Evil Dead II (also known as Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn on promotional material) is an American horror film directed and co-written by Sam Raimi, starring Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Kassie Wesley, Richard Domeier, and Ted Raimi. Written by Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel, the film is a sequel to the 1981 film The Evil Dead, becoming the second installment of the Evil Dead franchise. The film was released theatrically in the United States on March 13th, 1987. In 1993, a sequel film entitled Army of Darkness was released.

Plot Synopsis

Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda arrive at a secluded cabin in the mountains for a weekend getaway. Though Linda expresses a fear of the cabin's owners arriving and discovering the two, Ash reassures her, and presents her with a small necklace as a gift. Leaving Linda alone in one of the cabin's bedrooms to retrieve a bottle of champagne, Ash discovers a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a strange book, and an even stranger dagger sitting on a desk. Ash turns on the tape recorder, hearing the voice of a man who identifies himself as Professor Raymond Knowby, an archeologist who had been working with his family on the excavation of the ruins of Castle Kandar in England. Upon finally entering the ruins, Knowby, his family, and associate professor Ed Getley, finding the book (which he reveals is entitled Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, "The Book of The Dead") and dagger in one of the castle's rear chambers. Knowby and his wife Henrietta took the Necronomicon and the dagger back to the United States and retreated to the solitude of their cabin.

With the story relayed, Knowby's recording then changes to a dictation of one of the Necronomicon's passages, one which allegedly deals in demon resurrection. The audio of the incantation awakens an ancient spirit, which rushes through the woods and crashes through the bedroom window, attacking Linda. Ash leaps up from the desk and rushes into the room, with Linda nowhere to be seen. He goes outside and calls for Linda, only for her to suddenly spring out of the darkness towards him with solid white eyes and pointed yellow teeth. Startled by her demonic appearance, Ash falls to the ground and grabs a shovel to defend himself. Linda leaps with inhuman agility into the air, and Ash swings the shovel, slicing her head clean off her shoulders. Ash takes Linda's body and buries it in a shallow grave, examining the necklace he had given her moments before their trip went awry.

The early dawn comes, and the unseen spirit uses the last moments of darkness to race through the cabin and collide with Ash, tossing him into the air and sending him spinning through the treetops of the forest at great speed. Ash's body strikes a tree and he collapses to the ground, falling into a muddy puddle below. After a moment of stillness, he rises from the water, revealing that he has been turned into a white-eyed Deadite himself. The transformation is short-lived, as the purifying rays of the morning sun breaking above the forest canopy expel the dark spirit and render him human once more. The combined trauma of the attack and transformation is too much for Ash, and he falls unconscious with half of his body still submerged in the shallow puddle. Time passes, and Ash awakens, realizing that now is the time to make his escape before nightfall comes. Speeding off in his Oldsmobile, Ash suddenly slams on the breaks as the car approaches what was once a truss bridge spanning a wide ravine, now twisted into a claw-like mass of metal and wood. He screams in anger and agony, only to watch in horror as the sun sinks below the horizon. Dusk has come once again, bringing with it the evil spirit that gives chase to Ash as he drives and runs back to the safety of the cabin, forcing him to survive another night there.

Elsewhere, a small plane arrives at Fairview Airport, where out steps Annie Knowby, who is promptly greeted by Ed Getley. Annie has remained at the archeological site of the ruins of Kandar, and has brought with her several pages that had been removed from the Necronomicon. Annie asks Ed if everything is arranged with her parents, though Ed admits that he had not heard from the two elder Knowby family members in a week, though he is quick to point out that there's no phone in their cabin. As they load up Annie's luggage into Ed's car, she teases Ed with a major breakthrough in her father's translation of the Ex-Mortis... "a doorway to another world."

Back at the cabin, a sleeping Ash is awakened from his slumber by a strange noise coming from down the hall. As he goes to investigate, he finds a piano in one of the bedrooms playing the same song that he had played for Linda before the demon had claimed her. Though Ash is overcome with emotion at the reminder of his loss, the moment comes to an end when wooden boards covering the windows break, allowing him to watch with horror as Linda's corpse rises from her grave and dances in the moonlight, using her severed head as a ghoulish prop for her routine. Ash suddenly wakes up back in the rocking chair, wondering if her demonic dance was all just a dream, only for Linda's severed head to fall directly into his lap and bite into his hand. After a moment of struggling to get Linda's head to let go, he stumbles into the nearby workshed and sticks her head in a vice, only for Linda's decapitated rotten body to barge in with a chainsaw and attack. Ash deflects the chainsaw with a crowbar and manages to wrestle away the saw from the corpse's rotten arms, and begins to cut into Linda's head.

With the horrific deed done, Ash goes back to the main cabin, dropping the chainsaw and picking up a nearby shotgun. As he moves into the living room, the rocking chair in which he had just been sleeping in slowly rocks back and forth on its own, only freezing as Ash goes to touch it. Fearing his sanity might be slipping, Ash drops the shotgun and goes over to the mirror in an attempt to calm himself down, only for his reflection to lunge out of the mirror and begin to strangle him. Ash staggers backwards from the mirror, only to realize that he was strangling himself. Suddenly, the bite from Linda's head on Ash's hand begins spread like a dark infection, causing his hand to move independent of his control. He then gets down on the floor and kneels on his wrist, yelling through tears at the unseen demons to give him back his hand.

Ed Getley's car drives along a fog-covered dirt road before pulling over, as the narrow road is now blocked by a tow-truck and a man putting up caution barriers ahead of it. Annie and Ed get out of the car, asking the man if this was in fact the road to the Knowby cabin. The man, Jake, confirms that it is, but they're not going there. He turns on the tow-truck's headlights, revealing the twisted ruins of the bridge ahead of them. Upon the sudden appearance of Jake's companion Bobby Joe, Jake exclaims that while there's no road, there is a trail that leads to the cabin, and that he'll take Annie and Ed there, for a price. Annie agrees to Jake's price of $100, under the condition that he takes her luggage. Jake chuckles to himself, believing that Annie was only referring to the small wooden box containing the lost pages of the Book of The Dead.

Inside the cabin, Ash panics as his hand continues to grow more unruly and violent against him, grabbing and flipping him all over the cabin's small kitchen, bashing him over the head with plates until finally rendering him unconscious. Then, the hand notices a large butcher knife nearby, and begins to craw across the floor to reach it. Only a few inches away, a large kitchen knife plunges into the top of the hand and sticks it to the floor, revealing that Ash had merely faked his blackout. He reaches over and picks up the chainsaw, pulling the pull-cord with his teeth, and lops off his hand at the wrist, screaming all the way.

In the darkness of the woods, the group of Annie, Ed, Jake, and Bobby Joe wander through the dark armed only with flashlights. Jake staggers and stumbles across the ground as he struggles and grumbles with Annie's steamer trunk on his back.

While bandaging his bloody stump, Ash's hand escapes from it's trashcan prison and begins to scurry across the floor, leading it's former owner on a hunt throughout the living room. Upon shooting the wall in which he believes the hand is hiding, Ash is suddenly blasted with a horizontal geyser of blood that fills the room, though it vanishes just as quickly as it appeared. A shaken blood-soaked Ash tries to sit down in the nearby rocking chair, only for the chair to completely collapse from underneath him, sending him onto the floor. Suddenly, anything and everything within the main room of the cabin comes to life and begins to manically laugh, with Ash himself joining in on the joyous moment before his laughs morph into screams as he realizes his sanity may be slipping. A sudden knock at the door brings an abrupt end to the laughter, and Ash raises the shotgun and blindly fires through the door, hearing a woman's scream on the other side. Ash steps forward, only for Jake to leap out and tackle Ash to the floor as Ed, Annie, and the grazed Bobby Joe enter. Annie wonders where her parents are, only to spot the bloody chainsaw and the bloody Ash, coming to the conclusion that he is responsible for their disappearance. Jake drags the woozy Ash into the fruit cellar as the others watch Williams tumble down the wooden steps.

As Jake tends to Bobby Joe's wound, Ed tells Annie there's no sign of her parents, though Annie is quick to point out that her father's belongings are there on the desk. She turns on her father's tape recorder, with his message revealing that after Henrietta's possession by the Kandarian Demon, he was unable to bring himself to kill her, and simply buried her in the cabin's fruit cellar. At that moment, Henrietta's rotten corpse pops out of the ground, frightening Ash, who scrambles up the steps and begs to be let out. Reluctantly, the group pull Ash out mere moments before the undead Henrietta reaches him. Henrietta grabs Jake, prompting Ed to jump in and start punching Henrietta, only for Henrietta to reach up and throw Ed across the room. Ash and Jake managed to slam the cellar door shut and lock it back up.

After Ash tries to explain to the frightened group what is going on, Henrietta appears through the opening of the cellar door completely human, singing a lullaby that she used to sing to Annie as a baby. Ash holds Annie back before she can unlock the cellar door, only for Ed to suddenly leap up from the couch, revealing that he has been possessed. He floats in the air, laughing manically and taunting the frightened onlookers. After Ed attacks Bobby Joe and Jake, Ash charges at him with an axe and begins to hack away, sending green blood all over the room as Annie watches in terror.

The cabin falls silent for a time as the deed is done, only for strange noises to begin echoing throughout the cabin, which Ash theorizes may be something trying to break into their world. An ominous light spills out from a bedroom door that slowly creaks open on it's own, prompting Ash and the group to investigate. Inside the room materializes the ghoulish ghostly visage of Raymond Knowby, sending a dire message from the beyond that the group's salvation lies within the lost pages of the Ex-Mortis that Annie had brought with her. As the ghostly form vanishes, Bobby Joe complains that Jake is holding her hand too tight, only for Jake to reply that he isn't holding her hand. She looks down and screams in terror as she realizes she's holding Ash's severed hand, and she flees into the darkness of the woods. As she runs deeper into the forest, vines slither out of the fog and shadows and drag her across the forest floor, into the open maw of a demonic tree.

Back at the cabin, Annie examines the pages of the Necronomicon, explaining to Ash about the "Hero From The Sky", a man who combated this evil in the Middle Ages. As Jake continues to stare out the window in the hopes of spotting Bobby Joe, Annie explains that passages on these pages can turn this demonic force into a thing of the flesh, and they can open a rift in time to send it back. Before she can elaborate further, Jake grabs the shotgun and throws the pages of the book into the fruit cellar, demanding that they go out and look for Bobby Joe. Reluctantly, Ash and Annie go outside, with Jake's calls for Bobby Joe grabbing the attention of the demon roaming the woods. Ash becomes possessed once more, and attacks Jake as Annie runs back to the cabin. Inside, she arms herself with the Kandarian Dagger, silently waiting for something to happen. She slowly creeps towards the backdoor when the door handle starts to move, mistakenly stabbing Jake directly in the gut with the dagger as the possessed Ash tries to reach through the window at her. Ash ceases his attack momentarily, allowing Annie to drag the wounded Jake back into the living room. Henrietta suddenly reaches out through the opening of the cellar door and begins to drag Jake into her lair, though Annie is quick to grab Jake's ankles. Blood begins to intensely spray out from the cellar as Jake's flesh is stripped from his bones, and he's dragged completely into the cellar, leaving Annie all alone. The possessed Ash enters the cabin and throws Annie across the room, only to notice Linda's necklace laying on the ground beside her. Overwhelmed with emotion, Ash is freed from his possession and reverts back to human form, leading Annie to question how long he's going to be normal. Knowing they need those pages in the cellar, the two gear up and prepare to venture down to retrieve them.

Attaching the chainsaw to the stump of his hand and arming himself with the shotgun, Ash ventures alone into the darkness of the fruit cellar, retrieving all the pages before being stopped by Henrietta moments before he climbs back out to the surface. Henrietta levitates out of the cellar and begins to attack Annie while she is trying to recite the passages on the pages, only for Ash to climb out and begin attacking Henrietta. The possessed Henrietta mutates into more grotesque form with a ghoulish head and an elongated neck, continuing to attack until Annie distracts her by singing the same nursery rhyme that Henrietta had tried to use against her earlier. This distraction allows Ash a moment to use his chainsaw hand to dismember Henrietta limb by limb, obliterating her head with a single shotgun blast.

Suddenly, the trees outside the cabin begin to move on their own, attacking the cabin. As Annie goes back to finish reciting the pages, the Kandarian Demon, now given a form of flesh, burst through the front door of the cabin. Ash swipes at the creature as Annie continues to read, only for her to be cut off mid-sentence as the Kandarian Dagger stabs her in the back, courtesy of Ash's severed hand. The giant tree branch hand of the demon snatches up Ash, who raises his chainsaw and stabs the monster in the eye as it pulls him closer to it's hungry maw. With her dying breath, Annie finishes reading the passage to open the time rift, pulling the demon inside it. Ash crawls over to Annie's body, telling her that she did it, only for the time rift's pull to become more intense than ever. Ash screams as he's pulled into the rift, hit by flashing lights and swirling smoke as he tumbles through alone.

The time rift opens in a dusty canyon, spitting out Ash and his Oldsmobile into their strange destination. Before Ash can sit up or get his bearings, a priest and dozens upon dozens of armor-clad knights surround him, ready to send their swords into his flesh (believing him to be a Deadite). Suddenly, a screech fills the air, and a winged Deadite glides above the frightened knights. Ash stands up and draws his shotgun, taking aim and blowing apart the Deadite's head, sending it's lifeless body to the ground. Shaken by the encounter, Ash looks around, noticing a large castle behind him as the knights begin to hail him as their savior. He screams, realizing he was the "Hero From The Sky" all along...

Cast

• Bruce Campbell - Ash Williams/Evil Ash
• Sarah Berry - Annie Knowby
• Richard Domeier - Ed Getley
• Dan Hicks - Jake
• Kassie Wesley - Bobby Joe
• Denise Bixler - Linda
• John Peakes - Professor Raymond Knowby
• Lou Hancock - Henrietta Knowby
• Ted Raimi - Deadite Henrietta Knowby

Alternate Versions

"Severely Edited For Television" Cut

In late 1987, Bruce Campbell was brought in at the request of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group to recut Evil Dead II into a heavily censored version suitable for network television broadcasts.^[1] This "Severely Edited For Television" version removed much of the film's gore and graphic imagery, relying on alternate takes, deleted scenes, or extended reaction shots from various characters to make up for the removed scenes. Among the notable added scenes include a shot of Ash throwing the Necronomicon into the fireplace (maintaining continuity from the climax of The Evil Dead), an extended version of the "laughing room" scene, Annie Knowby watching the Deadite-possessed Ash eating a squirrel, as well as a bloodless version of Jake's death in the cellar door.^[2] While this version never aired on network television in the United States, it was broadcasted several times throughout the 1990s in Mexico, which has resulted in this version gaining the fan-given nickname of "The Mexican TV Cut".^[3]

The "Severely Edited For Television"/"Mexican TV Cut" has never had an official home media release in any format in any country, as it is believed that the original elements and prints (alongside much of the original material for Army of Darkness) were destroyed by Dino De Laurentiis following financial struggles in the late 1990s and the subsequent sale of many of his films.^[4]

"Tanz der Teufel II: 25th Anniversary Limited Edition" Cut

In 2013, German home media company BMV Medien partnered with StudioCanal to release an officially licensed limited edition blu-ray release of Tanz der Teufel II (Evil Dead II), which included three minutes of additional footage not featured in the film's original theatrical cut. This version used behind the scenes footage taken by Greg Nicotero and Vern Hyde crudely spliced into the theatrical cut of the film to prolong several scenes by several seconds.^[5] This cut also uses several seconds of footage from the opening of Army of Darkness, where Ash stands up upon hearing Linda scream from the demon crashing through the bedroom window.^[6] This official release is not to be confused with another German-exclusive Tanz der Teufel II cut (called "XXL Version") originating from a 2008 bootleg DVD, which also used the Nicotero and Hyde footage in a similar manner.^[5]

Deleted Scenes

As of 2026, it is believed that all original film elements for Evil Dead II were destroyed sometime following the bankruptcy of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group in 1989, making a formal remaster and release of any deleted scenes impossible.

Scene Name	Image	Description	Notes
Extended Introduction: "Hero From The Sky"		The opening prologue of the film depicted a sequence in which the newly-constructed Castle Kandar is seen thriving before a dust storm and ominous lighting herald the arrival of evil in the land. It is then followed by a heroic shot of the silhouetted "Hero From The Sky", whom the narrator states banished the evil.	Though it is unknown how far along into production this scene was, it is known that the "Hero From The Sky" close-up shot of Bruce Campbell as Ash ("holding what appears to be a jagged toothed longsword") was filmed.
Extended Introduction: Henrietta Attacks		Fleeing to the cabin's fruit cellar, Professor Knowby records a message on his reel-to-reel tape recorder that his wife Henrietta has been possessed. Henrietta leaps from the darkness of the cellar and frightens Raymond, ending his recording abruptly.	On-set photographs released throughout the years have revealed that this sequence was completely filmed.
Extended Introduction: The Evil Dead Recap		The narration continues, stating that a group of five collage students ventured to the same cabin just one week after the Knowby family vanished. Quick shots recreate various moments from The Evil Dead with new actors in the roles of Scotty (portrayed by Sam Raimi), Shelly, Cheryl, and Linda. The recap concludes with a shot of Ash throwing the Necronomicon into the fireplace, and the book's eyes bulging out of it's cover as it screams in agony.	According to several behind the scenes featurettes on the film's various home media releases, various portions of this scene were shot, though it was scrapped by Sam Raimi after only a few days into production.[7][8] The new shot of Ash throwing the book into the fireplace (without the animation of it screaming in agony) was used in the "Severely Edited For Television" cut.[3]
Chop-Top Ed		After Ash attacks the Deadite Ed Getley with an axe, Ed continues to fight with half of his head lopped off, exposing a small green brain within. Ash continues to hack away at Getley, and there is a shot of his body and dismembered limbs flopping on the ground.	On-set photographs released throughout the years have revealed that this sequence was completely filmed.
Attack of The Helping Hand		Continuing directly from the Deadite Ed fight sequence, Ash finishes chopping up Ed, only to be attacked by his own severed hand. The hand chokes it's previous owner, only for Ash to get it off of him and it scurry away.	On-set photographs released throughout the years have revealed that this sequence was completely filmed.

Distribution & Merchandising Rights

Evil Dead II was originally produced and distributed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group through a shell company named Rosebud Releasing (as Dino De Laurentiis did not want to release an unrated film under his primary company).^[7] In 1988, the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group went bankrupt, and most of the company's film catalog, including Evil Dead II, was sold to Paravision International, the entertainment division of the L'Oréal personal care product company. Paravision's catalog was then sold to StudioCanal (then known as Canal+ D.A.) in 1994.^[9] Renaissance Pictures had retained a majority ownership of the merchandising rights to Evil Dead II since the film's release, though eventually their portion of the rights were sold to StudioCanal in 2010, allowing the company to fully begin licensing Evil Dead II for various forms of merchandise and other media.

Adaptations In Other Media

• Evil Dead: The Musical (2003): A musical production done with official approval of Renaissance Pictures and StudioCanal adapting the events of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.
• Evil Dead 2 Cinestory (2020): An officially licensed graphic novel adaptation of the film published by Jasco Games.

Trivia

• One of the early story concepts for Evil Dead II was about the character of Ash battling the forces of evil in medieval times. An early production announcement advertisement based on this story concept would be created and published, with the sequel's full title as Evil Dead II: Evil Dead and The Army of Darkness. Due to budgetary constraints, this idea would be scrapped for Evil Dead II, but later reworked for the film's sequel (Army of Darkness) a few years later.^[10]
• When the Deadite Ash notices Linda's necklace on the floor of the cabin, the necklace's chain is in the shape of a skull.
• A glove resembling the one worn by the Nightmare On Elm Street character Freddy Krueger can be seen in the workshed and in the cabin cellar. This replica glove was designed by Tony Elwood, who suggested the prop's inclusion in the film to Sam Raimi.^[11]
• For the United Kingdom's release of Evil Dead II, an exclusive 30-second television spot starring Sam Raimi and television presenter Jonathan Ross as fictionalized versions of themselves was produced by Palace Pictures.

References