A couple of weeks ago the ZRC had the opportunity to take in a showing of ‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ at the Capitol Theatre here in Madison, and then due to travel and film festivals and what not, your humble blogger forgot to write about it.

Oops.

Obviously we at The Zombie Rights Campaign have strong feelings on the ‘Evil Dead’ issue; we even made a shirt in support of the Deadites (and in opposition to their cruel taskmaster, the Necronomicon).

‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ is essentially a compilation of the first two Evil Dead films (plus a bit of ‘Army of Darkness’) into, well… a musical.

With lots of blood. In fact, that’s a selling point; the first five rows of the show were designated the Splash Zone, and marketed as a place where you will get into the action, or at least, the fake blood supply.

We hope it’s fake blood.

The Zombie Rights Campaign picked up a couple of seats immediately behind said zone to see the performance. Our thoughts?

‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ is stridently Anti-Zombie, even more so than most Anti-Zombie media. The Deadites are explicitly labeled as ‘evil’, including a song ‘Look Who’s Evil Now’ where Living characters become Deadites and immediately engage in comedically exaggerated violence against their still-Living cohorts.

The plot is mostly as you’d expect. Ash, the designated hero, stands idly by while the Book of the Dead (obviously the real villain) lays waste to the cabin and generally causes havoc, until eventually he realizes his ‘destiny’ by becoming an action movie serial killer.

The songs and performances on this tour were catchy and enjoyable, and the Art Director, who has been familiar with the soundtrack for some time (purchased many moons ago for research purposes) thought the live performances and singing were an improvement over the CD. If anything, of course, this makes the stage show more insidious, as no matter how committed you are to The Cause of Undead Equality, you may find yourself humming the songs for days.

A word on the merchandise: the ZRC has seen chainsaw related props for sale related to Anti-Zombie properties before (notably, our collection includes a nearly unusuable ‘controller’ for the PS2 version of a Resident Evil game shaped like a chainsaw, complete with tilt sensors so you can slash at the Zombies). Most of those chainsaw props/toys don’t come pre-splattered with blood and sized to fit childrens’ hands, however.

We strenuously object. To the movies, to the show, to the foamy indoctrinational toy, to all of it. When will people learn not to hate the Deadites? Poor, overworked, underpaid Deadites?

Clearly it’s the book’s fault. Been saying that for years.

‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ is rated Living Supremacist by The Zombie Rights Campaign.

Tags: ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Saturday, October 11th, 2014 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.