On the surface, it would appear that Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead II" was a late-arriving sequel, but, according to the director, the first installment did "very poorly domestically" during its initial theatrical release. Though I grew up a little over an hour south of Raimi's hometown, Detroit, Michigan, where it premiered in 1981, I knew nothing of the movie until I beheld a series of gloriously gnarly glossy stills in Fangoria Magazine at some point in 1983. Soon after, the movie turned up at my local video store, and my torrid love affair with the cinema of Sam Raimi began.

Four years was still a long time to wait for a follow-up to "The Evil Dead" (a title Raimi hated), but Fangoria kept writing about the first movie and insisting that a sequel was in the works. And so I dreamed the go

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