November 5, 2015

Like a lot of you, because of the premiere of ASH VS EVIL DEAD, I’ve had Ash on the brain a lot this week. I mean, wasn’t it great to see Bruce Campbell back as his most beloved and well-known character? And under the direction of his old friend Sam Raimi, no less? I feel like this was something we were never going to get and now that it’s here, I almost feel like we’re not worthy! It got me thinking of how little Ash has changed since last we saw him. Granted, the prospect of him shirking all his responsibilities in the course of the last 30 years was intended to be comedic plot point, but if you analyze the Ash character over the course of all three EVIL DEAD films, he’s been a drastically different person every go round.

I wanted to spice things up and do things a little differently with this edition of Character Showdown. Let’s look at a character played by the same actor, but in different ways and see which one we prefer best!

As I mentioned in my Double Take column earlier this week, a lot of people tend to forget that the first EVIL DEAD was played for straight scares and the humor and slapstick/splat-stick that most associate with the series came much later in the sequels. Ash isn’t even really the main character in Part One, even though most of the other character do revolve around him. He’s got his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), and his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) in tow for this cabin in the woods excursion. Scott (Richard DeManincor) is his best friend who brings along his girlfriend is Shelly (Theresa Tilly). But once they read from the book and all hell breaks loose, he kind of clams up and doesn’t want to deal with the situation. If anything, Scott takes the lead and becomes pro-active in terms of dealing with the deadites and trying to escape. That doesn’t go over well, and we’re left with Ash by default. He ends up figuring out how to defeat the evil dead with his little glass amulet, but that’s kind of it. He doesn’t really grow or change much as a character.

EVIL DEAD 2 is the best in terms of showing that character growth. In this 1987 redo of the original, the movie opens this time with just Ash and his girlfriend Linda heading to that same damned cabin in the woods. Once again, they flip the switch on the tape recorder, the words from the book of the dead are recited and the evil dead unleashed. Ash immediately decapitates his girlfriend and remains in a somewhat frantic and scared state, but then he has to battle the darkness within himself. It’s hard to believe here’s a horror movie where our lead character spends close to 2/3rds of the movie by himself and we, the audience don’t mind one bit. That’s how darned entertaining Bruce Campbell’s Ash is in EVIL DEAD 2. But more importantly, once other people end up in the cabin and things get really nuts, Ash steps up and decides to fight this evil, sawing off a shotgun and arming himself (heh) with a chainsaw in place of his missing hand. In the Necronomicon, there’s a section about a man that fell from the sky and was destined to destroy this evil, and in a twist of fate, we later learn that man is Ash himself. Over the course of this one movie, he steps up and becomes a hero.

ARMY OF DARKNESS does a tiny bit of back-peddling to slightly tweak the ending of EVIL DEAD 2. Yet again, Ash does go back in time and end up in medieval times, but right from the get go, he’s kind of a brash and egotistical “braggart.” He comes off as pompous and self-serving. But there’s no denying that he’s ridiculously good at slaying deadites. Maybe he is the chosen one? He only quests for the book for selfish reasons. It’s his ticket back home. But over the course of the movie, he learns to accept his fate and embrace the hero he was meant to be. Depending on which version you watch, either he ends up in a post-apocalyptic future, yet again the victim of his own bumbling mistakes. Or he’s back at good ol’ S Mart, regaining stories of how he once had the chance to be king. 30 years after these events are where we pick up Ashley J. Williams in ASH VS EVIL DEAD. And from the pilot, he’s pretty much the same version of Ash that appears in ARMY OF DARKNESS.

That’s a lot of interesting takes on the same single character over the course of a 30 year franchise! For me personally, I’d have to say Ash from EVIL DEAD 2 is my favorite, because he starts out in one place, and ends up becoming the hero that action figures are made out of! And it also has one of those endings that while dark, could stand on its own.

What about you guys? Which version of Ash was your favorite interpretation of the character?