Brain Dead Meets Evil Dead

Director Sam Raimi, an unabashed fan of the Three Stooges, taught himself filmmaking by remaking Three Stooges comedies shot-for-shot.  It should not be surprising then that Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy includes a number of Stooge-inspired scenes. 

Raimi labelled the original Evil Dead as “the Three Stooges with blood and guts standing in for custard pies.”  Bill Warren got more specific on the matter in examining the film for The Evil Dead Companion.  He wrote, "The bleeding wall sockets and the lightbulb that fills up with blood are gory duplications of similar shots involving water in the Stooges' A Plumbing We Will Go."  Let's see what Warren means.   

A Plumbing We Will Go (1940)

Evil Dead (1981)

You might have noticed while watching the clip from A Plumbing We Will Go that a corset is wrapped around an overhead water pipe.  This is a funny makeshift repair concocted by Larry to stop a leak.  Obviously, someone as unconventional in his thinking as Larry must have visited Evil Dead's eerie cabin in the woods because the overhead water pipe that appears in this film is also wrapped up in some sort of clothing item. 

The sequels also indulged at times in Stooges-style comedy. 

Evil Dead II (1987)

Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness (1992)

Raimi still looked to A Plumbing We Will Go for direct inspiration when he made Evil Dead II. 

 A Plumbing We Will Go (1940)

Evil Dead II (1987)

I didn't expect the new serious remake of Evil Dead to include a Three Stooges homage.  I was wrong.  Take a look at this scene from Fiddlers Three (1948).

Shemp is relieved to make it out of the box without blood loss, but blood loss is plentiful in an Evil Dead version of the scene.