Monster Scholar

Never shame a gypsy! “I got you, you old bitch!”—Christine Brown Run, don’t walk to your nearest multiplex then push, shove, and elbow every man, woman, and child in your frenzied scramble to the ticket counter. It’s worth it. I enjoyed the pleasure of Drag Me To Hell at the 10:15 showing last night. The audience included myself, my husband and a smattering of college students, with one particularly devoted fan sporting an Army of Darkness t-shirt The opening scene of Sam Raimi ’s return to horror kicks you in the gut like an Army mule and he wastes little foreplay before throwing you into the abyss. Raimi has a gift for the arcane, and like the Book of the Dead and Kandarian demons from Evil Dead , in Drag Me to Hell he creates a new universe of monstrous lore. The Lamia is a vile demon that gypsies can sick on their enemies by cursing an object that belongs to them and returning it. The Lamia comes to torment the owner of the object for three days (i.e. visual and auditory h...

With permission from Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert , writer Mark Verheiden set out to do what seemed like the impossible, and recreate the celebrated 80s cult film hit Evil Dead as a comic book. But the final product of artist John Bolton and letterer Steve Dutro is not what most would expect it to be--just a tired rehashing of the film on paper. Verheiden makes it clear in the comic that to do so would be a disservice to Raimi's original vision. Instead, Verheiden decided to "expand the movie, meeting our characters back in their pre - deadite lives and opening up the story to see what happened between the events seen on screen" The result is a well crafted comic and while the action of the plot might seem familiar to horror buffs, Verheiden skillfully seeks out and portrays the events found at the screen's edge, the stuff we don't get to see in the original film. There is more back story about the relationship between Linda and Ash, including how they fel...