I've made a few comments about the STARZ show Ash vs. Evil Dead, mostly about how I thought Jill Marie Jones would be a good Susie Quinn, but for her age. It's a tongue-in-cheek horror show, a type of genre which I usually do not watch. But because of Bruce Campbell's very entertaining performance in the Army of Darkness movie some years ago, I was interested in catching this long overdue continuation of the story.
Army of Darkness, itself a continuation of the two Evil Dead movies, didn't need to be continued, because it was a self contained story. But it had a cult following, so why not take advantage of that? With Bruce Campbell on board, it turned out to be what you'd expect. The same kind of show, the same kind of humor, and the same kind of over-the-top gore. Which all worked quite well.
The show had another pleasant casting to add to the production. That would be Xena, the Warrior Princess, yes, the one and only Lucy Lawless, who STARZ had just used in its SPARTACUS show recently. Since the Evil Dead producer, Sam Raimi, was also the producer of Xena, Warrior Princess, it made sense to use her in the new Evil Dead series.
Spoiler alert: Don't read further if you haven't seen the last episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead. Okay, I will continue. Seeing as how Lucy Lawless is an accomplished actress, and played an iconic role as a "good guy" in her role as Xena, I was fully expecting her to be another good guy in Ash vs. Evil Dead. She was tracking Ash, and the viewer was led to believe she was going to help him fight the evil dead and save the world. After all, as she demonstrated in Xena, Lucy does have a strong heroic appearance, and even though she played no hero in Spartacus, (which was not produced by Raimi,) I fully expected her to return as a hero in Raimi's show.
But no. In this past episode she turned out to be the source of all of the evil in the show. You see, the original movie centered around the Necronomicon, or the book of the dead, written centuries ago, and has the power to summon demons. So imagine how thrilled I was when the story took a twist and it turned out that Lucy Lawless was the one who WROTE the book. Apparently, she's an ancient priestess or something from the dark depths of antiquity. So she's not a good guy, she's a bad guy.
Which was a twist I didn't see coming, even though the story did foreshadow it when Lucy's character had fallen into a fire and emerged unharmed. That should have told me something. But no. I was just too used to Hollywood doing their Hollywood thing with their regulars, and expected her to be the serious, (or straight) hero opposite Bruce Campbell's comedic relief.
So kudos to Sam Raimi and his latest incarnation of the Evil Dead franchise. Good job to all involved. Again, I rarely go for tongue-in-cheek type of shows. But tongue-in-cheek stories with Bruce Campbell work every time. He was born for the genre. Thumbs up for Ash vs. Evil Dead.
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