Kandarian Demon. I would say a 9 for the trees. The Lorax would be proud of these ones.
Going from a normal tree to a possessed tree would be a 3 I think, they look very similar in most respects, but go beyond a basic possession where the host object remains the same.
Again, these will be considered Kandarian Demons, and receive an 8 for their name.
We now get our first look at the demons that have flown at our victims in the past two movies. These guys are spooky. Winged fleshy beings with sharp claws and glazed eyes, as one would expect. These are an 8 in spook. Fleshy almost human bird creatures that are also undead is a real good combination for some spookiness.
Their danger can now be looked at from the past 2 movies. These things can quickly possess humans, and gain a strong and tougher form, however they are not in that form currently. I believe their danger remains the same as I suggested for their unseen variants of the first movie.
What were these before they were undead? I am unsure. However, through some comic book exploration we can find The Faceless Man claiming to be the first Deadite. This man is basically just a very large humanoid. If we then assume Deadites originated from very large, but also fairly normal humanoids, then these forms would be a 7. Their faces and skin remain, but their bodies are stretched into wings, their hands now claws, and their eyes glazed and lifeless.
Finally, these are Kandarian Demons as we know them before the end of this movie, but are then called Deadites by the medieval knights. As such, we will find the middle ground between these two rankings, and give them a 5.
A wild ride of a genre defying comedy, Ash once again continues his story with some changes to the last film, defeating his Bad clone, and returning to his time.
Army of Darkness Deadite
Bad Ash
Skeletal Army
Army of Darkness is the shortest of the original Evil Dead films and goes by rather quickly with little going on. While Ash and company are no longer restricted to the cabin in the woods, there isn't much to talk about on Ash's journey, and while I appreciate the enhanced spectacle, I feel this is a step down from Evil Dead 2.
Ash is, as we know from the last film, now trapped in the past, however, he is taken as a slave by the knights, assumed to be a member of Henry the Red's army, and is thrown into the pit. Here he fights a few Deadites before being returned his chainsaw and is declared the chosen one, who must go and deliver the kingdom the Necronomicon, both to defeat the Army of Darkness, as well as return him to his time.
Ash partakes on this journey growing an evil clone who he defeats handily, and obtaining the Necronomicon, however forgets the magic words needed to do so safely. He returns, book in hand, but the army of the dead have risen, and come to reclaim the Necromonicon. While they bolster their numbers, Ash prepares the kingdom to do battle with these undead, and after a long skirmish, Ash defeats his evil clone and is returned home.
There are two new additions to be ranked, those being the Army of Darkness Deadite Demon, along with the Skeletal Deadites. These seem to be a weaker variant, used more as fodder than as the real strength of the army. Bad Ash does not pass my undead check, as he is born into the world a new being, and when he is buried, despite being dismembered, his head remains speaking, and very much alive. Bad Ash never truly dies until the end of the movie, and to me means he is not undead.
While similar to the Deadite at the end of Evil Dead 2, these Deadites are clearly scarier, having more translucent wings, and a more wrinkled and demonic-looking face and body. The spook will be increased by one as such.
Danger remains consistent, with no show of increased power.
The transformation will also be increased as their forms are more wrinkled and demonic.
In Army of Darkness, these Deadites are never referred to as Kandarian Demons, and as such do not keep the clout associated with that name. These Deadites revert back to a 2.
Army of Darkness introduces skeletons to the Evil Dead franchise, and these skeletons have range. Some retain some flesh and organs, others are nothing but bone. Some wear full sets of armor and wield swords, others wear rags and play instruments. Because of the variety, and as such different aspects to scare different people, they receive an 8 in spook.
As mentioned in the movie breakdown, these skeletons serve mostly as fodder, while the fleshier, and more familiar Deadites provide the muscle of the army. Skeletal Deadites will receive a 3, not being useless, but not being very powerful either, easily broken by a single good sword swing.
They are just skeletons. While some have some flesh, I think this still remains within completely natural transformations, and they continue to have a 1.
Being referred to as Deadites brings pain to my heart, as I must give these skeletons a 2 in their name. I am sorry my bony friends.
Watching The Evil Dead (1981)
Watching Evil Dead 2 (1987)
Watching Army of Darkness (1992)
Consulting the Evil Dead Wiki - https://evildead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Faceless_Man_(AatAoD_Universe)