It’s the middle of June during the Summer of ‘93. I’m 16 years old and instead of spending my vacation trying to pick up girls at the local pool or hanging out at the mall like any respectable teenage degenerate, I’m hunched over an easel in a studio classroom underneath the Corcoran Art Gallery. Sitting next to me is another kid of similar height and build, both of us in the 6-foot range, and neither weighing over 145 pounds.

His name is Kevin and we share a strange thing in common: We were born exactly one year apart. In the same hospital. You see, through a series of complications not important enough to mention, we were both forced to present our birth certificates to attend this particular class. It was then that we noticed we were both born on October 28th at 1:45 p.m. in George Washington Memorial Hospital. I in 1976, and he in ‘77. Using this and the fact that we were eerily similar as a springboard, we kick up a friendship, and it’s at this time he passes me a beat-up video tape with the words “Evil Dead 2” scrawled across the edge in ballpoint. Thus was my first exposure to the manic mind of Sam Raimi, and the reigning king of B Movies: Bruce Campbell.

The tale is a fairly simple one. Ash (Campbell) and his girlfriend Linda take a romantic vacation to a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods, and before you can say “Klatu Verata Nictu”, Ash plays a found tape reciting passages from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Book of the Dead-unleashing an evil force which soon takes possession of Linda. Romantic getaway effectively over, Ash is forced to kill, dismember, and bury her. But it ain’t over, because something in the woods remains and continues to terrorize Ash.

In other words: It’s a haunted house/woods movie. Only one with zombies, demons, and the Three Stooges thrown in the mix. A hyper-kinetic picture that effectively scares as much as it sparks laughter. A film that became such a success that it lead to a wide release sequel, Army of Darkness-which abandoned most of the horror in favor of Action/Adventure and is a cult-classic in its own right. But we’re not here to talk about the giddy glee that Evil Dead II inspires. No, we’re here to talk about the Chainsaw.

Name: Chainsaw Arm

Size: 860 x 240 x 270mm

Special Abilities: Disembowling and Decapitating Demons, Run for weeks on a single tank.

Notes: A must for the working demon hunter on the go, this do-it-yourself bionic attachment comes in a variety of colors and styles, sure to fit every every occasion!

Roughly a third of the way through the picture, the evil pursuing Ash gets into his hand and it goes “bad”, trying repeatedly to kill him in one of the more memorable scenes of the picture. So Ash does the only sensible thing: he cuts it off with the Chainsaw. Then much later in the picture, when he decides he’s had just about enough of these Evil Dead causing trouble, he devises a mount that attaches to his wrist, enabling him to attach the chainsaw…thus creating one of the most famous monster fighting weapons in movie history, and cementing this flick’s place in our list.

Sure, you could argue that in the follow-up, Army of Darkness, we got the Chainsaw arm, Boomstick Kata, Plate Mail Fist, and the Death-moldsmobile. We certainly did. But nothing beats the first appearance of the chainsaw arm, so we’re going with the one, the only, Evil Dead II.

Groovy.

After the enthusiastic response to the screening of Idle Hands, Event 8 was picking up steam, with the crowd clamoring for more. Admittedly, I wasn’t prepared for a fourth movie that night. Fortunately an extensive DVD collection saved the day yet again with a copy of Evil Toons!

Any fan of crap-tastic cinema knows they’re in for a show with good ol’ Fred Olen Ray. Occasionally working as a “T&A specialist” for low-budget, direct-to-video flicks (as-in they hired him to inject more nudies), his ability to find excuses to have actresses strip down in movies is unparalleled, even by Paul Verhoeven. He’s made over a hundred movies, and what can I say? They’re fun, if just for the simple fact that its easy to see that the guy loves what he’s doing.

Well, that and they are so. Incredibly. Dumb.

Take this particular picture, where 4 college girls (Madison Stone, Barbara Dare, Monique Gabrielle, and Suzanne Ager) take a weekend job cleaning up a creepy mansion for a more than slightly pervy Dick Miller, only to have the ghost of “some guy” (David Carradine!) appear, give them a flesh-bound demon-book, which they promptly set down to read-thus unleashing the titular animated demon.

The fact that 3 out of 4 of the girls in the picture were either actively, or were about to start, working in the porn industry at the time the picture was made, is a pretty clear indication of where the movie’s gonna’ go. Before the bad-book even makes an appearance, four breasts already have. And when the demon-who for the record, is only seen in the picture in full animated form for about 39 seconds-initially attacks, it performs one of the funniest bits of sexual harassment ever committed to film, carefully yanking off the top of his intended victim in full view of the camera…with his tongue.

He then, conveniently for the budget, assumes her blood-covered-yet-still-topless form, and continues stalking the rest of his prey (who all also achieve various stages of undress before being eaten). Between all of this we get scenes of bad Three Stooges-style skits of varying lengths, and some daffy cameo-ish appearances by Arte Johnson as yet another pervy old guy. All-in-all, a fun-filled ride for the whole family!

Words cannot begin to describe how much this film warms the cockles of my heart. Not only that, it was a perfect closer to Event 8, with the crowd really getting into how bad it was, all while still appreciating the film’s…other qualities. If we’d stuck with the last two movies of the night, the Halloween event would easily have been remembered as one of the best.