By Paul Freitag

"Groovy."

It?s one word. Six letters. It?s been said on TV and in films many times before. Heck, Richie Cunningham probably said it five times an episode in Happy Days. But with this one simple little word, Bruce Campbell?s character in the Evil Dead series, Ash, became a cult icon.

When Ash first appeared in Sam Raimi?s 1982 low budget, indie horror pic The Evil Dead, he wasn?t yet the smartass buffoon that we?ve come to know and love today.

Sure, demons invaded the cabin he and his friends were staying at and everyone except for Ash got possessed and/or chopped into little pieces, but Ash took it all in the way a proper horror movie hero should. Whenever possible, he killed things and delivered a stoic, yet focused performance. Only occasionally was there a glint of the Ash yet to come.

The only real thing the Ash in The Evil Dead has in common with the Ash in Army of Darkness (the third film in the trilogy) is his propensity to get involved in awful, brutal events. Throughout the course of this series, Ash managed to be attacked, sliced up, thrown into trees, drowned, bitten, scalded, possessed, and have blood, ooze, and other unidentifiable liquids forced into his mouth. It?s really a wonder that he doesn?t lose his mind by the end of the first film; we had to wait until the midway point of the second film for this fortuitous event.

After a quick recap of the first film, Evil Dead 2 unfolds with Ash returning to the Michigan woods with another girlfriend. Listening to a reading from the book of the dead, Ash inadvertently unleashes spirits from the underworld. His girlfriend is, again, quickly possessed and sets her energies onto braining Ash with something sharp. Resigned to this fact, Ash is forced to lop off her head with a shovel in a desperate attempt at self-preservation. This accomplished, the insanity of the situation starts to sink in. The player piano begins to play itself, and Ash, tenderly holding the Crackerjack necklace he?d just given his girlfriend, begins to weep. This is the first real sign of Campbell?s tour-de-force acting ability. Not since Beaches has there been a more poignant moment in filmmaking.

It isn?t until some moments later that Ash is put in the rather awkward position of slicing his girlfriend?s severed head in two with a chainsaw. Having returned from doing this, Ash looks into a mirror tries to convince himself that he?s fine. However, when his reflection in the mirror grabs him and barks, "We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound fine?" Ash cracks.

His hand soon becomes possessed, attacking his face and pelting his head and face with dishes. Knocked out by one of these blows with a plate, Ash?s hand starts dragging his body across the floor, in hopes of reaching a large knife. Campbell?s natural knack for physical comedy really comes into play in this scene, beating Jim Carrey to the punch in self-abuse situations by a mere decade.

The character of Ash is like a mutated, spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splatterpunk merger of all the Three Stooges, throwing himself against the ground and tossing himself into walls with reckless abandon. "Scenery-chewing" doesn?t seem like an adequate phrase; It?s more like Campbell stuffs the scenery into his mouth and swallows the entire thing whole.

The scene is thusly set for Ash?s first bout of insanity. Ash?s mind gone, he starts laughing hysterically with the moose head on the wall, the lamps and the dancing books, (much like video for "(I?ve Got My Mind) Set On You," only better because it doesn?t involve any aging Beatles). When Ash lets loose, it?s an insane, wild-eyed, yelping monster of a laugh, the kind that could scare away hyenas and cause any given Brad Dourif character to advise, "Whoa, calm down, man, you?re going a little batty."

Ash?s transformation from normal guy to shrieking lunatic is complete. This metamorphosis from sensitive Alan Alda type to batty Michael Jackson-like action hero takes most of the film?s screen time.

There are other characters in the film, of course (see picture above), but they?re all very secondary characters, with Campbell spending much of the film alone in the cabin acting opposite himself. It?s an accomplishment few actors can claim and fewer audiences would enjoy. Would you watch Vince Vaughn react to a bunch of special effects for thirty minutes? Could Dana Delaney enter the movie with virtually no dialogue and nothing but herself to play off of? Would you pay to see George Clooney bashing himself repeatedly against the head with a plate? Campbell electrifies the screen, and once he starts moving, you?re hooked, eyes glued to the on-screen action.

During the final segment of Evil Dead 2, Ash?s personality circles around and we are able to get a glimpse of the man we?d see hamming it up through Army of Darkness (for all practicle purposes, Evil Dead 3). Fed up with losing to the undead and having girlfriend after girlfriend taken from him, Ash becomes the ultimate evolution of the ?80?s action hero; an impressively stupid tough guy who can withstand just about anything and speaks almost entirely in one-liners. It?s all topped off with the biggest one-liner of all, which, paradoxically, is the shortest.

"Groovy."

It?s a moment just after several quick edits showing how Ash replaces the hand he had just recently cut off, with a chainsaw (this is depicted very well in the photo to the immediate right). Whenever Evil Dead 2 has a midnight showing in theaters, this instant in the movie is greeted with riotous applause. It?s one of the few perfect moments in film history.

Ash?s eyes gleam with insanity, the tone of his voice is ideal and the word choice shows just how terribly out-of-it our hero is. It?s as if all the dumb brawny adrenaline of the exploitation film were consolidated into one glowing moment.

From here, Ash attempts another reading from the book of the dead, and ends up getting stuck in medieval times with a chemistry text book and his 1970 Oldsmobile (actually director Raimi?s car). Captured by English knights, Ash soon becomes a slave, all the while trying to get back to his own time and place in the universe. Ash has gotten so nutty by this point, in fact, that in the series recap, he imagines that his dead girlfriend was Bridget Fonda (who, as a friend of Sam Raimi, agreed to this brief cameo role).

This setting in the dark ages allows Ash to enter pure action-hero mode, battling zombies and chain-mail clad knights, ultimately splitting into a "good Ash" and "evil Ash" a la Superman III.

When he?s not getting tossed around by the various forms of the undead, Ash hurls out the Sam and Ivan Raimi scripted one-liners like there?s no tomorrow.

In response to Henry the Red?s (Richard Grove) statement about their (supposed) imminent death, "You ain't leading but two things right now: Jack and Shit, and Jack just left town."

To his lady-love, Sheila (Embeth Davitz), "Gimme some sugar, baby."

Having just shot the evil Ash in the face with a shotgun, "Good? Bad? I?m the guy with the gun."

After living through a third movie with his time spent fighting the undead, Ash returns to his rightful place in Michigan, working at the S-Mart ("Shop smart. Shop S-Mart"), a glorified Meijer. Having recited the wrong words from the book of the dead for the umpteenth time, Ash unwittingly has brought further evil back from the world of the deceased. Grabbing a shotgun from the sporting goods aisle, Ash calmly dispatches the undead "she-bitch" on attack, grabbing the comely, voluptuous, female customer next to him, uttering, "Hail to the King, baby" before planting a kiss squarely on her lips, setting the scene for (hopefully) a fourth installment in the series.

Of course, most Army of Darkness fans know that the movie?s original ending features Ash screwing up his return to the 20th century at the end of the film. Reciting the aforementioned wrong words from the book of the dead, Ash sends himself hurling into a post-apocalyptic future. While this is a lot more appropriate to Ash?s jaw-droppingly awful karma, it was deemed too dark for American audiences, and most folks simply saw Ash kicking ass as a clerk at the S-Mart at the end of the film. Reaction to this ending was varied as some people found it entertaining and others thought Ash deserved a far less dignified send off. Campbell himself states "...what character deserves to be left alone more at the end of the world than that idiot Ash?"

None that I can think of.