Review by Eric Hillis (@hilliseric)
We're past the halfway point of this debut season of Ash Vs Evil Dead, and after two weak episodes, it would have been disheartening had this sixth episode failed to deliver. Thankfully it delivers in spades - and buckets of blood, featuring one of the most insanely gory set-pieces to ever grace the small screen. Ash (Bruce Campbell) is back, and the deadites are ridin' his ass hard!
I'm beginning to think Lucy Lawless is being paid by the minute for her work on this show, as each episode seems to do its best to give her character, Ruby, as little screen time as possible. Ruby appears right at the start of The Killer of Killers, arriving at Brujo's burnt out home, along with Amanda (Jill Marie Jones), just as Ash and co are hightailing it in his Oldsmobile, his live-in trailer in tow. Ruby gets into a scrap with the skeleton of Brujo, now a deadite, and disappears when pulled into a fire. This tells us that Ruby clearly isn't any ordinary human, as while the episode wants us to believe she perished in the fire, we know it's not going to kill off a character played by Lucy Lawless in such a throwaway manner. The skeletal deadite has a classic Ray Harryhausen look, though the CG is frankly awful. If the producers had opted for the stop motion of Sam Raimi's original movies, it would elevate this show to another level.
In need of sustenance after the Brujo brouhaha, Ash, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) stop off at a roadside diner, where Ash duly stuffs his face with pancakes like there's no tomorrow; and given his experiences, it's hard to blame him! It's here that the aforementioned gore-fest kicks off, but not before we get some of the series' best dialogue so far, courtesy of Nate Crocker, a writer whose only previous experience is a 2013 short entitled The Incident(s) at Paradise Bay. Eager to avoid picking up his check, Ash attempts to offer his sexual services to the waitress in lieu of payment, in a hilarious monologue, played with a smarmy charisma as only Campbell can. The delusional Ash retires to the bathroom expecting to be followed by the waitress, but it's Amanda who arrives on scene, giving our hero a face full of urinal cake. Her attempt to arrest Ash is scuppered once again when the 'evil' arrives at the diner, unleashing chaos and turning a bunch of patrons into deadites.
This set-piece is something I wasn't prepared for. Kiwi director Michael Hurst does a great job of emulating Raimi's kinetic style, and the show doesn't hold back with the carnage. The episode introduces us to a young boy, and my first thought was "Oh no, don't give Ash a Spielbergian kid sidekick," but minutes later the young lad is splattered by being hurled into a ceiling fan! Ash Vs Evil Dead, you have my respect - and my attention! The scene also has two teen cheerleaders massacred, one ending up with a hockey skate embedded in her skull like Joseph Gordon Levitt in Halloween: H20. In a moment that recalls the Raimi/Campbell starring 1989 supermarket slasher The Intruder, Kelly puts a deadite waitress's face through a meat slicer, as Ash looks on with pride.
At the end of the episode, figuring her superiors won't believe the truth, Amanda teams up with Ash's crew and heads off in search of an end to the deadite plague. I can't wait to see what further adventures this Scooby Doo gang get themselves into, and with Hurst returning for next week's episode, the signs are good!
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