Book Of The Dead - The Definitive Evil Dead Website

Following his work on The Evil Dead, Joe LoDuca went on to score Sam's next picture; Crimewave in 1985, as well as Josh Becker's Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except that same year. This made Joe an obvious choice for Sam when a composer for Evil Dead 2 was required. He was signed up early in the movie, but in the end only had around three and a half weeks to turn the finished score around.

Joe had to tread a fine line to achieve just the right tone, balancing between the movie's two extremes of humour and horror, while covering full range in between. Ash's piano piece for instance, "I tended to go operatic with it," Joe explains. "It didn’t have to be what it was, that Ash all of the sudden is a brilliant classical pianist, but in some ways it was, once again, that combination of opera, horror and the Three Stooges. I’ve often felt that with a lot of the work I’ve done for Sam and Rob, there’s no such thing as going over-the-top. The idea is that the emotions are so grand that they verge on opera. That’s the point of view the music is taking, and everybody seems happy with it." The destroyed bridge scene required an all together different tone; "I was trying to do something as urgent and dynamic as I could possibly come up with" Joe laughs. "There are some very creepy things in the mirror that take place. And there are those big bombastic action sequences, and finally in the last act, it turns operatic because you’ve opened the gates of hell." He adds; "By the time of my second film, Thou Shall Not Kill... Except, there had been a little black box invented that enabled you to synchronize to a videotape, and give you a tempo match. At that point, it became a lot more organic in terms of how to write the picture."

Here you can see information about some of the various soundtracks available for Evil Dead II. The most common version is the That's Entertainment Records 1987 UK CD & LP release, but there have been two interesting Japanese CD box-set releases, one covers The Evil Dead & Evil Dead II and the other the whole trilogy, both versions are quite rare. There was also a Varese Sarabande 1987 US CD & LP release, but regardless of which version you get, they're all basically the same 9 tracks as listed below.

Evil Dead II CD back cover (UK, That's Entertainment Records CDTER-1142)	1.	Behemoth (02:44)
	2.	Hush Lil' Baby / Pee Wee Head (03:26)
	3.	The Book of Evil (02:53)
	4.	Ash's Dream / Dancing Game / Dance of the Dead (03:39)
	5.	Fresh Panic / The Other Side of Your Dream (04:28)
	6.	The Putrified Forest / Under Her Skin (04:21)
	7.	The Evil Begins Anew / Sunrise / Ash Attacks (03:01)
	8.	Hand and Mouse / Love Transforms / Mirror, Mirror / Bad Fingers (05:00)
	9.	Hail the... / End Title (05:02)

CD insert front (UK, That's Entertainment Records CDTER-1142)

CD insert back (UK, That's Entertainment Records CDTER-1142)

Evil Dead II - Dead By Dawn Complete Fanmade Score

You can buy the official That's Entertainment Records 1987 CD & LP soundtrack at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk as well as Ebay, although many fans will already know that this release does not include all the music used in the film, only around half of it. Further, in places it is edited differently. Currently, the only way fans can hear the complete score is through fanmade projects. This is a score created by fan 'megamattterra'. It was edited from a combination of sources including the 5.1 film's Blu-Ray English DTS audio track, and the retail CD. It does have some speech & sound effects, but this is currently the only option. Putting the soundtrack up for download would raise copyright issues, but you can listen to a stream-only version through the media player below.

Please note; We don't wish to tread on anyone's toes, simply to allow fans to listen to material they can't officially buy. If there are still any copyright holders out there would rather their audio was not included here, please send over an email, and it'll be immediately removed.