Back in the days of Vaudeville, a comic (usually a male) tricked his sidekick (usually a female with very large breasts) to bend over in front of him to pick up something he "accidentally" dropped on the floor. When she bent over before the audience, the comic revealed a stick made of two long, flat boards sandwiched together and "slapped" her butt, the two boards slapping together to make a loud sound.

Yes, this became known as "slapstick," a boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude, over-the-top jokes, especially bathroom humor, and humorous violence that would probably kill someone in another genre. Think cartoon violence where a falling safe squashes the cat, but the cat inflates to continue the chase. Slapstick has always been popular, and according to Mel Brook's "History of the World," may have actually originated when cave people watched fellow cavemen eaten alive by dinosaurs. Remember, in comedy, what makes it funny is it happens to someone else! I thought it was hysterical when Ben Stiller caught his balls in his zipper in There's Something About Mary (1998).

Slapstick became a mainstay of cinema with classic comedians like Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, The Keystone Cops, and of course, The Three Stooges. (Comedians like Jim Carey and Adam Sandler, to name only two, probably carry the torch today.) It's interesting to recall that The Stooges caused a bit of a stir for parents of the 50's because kids liked to mimic the gags they saw Moe pull on Larry and Curley. (Reminds me of the MTV "Beavis and Butt-head" scandal, when some kid burned down his house after seeing the cartoon duo do it on TV.) Things never change, people! So, after watching Moe, kids tried poking their friends in the eyes and pulled ears and noses with pliers, sometimes with very bloody results. Not funny? As long as it didn't happen to me?

But what would happen if we took away Moe, Larry, and Curley's famous pies and replaced them with a chainsaw, a hatchet, and an ice pike? Would we still laugh? You bet we would! Sometime back, don't ask me when, Fangoria Magazine came up with a name for this type of humor. If hitting someone in the face with a pie for laughs is called Slapstick, then, hitting someone in the face with a chainsaw for laughs is called Splatstick.

But were audiences ready for that kind of humor? One of the first films to attempt this relatively modern art form, John Landis' American Werewolf in London (1981), considered a genre classic today, didn't do very well when first released. Why? Splat-Stick! When David (David Naughton) endures the painful transformation into a werewolf, Credence Clearwater's Bad Moon Rising plays in the background. And what about the scenes with David's dead friend, Jack (Griffin Dunne), oozing pus and rotting before our eyes while talking to David, or David's maimed, extremely bloody victims gathered together in a porno theater to convince him to kill himself. Audiences in 1981 didn't know they were supposed to laugh. This is supposed to be a horror film, not a comedy, the audience screamed. However, most people who watch the film today think it's hysterical. So, for me, it's kudos to John Landis for this groundbreaking film. Still, when it comes to Splatstick, one name stands out as the king - Sam Raimi.

Sam Raimi has an interesting story to tell. He was the kid in high school who made Super-8 movies of his friends and himself being run over by cars, or my favorite, the hacking death of the Pillsbury Doughboy, complete with jellied guts flowing from the amputated limbs. In an interview on The Incredibly Strange Film Show, Raimi attributed his strange sense of humor to The Three Stooges, which makes me think about all those parents frightened by the influence of The Stooges on their children.

So, like many filmmakers trying to break into the business, Sam Raimi (a former air-conditioner salesman and college dropout) and his friends, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert (the lucky bastard! I'll tell you why later!), decide to make a little horror film - considered a break-into-the-business genre. (Don't forget, James Cameron has Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) on his resume.) Raimi's first film was a short 8mm horror film called Within the Woods (1978), where, Bruce Campbell (in the lead role because, according to Raimi, Bruce was the best looking) finds The Book of the Dead in an isolated cabin, is possessed by a demon, and kills his friends. Sam, Bruce, and Robert, start taking their little 8mm film to neighborhood grocers and dentists, anyone they thought would invest in their project. They actually set up a screen in a grocery store aisle after closing to show their horror film to potential investors. But something strange happened, the investors laughed. They thought the film was hysterical. I guess you can take the boy away from The Stooges, but you can't take The Stooges away from the boy.

By 1982, Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert finally get their money  . . . and an idea. The result becomes Evil Dead I: The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror. The story? Five friends go to a deserted cabin in the woods, discover The Book of the Dead (Hey, it worked once already!), but this time, everyone except Ash (Bruce Campbell) becomes possessed by demons. And now, Sam Raimi lets his Stooges loose. (Look for Raimi and Tapert in cameo roles as hillbillies at the side of the road.) 

The film starts right away, with plenty of long shots of the cabin to highlight its isolation, a staple shot for horror and thrillers. (Watch for my Frames of Reference piece explaining camera shots and angles in genre films.) They find a tape recorder and (duh!) listen to the tape: an anthropologist explaining how he summoned demons. After scaring the shit out of herself, one girl hears a sound in the woods and (duh!) goes out to investigate. Classic! She becomes possessed and all hell breaks looses. The special effects are raw but wonderful. In fact, this raw look and feel gives the film its real charm. (Rawness is one of the reasons I always liked Reservoir Dogs a little bit better than the polished Pulp Fiction, but that's another article.) But what about over-the-top splatstick blood and guts? Watch this film and prepare for demons spewing fountains of white gook from their mouths. Is this disgusting? Yes, but hysterically disgusting, because it's a deliberately exaggerated gore fest. And that's the difference. Raimi knows he's doing splatstick. Add the cliché thunder and lightening, eerie sound effects, music by Joe DeLoca, and the kind of characters who go down into the basement when they hear a sound, and you have the ingredients of this campy, over-the-top classic. How else can you sit through a scene of Ash trying to cut his girlfriend in half with a chainsaw (a scene he repeats in Evil Dead II, among others), and find it funny?

But Raimi did question the wisdom of one scene. After one of the women runs into the woods, the trees attack and rape her. The special effects up until the actual penetration were actually quite well done, and I really didn't see the final penetration act coming. Nevertheless, Raimi confessed during an interview that, after reflecting on the scene, he probably would have omitted it if he had it to do over. I'll let you be the judge.

I won't go over the entire plot, you know the story. What really works are specific scenes like Ash looking into a mirror (a scene repeated in all three Evil Dead films), telling himself he's not going crazy, for a wonderfully eerie "am I nuts?" effect, when the mirror turns to water. Then there's Ash cutting off his girlfriend's head with a shovel, also repeated in Evil Dead II, and the wonderful cackling sounds of the demons. (Don't overlook the makeup effects by Tom Sullivan.) Another Raimi signature you'll see in all of his films is the camera floating about three feet off the ground, putting us in the demon's point of view. He uses this same technique in later films to put us in the point of view of arrows and bullets flying across a screen to meet their targets. According to Raimi, being on such a low budget, they come up with that shot by fastening the camera to a plank of wood that two guys held at the ends, noticing they got different degrees of the effect depending on the length of the wood.

So, Evil Dead: The Ultimate Experience (1982) ends up becoming a hit . . . in Europe. Fortunately for us or U.S., being a hit in Europe gets them an audience with famed producer, Dino De Laurentiis, who agrees to finance their next project Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, the film that will make Sam Raimi the King of Splatstick.

Watching Evil Dead II (1987), you can see that Raimi now had the confidence to pull out the stops. The story: Ash (although essentially the same character, this is NOT a sequel to Evil Dead I) takes his girlfriend to an isolated cabin (sound familiar?) and discovers the Book of the Dead. In this version, after listening to the same tape recording, a demon, who wants to swallow his soul, possesses his girlfriend. Again, he cuts off her head with a shovel, but this time, the head (called the shrunken apple head), reattaches to her body during a wonderfully funny, yet creepy, dance routine. The severed head bites Ash on the hand and he stumbles around the cabin, smashing his girlfriend's head into lamps and walls as he makes his way to the tool shed and the chainsaw. And that's where Raimi stands out. You can never get too funny that you forget the horror. The rhythm for this film becomes: outrageously funny scenes followed by horrifically outrageous scenes. Make them laugh, and then gross them out. Laugh. Gross-out. Look for this pacing when you watch it and you'll see why and how it works so well. 

Soon, other characters (two hillbilly lovers, and two anthropologists) join Ash at the cabin, discover the blood soaked furniture and tools, and are caught up in the mayhem wonderfully. The mirror scene returns. Only this time, when Ash tries to assure himself he isn't going crazy, his reflection grabs him, reminding him he just cut up his girlfriend with a chainsaw. As silly as the story gets, there are these great scenes where Ash ponders his sanity after witnessing supernatural occurrences, only to find himself sitting in a chair, making us, and him, wonder if this is real or in his head. In another classic scene, the demon possesses Ash's hand, which turns against him. Bruce Campbell does an incredible job making us believe this is real when he fights himself, punches himself in the stomach and face, hits himself over the head with glass plates in classic Stooges' style, and tries to drown himself in the kitchen sink. Of course, the only way he can save himself is to cut his hand off with a chainsaw. Make them laugh, and then gross them out. When Ash cuts his hand off, blood gushes profusely, like a fire hose, into his face. Ash covers the severed hand with a bucket and a stack of books topped with Hemingway's Farewell to Arms. Now Raimi treats us to another hilarious scene where Ash chases his severed hand around the cabin until the hand turns to give him the finger. He fires a shotgun, hits the hand, and more blood gushes from the walls, reverses, and disappears. Is this really happening? Or has Ash lost his mind? In another classic scene, Ash smashes a trap door on the demon, Henrietta's, head, expelling its eyeball, which flies across the room into another character's mouth. (Look for Ted Raimi, Sam's brother and Xena's Joxer, under the makeup as the demonized Henrietta.) But that's enough from me. Watch this movie! You can also look for Sam Raimi's cameo as a knight in armor.

So, as the Sam Raimi story goes, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn makes Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell horror's cult icons. I happened to attend the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors when they were at this point and they couldn't walk into the room without crowds of fans storming them. Now that's really scary! Lines for their autographs snaked around the convention hall for miles. And I'll admit, even I got giddy seeing them in person. That was the weekend I went home and rented Evil Dead II for the third time, before buying a copy for my film library. What took me so long?

Now, with the success of Evil Dead II, Raimi and the gang (it's the same people making each film) get the backing of Dino De Laurentiis AND Universal Pictures (it doesn't get any more mainstream than that) to make the third version of Evil Dead. This time, it is a sequel to Evil Dead II, except Universal makes him drop the Evil Dead title, not wishing to be acquainted with Raimi's other low budget horror films, and makes them go with the title: Army of Darkness. We know what it really is - Evil Dead III.

Picking up where II left off, Ash (Bruce Campbell again) finds himself in the year 1300 fighting demons, where a Wiseman, played by Seinfeld's Mr. Pitt. (I can't help it. I see the world through Seinfeld) promises to return Ash to his own world if he (all together now) gets The Book of the Dead. This third installment becomes a hysterical fish out of water vehicle, filled with the same (if not more) Stooges brand of humor, with more money for more splatstick special effects (puppetry, stop-motion animation, rear-screen projection), more skeletons, costumes, two Ashes, castles, more severed limbs, flying demons, a cast of hundreds, and horses (which are expensive. Remember, even Monty Python couldn't afford horses for their Holy Grail film). Again, look for the mirror scene, where, this time, the shattered shards each become a miniature Ash to terrify Bruce Campbell in ways Gulliver could never imagine. Again, look for someone cut up with a chainsaw. And look for Ted Raimi in the crowd of warriors (it's good to have a brother in the business). This one ends with Ash returning to his job at a K-Mart-like store to fight one last demon under the blue light special. The version I watched also provided the original ending, fortunately, not used. It had Ash messing up the spell to return to his world and ending up in a post-apocalyptic future. It didn't work for me! The fight with the demon under the blue light special is perfect.

So where does the Sam Raimi story go from here? Have you ever seen Xena: The Warrior Princess? How about Hercules: The Legendary Journeys? Does that Stooges-style humor look familiar? You'll find Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert at the controls of two of the most popular syndicated shows in history, with Joe DeLoca still doing their music. Oh, I almost forgot, Tapert gets to marry Xena (Lucy Lawless.) That alone makes their trip to this point in time worth it. And yes, Bruce Campbell is the King of Thieves in both shows. Other projects Sam Raimi has had his fingers in as producer, writer, or director include: Cleopatra 2525 (2000), Jack of all Trades (2000), The Gift (2000), For Love of the Game (1999), A Simple Plan (1998) (highly recommended), The Quick and the Dead (1995), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Darkman (1990). He is also behind the controls of the upcoming Spiderman (2002). Not bad for a kid who grew up under the influence of The Three Stooges.

What do you do now? Rent the three Evil Dead films and get together with a bunch of friends. Get yourselves into the proper frame of mind, and sit back for gross-outs and laughs that will have you doubling over. Yes, yelling at the characters is permitted, in fact, it's encouraged. Then, for your next film, I want you to try Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (1992), another splatstick classic and a Fangoria "horror film of the year" winner. I won't give too much away, but prepare yourself for a fight scene involving a room full of zombies and a rotary lawnmower. And remember to keep telling yourself: It's only Splatstick! It's not happening to me! One last interesting note. A computer game, based on The Evil Dead films, has already been released called, Hail to the King!