Abandoned Dead

Michigan State University students Ash Williams and his girlfriend, Linda, take a romantic getaway to a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods. While in it, Ash plays a tape of archaeologist Raymond Knowby, the cabin's previous inhabitant, reciting passages from the "Book of the Dead", Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, which he uncovered during an archaeological dig. The recorded incantation unleashes an unseen evil force, known as the Kandarian Demon, that kills and possesses Linda, turning her into a "deadite". Ash decapitates Linda with a shovel and buries her in a shallow grave near the cabin. As dawn approaches, the evil force throws Ash through the woods. He briefly becomes possessed by the demon, but the sunlight expels it from him. Ash attempts to flee the area but finds that the bridge to the cabin has been destroyed. The entity chases him back to the cabin, where Linda's revived head bites his hand. He runs to the toolshed and destroys the deadite Linda with a chainsaw, but his bitten right hand becomes possessed and tries to kill him. Ash severs it with the chainsaw and tries to shoot it with a shotgun, but the hand mocks him and escapes. Meanwhile, Knowby's daughter Annie and her research partner, Ed Getley, return from the dig with the missing pages of the Necronomicon. Blocked by the destroyed bridge, they enlist handyman Jake and his girlfriend Bobby Joe to lead them to the cabin on foot. There they find an embattled Ash, who accidentally grazes Bobby Joe while trying to shoot his possessed hand. Assuming that he murdered Annie's parents, the newcomers lock him in the cellar. The four new arrivals listen to the rest of the tape recording, where Knowby explains that he killed his wife Henrietta after she was possessed by the Kandarian Demon, then buried her in the cellar. The deadite Henrietta bursts from her grave and possesses Ed, whom Ash, now freed from the cellar, dismembers with an axe. Bobby Joe flees through the woods when Ash's severed hand latches onto hers, but demonically possessed trees drag her to her death. Annie translates two of the Necronomicon's pages, which portray a fabled hero with a blade for a hand and detail a ritual that will make the evil take physical form and then open a portal through which it may be banished. Before they can perform the ritual, Jake turns on them and throws the pages into the cellar, forcing them at gunpoint to locate Bobby Joe. In the woods, Ash becomes possessed once more and attacks Jake. Annie retreats to the cabin and accidentally stabs Jake with a Kandarian dagger, mistaking him for the possessed Ash, before Henrietta kills him. Deadite Ash tries to kill Annie, but returns to his normal self upon seeing Linda's necklace. With Annie's help, Ash modifies the chainsaw, attaches it to the stump of his right arm, and cuts the shotgun's barrel. After finding the missing pages of the Necronomicon in the cellar, Ash kills Henrietta. Annie starts reciting the incantation, which makes the demon physically manifest and attack Ash. As she attempts to finish the incantation, Ash's severed hand stabs her in the back. Annie completes the ritual with her dying breath, opening up a whirling temporal vortex which sucks in not only the demon, but also Ash and his Oldsmobile Delta 88. Ash and his Oldsmobile land in the Middle Ages. A group of knights confront him and initially mistake him for a deadite, but when a harpy-like Deadite appears and Ash blasts it with his shotgun, they hail him as their champion. Realizing that he is the hero prophesied in the book, Ash breaks down and screams in dismay.