capsule : the funniest horror movie ever made ; a melange of dario argento and wile e . coyote . evil dead 2 : dead by dawn is the result of an unstable fusion of warner bros . cartoon slapstick and _giallo_ horror-movie conventions . it's a flick with the mind of a splatter film and the heart of a mack sennett two-reeler . in plain , non-fanboy language , it's a ton of disgusting fun . example : a monster of the undead rises from the cellar , only to have its head smashed in the trapdoor . its eyeball pops out and flies into the mouth of one of the three screaming girls in the movie . gulp . the plot , what there is of it , is simple to the point of irrelevancy . a young man and his girlfriend head out to an abandoned cabin for a romantic interlude , and unwittingly unleash the evil undead . the girl dies horribly and the man ( square-jawed bruce campbell ) lives -- but as what ? horrendous mutations strike him like epileptic fits . the dead rise out of their graves and inflict ghastly punishments and tortures on him . his own hand rebels against him ( and the punishment he exacts on it is howlingly painful ) . the majority of the movie is one long , roaring blast of slime , guts , special effects and ear-drilling sound effects , but it's put together in a way that gets more than a fair amount of good laughs . evil dead 2 is most likely * the * item that started the whole trend of sly , self-referential horror movies ( culminating , of course , in the brilliantly nasty scream ) , although it's a lot more freakish and far-out . 
