Horror History: Ash vs. Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Evolution of the Homage
Steve Barton
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Our own John Squires spotted everyone’s favorite dream demon’s weapon of choice hanging on the wall in the finale of the Starz masterpiece known as “Ash vs. Evil Dead” for iHorror , and if you’re wondering how or why it got there, we have the whole saga for you right here…
While watching the 1977 Wes Craven classic The Hills Have Eyes, young Evil Dead director Sam Raimi noticed a torn Jaws poster hanging on the wall of one of the film’s set pieces.
Raimi took this as Craven playfully saying that his latest film was scarier than Spielberg’s 1975 classic, and thus the game was afoot! In Raimi’s debut feature The Evil Dead, you can see a torn Hills Have Eyes poster in the basement of the cabin.
Craven took note of this and had his character Nancy watch The Evil Dead on her TV in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Not to be outdone, Raimi then placed Freddy’s glove in the cabin for 1987’s Evil Dead 2.
This brings us to “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” in which Freddy’s glove is still hanging in a cabin decades later. We’re sure that somewhere right now, Wes is looking down and smiling.
For those playing along, it should be noted that for whatever reason, director Adam Marcus paid homage to The Evil Dead by inexplicably having the Necronomicon show up in his 1993 film Jason Goes to Hell. If only he could have had Jason show up too, we may have been on to something.
This of course then led to Freddy (or at least Freddy’s arm played masterfully by Kane Hodder) showing up to drag Jason’s hockey mask to hell. Neither Raimi nor Craven acknowledged Marcus’ homages.
That being said, the image of Freddy’s glove paired onscreen with Jason’s hockey mask was a powerful one, and it eventually led to 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, in which Freddy took on Ken Kirzinger as Jason (aka the cook that Hodder’s Jason tossed around like a beanbag in Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan).
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