The Evil Dead 2 Commentary Track: Part Two

DVD CHAPTER TWO:

SAM:

 ...in our Ferndale office collecting dust for about 7 years.

LAUGHS

SCOTT:

Eagerly awaiting the sequel.

BRUCE:

What about the knife of the dea...

You know. the the was that, did that still exist?

SAM:

Tom Sullivan designed both that original large scale Kandarian dagger

and the Book of the Dead and their both, I think, both the originals are

used in Evil Dead 2 here.

BRUCE:

Right. And this cabin was re... was basically ummm, constructed on the, on the... on a guy's personal property in Wade...

GREG:

Where they shot Color Purple.

BRUCE:

Wadesboro, North Carolina.

GREG:

And all of this was built, the whole set was a 2 story set built

in a gymnasium of the J.R. Faison high school in Wadesboro.

BRUCE:

That's right.

GREG:

Don't ask me why I remember that.

BRUCE:

Although, weird little bits like this were part of

reshoots that were actually done in a warehouse,

SCOTT:

And that was in Dearborn?

BRUCE:

Yeah, in Michigan.

GREG:

Oh, that's right. Cause we flew in and did reshoots there.

BRUCE:

Right.

SCOTT:

What the... quiet.

GREG:

We don't want him to find us out here. yeah, this is the same

property where they shot Color Purple. There's a house...

SCOTT:

Oh.

SAM:

No! That wig is from K-Mart!

BRUCE:

Oh, man. There's no question about that.

GREG:

So, the first, the first 3 weeks we were out on location

shooting nights and they built the uh the castle, I remember...

SAM:

Say hello to Poppa!

SCOTT:

Recap the decap!

BRUCE:

The relationship was cut short.

GREG:

Remember when she had her tennis shoes on? And we did the slow motion shot and you had to cut out before we saw her feet cause she had her tennis shoes on?

SAM:

 I do remember that.

SCOTT:

Of all the...

SAM:

How do you remember that strange fact?

GREG:

 I watched the tapes last night.

BRUCE:

There';s the amulet! the 12 dollar amulet.

SCOTT:

The amulet. OUCH!

SAM:

You know, on a night when all this horror is going on, how does he have time to craft that big cross? It's like, just bury her and get inside and bolt the door, for god's sake.

BRUCE:

Sam, don't say that. Ash is a very skillful man.

SCOTT:

Bolt the door.

SAM:

Skip the arts & crafts, buddy.

GREG:

Ok.

BRUCE:

Sam, will you explain this phoney um, this handheld stuff... the shakey-cam?

GREG:

Shakey-cam.

SAM:

This shot is actually shot on a motorcycle I was riding, camera mounted to it with a spring plate that we designed. I remember when they didn't pull open this second door I once slammed into that. Bruce, this is the shot where I uh I broke your jaw.

GREG:
Yeah, right there.

BRUCE:

Right, which wound up being the last shot we shot of the movie because in case anything happened to me, we'd be fine.

GREG:

How long did it take to shoot this shot? A whole day, right?

BRUCE:

As I recall, it was one full day which this was ironically shot in South Carolina, outside of Cheraw, South Carolina cause we had to find a road that was at least like a mile long where Sam could personally torment me...

GREG:

 With branches and stuff?

BRUCE:

 ...on his little rig where he would spin me back and forth in either direction.

SAM:

That was the most fun I had all shoot was spinning you on that Rheostat,

backwards and forwards, ramming you through trees...

BRUCE:

 Yes, just playing me like a video game.

GREG:

This was the first of many torturous times of Bruce in the makeup with the contact lenses. the makeup was sculpted by Howard Berger. i remember Sam kept saying "Open your eyes! Open your eyes!".

BRUCE:

I know, but what was so weird was that I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or not.

GREG:

Cause of the contacts and the water...

BRUCE:

Right. You can't always really tell.

GREG:

And I kept saying "He's gonna open his eyes and the lenses

will wash away, so we better be careful".

BRUCE:

At this point, Peter Deming came to join in

GREG:

Yes.

BRUCE:

Of this footage and I think some of the first stuff Peter had to shoot

was doing exposure changes and reverse motion which obviously

was a good hello to this movie for Peter Deming.

GREG:

Escatly. And there's actually a closeup here of the eye-changing which we shot in the parking lot at KNB. That right there, that Bob Kurtzman did.

BRUCE:

Which was an oversized piece?

GREG:

Yep, oversized eyeball.

SAM:

Gee, that shot's so good it looks like it must have

been shot in a garage and not a parking lot.

LAUGHS

SAM:

Yeah, that was Peter Deming's first day, I do remember that because

Eugene Shlagleet and the rest of the first crew left.

SCOTT:

Right.

SAM:

They didn't wanna do all the...

BRUCE:

They were busy. they had a previous engagement.

SAM:

They did.

GREG:

[Branchelaurus] Every 5 seconds there's branches or things being...

SCOTT:

Oh no!

SAM:

What a horrible dream.

GREG:

What did we put in the... Wasn't there something in the puddle that we...

SCOTT:

Water!

GREG:

LAUGHS

BRUCE:

Yeah, horrible dye, no doubt.

GREG:

There was dye in there because we didn't want to put

dirt in there because of your contacts.

SAM:

My policy is to soak Bruce's membranes in as many strange

dyes and liquids and potions and chemicals as possible.

BRUCE:

Yeah, but I feel

 [FAKE COUGHING]

pretty good.

[FAKE COUGHING].

LAUGHS

BRUCE:

I think this property had some good trees on it but other trees were kinda wimpy so a tree like there was a ported, there were ported trees and then spray foam trees.

SCOTT:

Don't torture me. I didn't even know that. Now it'll torment me.

BRUCE:

Yeah, the tops of the trees are ike just horribly cut off. they join back into little tiny trees.

GREG:

That one, too. You couldn't pan up too high because

the trees just stopped after about 9 feet.

BRUCE:

I have a photograph of it taken about a year ago and those

phoney trees that all the stuff is crumbling off it but it's still there.

GREG:

You're kidding.

BRUCE:

Yeah.

SCOTT:

 Oh, man. maybe we have phoney [timite].

GREG:

That was a great 360 shot... I mean all the way around.

BRUCE:

Right.

SAM:

Bob uh Dyke...

BRUCE:

Look, a matte shot.

SAM:

And a Mr. Hitchcock shot those paint... uh, matte paintings.

BRUCE:

Right.

SAM:

Tom Hitchcock, correct?

BRUCE:

Right, from Michigan... at the time it was Magic Lantern Productions.

SAM:

We had a wonderful script supervisor on this picture and the str... the most horrible thing happened at the preview in New York. She came out crying, I ran into her, "You didn't put my name in the credits" and i went GASP! Oh, my god, we forgot to put her name in the credits!

SCOTT:

She shoulda supervised that.

BRUCE:

 What was her name?

G & SAM:

Fran Zwass.

BRUCE:

I think it was Fran Zwass.

It's okay cause she threatened to quit every day cause

Sam would move furniture around for every shot...

GREG:

Or the blood would never match.

BRUCE:

[IMITATING FRAN ZWASS]

“Sam, Sam, it will not match, Sam!

[IMITATING SAM RAIMI]

“Don't worry about it, through the camera it looks fine.”

[IMITATING FRAN ZWASS]

“No, Sam!”

GREG:

She used to yell at us cause we didn't put the blood in the same place twice.

And she'd be like “No, black over here, green over here!”

SAM:

Yeah, but you know what?

We were the worst people at continuity.

We needed her and she did a good job.

BRUCE:

Right.

SAM:

Very good job.

BRUCE:

Especially shooting out of sequence.

We shot the, all the night stuff...

BRUCE & GREG:

First.

BRUCE:

And we had to estimate for example what certain...

GREG:

Yeah

BRUCE:

things would look like, which you're always wrong.

GREG:

Up, there you are wiping it off!

BRUCE:

I better get that makeup off.

GREG:

Wait, here's the first uh...

SAM:

A miniature! Look out!

BRUCE:

 Look out, a miniature. That's right.

SAM:

Don't make me act with that thing!

BRUCE:

I had to keep taking my makeup off in order to add more.

GREG:

Yeah.

BRUCE:

 If you just kept adding on throught the course of this movie,

I woulda been the grey man.

GREG:

 Sam...

SAM:

You loved hitting my car didn't you?

BRUCE:

I did love hitting your car.

SAM:

You were a vandal to my car in the last picture.

That was always a cool matte painting. I like that

GREG:

That's a great shot.

SAM:

Bob Dyke and Tom Hitchcock, they projected Bruce into that little area.

GREG:

As opposed to Bruce projecting himself.

BRUCE:

Well sure, but I had to yell so I hadda project, too.

SAM:

 I smell a blue screen shot!

GREG:

Uh oh.

BRUCE:

 I'm terrified of all these blue screen shots, as you can see.

Cut to Sam's car dragged into the studio on it's last legs 6 months later.

GREG:

LAUGHS

SAM:

That car was as healthy as the day it...

The Evil Dead 2 Commentary Track: Part One

   I love the Evil Dead films. Anyone that knows me personally will groan at hearing me mention them, since I have been known to profess my love for them often. but today's post is NOT about that...

   I believe that the Evil Dead 2 commentary track is one of the most enjoyable and funniest commentary tracks that has ever been recorded. It's not because I am an Evil Dead head, it is actually a hilarious insight into the minds of four of the men responsible for making the film work. They talk shop, they goof on each other, reminisce and generally have a great time together. You can tell these guys are friends and like each other a lot.

The four men involved are Sam Raimi, creator of the Evil Dead franchise.

Bruce Campbell, the star of the Evil Dead franchise (until the inevitable remake).

Scott Spiegel, the co-writer of Evil Dead 2.

Greg Nicotero, special Makeup FX master (who is currently working on The Walking Dead).

   So, sit back, crack a brew, hit the bong and enjoy my painstaking work at typing out the full 84 minutes of hilarity and fun of the Commentary track of the masterpiece "Evil Dead 2".

EVIL DEAD II COMMENTARY TRACK

DVD CHAPTER ONE:

BRUCE:

Sam won't tell this phoney story, so I will.

Sam had to shoot that logo.

Is that not true, Sam?

SAM:

That's correct, that's not true.

BRUCE:

Wha... Yeah, because I... because the...

Rosebud was not really a real company.

SAM:

That's right.

Dino Del Laurentis had a company...

uh... D.E.L. Is that it?

BRUCE:

DEG, at the time.

GREG:

Yeah.

SAM:

And uh, he could not release an X rated movie, which the MPAA had rated Evil Dead 2. So we had to make a cheesy new company called Rosebud Releasing and Bruce and I were in love with logos. So, uh, we shot a logo of this rose in front of this fake Warner Brothers type cloudy backdrop. Is that the story?

BRUCE:

That's the story, Sam.

GREG:

LAUGHS

BRUCE:

Say, who are you anyway?

SCOTT:

Aw, you missed all the cool stuff there!

SAM:

But, actually, it was shot by ano... by an animator. We gave him the backdrop, I gave him a storyboard and he actually did the uh stop motion animation.

I cannot remember the guy's name.

BRUCE:

Right. Well, who are you anyway?

SAM:

That what this who... this whole laserdisc is gonna be "What was that guy's name?"

BRUCE:

What was that guy's name? Well, what's your name?

We're supposed to introduce ourselves.

SAM:

Okay. My name is Sam Raimi.

I'm the director of this motion picture you're about to see - Evil Dead 2.

BRUCE:

Scott?

SCOTT:

And I'm Scott Spiegel, co-writer of Evil Dead 2.

BRUCE:

 I'm Bruce Campbell, I play the idiot Ash, and I co-produced this epic.

GREG:

Greg Nicotero, special makeup fx.

SCOTT:

And the movie begins...

GREG:
Dun dun dun.

SAM:

The movie's half over already... with that.

GREG:

The first story took us into it.

BRUCE:

This is actually shot in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

GREG:

 Wadesboro, North Carolina, that's where we shot this.

SCOTT:

This is the only part of the picture,

I think you guys really just dashed this off.

I absolutely had nothing...

BRUCE:
Right.

SCOTT:

 ...to do with this because we weren't sure about the uh the whole beginning sequence, which had some... we couldn't get the footage or something from New Line or Dino couldn't get the footage from New Line.

BRUCE:

Right. This is actually a brand new Linda, Denise Bixler.

SCOTT:

Right.

BRUCE:

 And there's been some confusion of whether Ash would be

stupid enough to go back to the cabin for another night

SCOTT:

Right.

BRUCE:

Which of course, he is. But uh that's another story.

GREG:

Well, didn't we actually reshoot the whole opening from the original evil dead with everybody sitting around with the tape recorder and all that stuff? I remember that there was another Scott that we had shot with, I remember.

SCOTT:

Oh really?

GREG:

Yeah, it was like the second day.

SCOTT:

 Yeesh, I know we wrote it.

GREG:

I remember shooting it.

SCOTT:

Hmmmm.

SAM:

Ever since the accident... I can't remember.

SCOTT:

Oh, that saucy little tramp! Baby. I am the chip and you are the dip.

BRUCE:

Actually, my favorite thing about her t-shirt is we parade 2 different t-shirts for her to try on. One was a normal t-shirt that just hung normally, the other one was this vacuu-formed one. And I remember Rob Tapert, the producer,. going

[imitates Rob Tapert]

"well, there's no question about it - the vacuu-formed one!"

SCOTT:

HAHA - Robbie! I know, he goes

[imitates Rob Tapert]

"Uh, baby, uh, you wanna play house?

You be the screen door and I'll slam you all night long!'

BRUCE:

HAHAHA!!!

SCOTT:

No, I'm sorry... I'm kidding, Rob. Sorry, Rob, just joking!

BRUCE:

Actually, I wanna talk about that little, that little amulet.

The one that was bought at Corey's Jewel Box in Michigan.

SCOTT:

Corey's Jewel Box?

SAM:

At the [down 12] mall, I think.

BRUCE:

Yes, the [down 12] mall. Sam bought it, didn't you,

because of the reflection gag... or the magnifying gag?

SAM:

Yes, originally in Evil Dead one what we were going to do was use that uh little magnifying glass in the amulet to let the sun shine through it and Ash was gonna witness it burning the book of the dead and he was going to realize at that point that burning the book was the key.

SCOTT:

Right.

SAM:

But, uh, that got cut out.

BRUCE:

So now, we're s.. s.. stuck with the little amulet.

SCOTT:

The fireplace will do just well, thank you.

SAM:

So, we got stuck with that cheesy necklace.

SCOTT:

Right.

SAM:

That's Bruce's dad's tape recorder.

I can remember making tapes with you in high school on that thing.

BRUCE:

Yeah, we used to actually put sound to some of the super 8 movies.

SAM:

Remember that, Scott?

SCOTT:

Absolutely.

Wasn't she married to Steve Guttenberg or something?

GREG:

For awhile.

BRUCE:

She was... for a while.

SCOTT:

For a while.

GREG:

Not anymore.

BRUCE:

So this.. that tape recorder is actually the same tape

recorder from the original Evil Dead movie.

SCOTT:

Right.

BRUCE:

I think it's one of the few actual holdovers cause this entire set was obviously rebuilt.

SCOTT:

And wasn't that a certain scale castle?

GREG:

Yep, there's the forced perspective miniature.

SCOTT:

That was in Wadesboro, right?

GREG:

Yeah

BRUCE:

 What kills me is that after months of building

that stupid thing, it looks like a matted in backdrop.

GREG:

It looks... exactly!

SCOTT:

Isn't that funny? But it still looks cool, though.

BRUCE:

It doesn't look real.

SCOTT:

And that's John Peakes on the left.

SAM:

Detroit actor.

SCOTT:

And he's also doing the voiceover right now, right? On the tape...

BRUCE:

Now, a little trivia: the guy who did the voice of the Professor, that same character, in the first Evil Dead is Bob Dorian, who now hosts American Movie Classics.

SCOTT:

Ah, that's right. Cool.

GREG:

No kidding. This was the first day of shooting. this is the first time we did any of the makeups 'cause she has uh henrietta has contact lenses and the makeup. And I remember trying to get the lighting right where she would rock forward into the light and she'd open her eyes and a horrible heinous horror hag...

BRUCE:

Played by Lou Hancock.

SCOTT:

I missed that! You shot that, but it didn't make it in, right?

GREG:

That's right.

SAM:

 I really liked that, too.

SCOTT:

That was really cool.

SAM:

It was a good moment, but somehow...

SCOTT:

Too slow.

SAM:

I don't know. It didn't seem to fit in the pace of this.

SCOTT:

Right.

BRUCE:

Sam, I have a question: was that clock the original clock, as well?

SAM:

That is the original clock.

BRUCE:

I think that was a holdover, too.

SAM:

The clock and the tape recorder both sat...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Valiant Funnies #2

Erica Pierce, the Mothergod, will hopefully be back to menace our heroes again.

Valiant Funnies #1

Valiant Comics is relaunching in 2012, but a few characters integral to it's success cannot be used due to Jim Shooter taking them to Dark Horse, only for them to fail.

The Genesis of Valhalla: Creating my Toyroom/Man-cave!

   So, Amy & I've been in the new place for 3 months, but I had to get the rest'a the joint situated first. Now, that it's pretty much all-together, I started working on my home within my home, Valhalla AKA Room 1148.

   Since I manage a storage property, I have a few units jammed with goodies in numerous 30 gallon bins. My OCD nature demands that everything is seperated by scale or theme. Yes, it's really fun to pack up over a thousand figures, let me tell you.

   So last night, after 12 hours of work, I came home and decided to start putting up shelves. I had to do a bit of cutting and lite sanding, but it's not a big deal. 6 shelves are up with 2 more to go (most likely tonight or Sunday).

   I brought a few bins home and just threw some figures up on them, so I can get what I want out of their plastic confinement and get the rest back to storage. This is the result. . .

THIS IS STRICTLY A W.I.P. (Work in Progress):
CLICK PICTURES IF YOU WANT THEM EMBIGGENED!



1) On the left, there are two bookshelves in the closet space (I removed the doors because I don't need it. I have a huge closet right outside that doorway to the right). In front are tool storage bins I use to keep individual loose figures in. That green and pink atrocity on the bottom right is called a "Pie Safe" and belongs to Amy. I'm trying to convice her to get rid of it (I need more room).

2) Top shelf is the start of my Bruce Campbell/Evil Dead shrine. Most of my friends know that wherever I have lived there has been some sort of Bruce display or, at the very least, a Necronomicon!
The bottom shelf is mainly DC Universe Classics figures with a few Marvel Legends & misc. figures thrown in (for now). I sold off 30 Marvel Legends figures 2 years ago in a severe financial pinch. I made $1200.00 but gave up some VERY nice figures that have tripled in price since (I'm not a TOTAL geek, part of this is financial).

3) I started laying out the figures and began a lil Avengers setup! Hulk, Thor, Iron Man & Nick Fury, plus a few GI Joes that will be moved when I set them up.

4) The Cobra Command: Arch Enemy of G.I. Joe. Cobra Commander in front of his Snake-Head throne with Tomax & Xamot in front of him and High Command at his side: Baroness, Storm Shadow, Dr. Mindbender & Wraith at his left hand, Destro, Major Bludd, Zartan & Firefly to his right, the Dreadnoks in front of them. To the far right is Serpentor in his Chariot that I put on a clear stand. Looks like his chariot is floating doesn't it? "This I command!" There are more Cobra Soldiers & Officers on each side, but I cropped the pic down for some details!

   Well, that's it for now, but looking at these pictures makes me think of a bit of dialogue from a film called "Free Enterprise" where the main character has a nice vintage toy collection (ala "The 40 year old virgin") and asks a girl he's just brought home if she likes his place. She looks around and says... "It looks like a really rich fourth grader lives here."

Nick Fury introduces the NEW S.H.I.E.L.D. Hovercar. . .