Saturday, September 5, 2009

A treat for my fellow Evil Dead fans.

The rest of the Necronomicon!!

From Evil Dead 1.

Here's the video, from the cutting room floor someone got ahold of.



The scene kinda drags, I see why they cut it down.
Still, cool.

Click open this post, and I've cropped out frames of all the pages for dissection....



Page 1.
"To my darling Rebecca".
;)

Page 2.
Skull, snake, raven, little skulls, this is visible to the unaided eye in the Necronomicon in the opening of Evil Dead 2 as well.

Page 3.
Demon skulls. Ditto the above.

Page 4.
Bat wing guy.
An arm being dissected down to muscles, then to skeletal on the other page.
Also visible in the ED2 book.

Page 5.
Monster hands, dismembered entrails guy, severed head with some vertebrae, and a skull.
Visible in the ED2 book.

Page 6.
Okay, we start to see some new stuff here.
A bunch of Candarian weapons of the type that resemble the dagger from ED 1 & 2.
The deadite face on the other page is visible in the ED2 book.

Page 7.
Freaky.
Human hand skin. Is it meant to be the bookmark?
Maybe it cures the hand-whammy Ash got in Ed2!
Some designs emanating from it, does that mean the skin is meant to be part of the page?
Dunno, makes ya think though.

Page 8.
Now it starts to get wild.
Outer space?
Could just be some astrological alignment stuff.
Or, could be the deadites are cosmic, like in Lovecraft.


Page 9.
Herbs for potions maybe?
Note the other page though.
Funky grid floating through space.
Probably signifying some Twilight Zone-y dimension.
Gives more credence to Candarian demons being cosmic.

Page 10.
The eyeball, and the funky continent map.
We see this when Ash flips through the Necronomicon in ED2.

Page 11.
Pile of skulls.
This is where numbnuts says "looks like your old girlfriend!".
Still in ED1.
Fucking tissue paper on the other page.
Saw a fan replica somewhere, it's supposed to be a version of the Davinci man diagram but with Batwing-Guy from page 4.
If you know what it looks like, and squint hard, you almost see it.
Dunno what the tissue paper all throughout was for.
Artist wanted to protect it from smearing?
Dunno, but it's annoying.

Page 12.
A tree sprouting up through the head of a corpse.
I call it "tree man", for shorthand.
Dunno what the other thing is...fire? Trees?

Page 13.
A wave crashing on a cliff with a weird dome building/city.
A lost civilization on Earth?
Perhaps alien?
Perhaps a precursor to "Castle Condar", which later became Arthur's castle?
Dig the other page.
Pot, perhaps some other herbs, a pipe, and a guy looking high.
Author of the Necronomicon, perhaps?
There's a deleted scene with Ash and the gang doing doobies.
Does pot give license for the Deadites to enter you?
Hmm...
An abandoned plotline to be sure....

Page 14.
The moon, phases of the moon.
Heads floating in some void.
Most probably spirits.
Look like sad normal people, not Deadites.
Victim spirits of the Deadite possessed?
They do say "I'll swallow your soul".

Page 15.
Winged skull, looks like a chapter introduction.
Ash/Bruce flips the page too quickly, and the camera cuts, so no matter how quick I was with pause, couldn't get the other page.


Page 16.
Candarian scribbles.

Page 17.
The face of the book looking freshly skinned.
This is of course, in the standard version of Ed1.

THE END.

Very truncated in ED1, we only get 2, 3, 4, 11, and 17, if I remember right.

Anyhoo, gawk at these long enough to memorize impressions, and now that your eye knows what to focus on, pop in your ED2 DVD, get to the opening, and when the pages of the Necronomicon flip by, be quick on the freeze-frame/pause, and you can see ALL these pages in there!!

...except pot-man.
Didn't see him, but maybe you'll be quicker, and catch him.

Cool, huh?

It's of note that these illustrations seem to have inspired various parts of the movies.

Tree man from page 12 seems to have inspired the chick getting branches under her flesh in ED2.

Winged creatures like on page 4 appear at the end of Ed2, and again in Army Of Darkness.

The eyeball from page 10 seems to have inspired the eyeball popping out and being accidentally swallowed scene from ED2.

The weird hyperspace pic may have been the theme for the dimension/time vortex from Ed2.

We see a stop-motion winged skull amongst the critters in the vortex animation in the ED2 opening.
Clearly inspired by page 15.

Professor Knowby appears as a floating head ghost ala page 14 in ED2.

Potion making ala page 9 is key to the ending of Army Of Darkness.

I could go on, but I'm just saying, there's fodder for more ED sequels in these pages.

Raimi ain't gonna give 'em to us, but you fanfic writers, you fan film makers, and especially, Dynamite Comics, get cracking.

Take us to that dome building.

Give us the skinny on Pot-Man.

Take us to the hyperspace grid place.

What country is that map showing us?

What does the right planet alignment do?
Or, can the dimension vortexes take you to other planets?
Are the Deadites extraterrestrial?
Evil Dead meets Stargate?
Go nuts with that!

And you replica makers, you get cracking too.
Make us the definitive Necronomicon prop.

2 comments:

John S. said...

I know that one page you couldn't see.
https://screamingsoup.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/untitled-15-e1449777860355.jpg

Diacanu said...


Oh, cool, thanks, man!

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