It’s a sight gag worthy of the glory days of The Simpsons, except that Raimi and his trusty leading man Bruce Campbell-the one fated to wave goodbye to a disappeared appendage-got there first.Įvil Dead Rise, the latest entry in the now five- film franchise (which has also spawned myriad TV and video-game extensions) features a cameo by a paperback of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights-an homage to both Raimi’s enduring sight gag and the larger Gothic tradition into which this film, directed by Lee Cronin, interjects itself with a good-natured rictus grin. The cheeky cutaway to a dog-eared copy of A Farewell to Arms in Evil Dead II (1987) was a perfect emblem for Sam Raimi’s anything-for-a-laugh unpretentiousness in his splatter landmark-less a literary reference than a joke on the very concept of literary references, with Ernest Hemingway’s elegiac title recontextualized into a gory bit of gallows humor. This article appeared in the Apedition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing.
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