'Ash Vs. Evil Dead' and the state of horror on TV

Bruce Campbell isn't a young buckaroo anymore. Ain't no use pretending.

So it's all the sadder, albeit in a funny, heartwarming sort of way, to see the 57-year-old horror icon reprise his role from 1981's The Evil Dead by putting on a girdle to suck in his gut.

Yep, that's the opening shot of Starz's horror comedy Ash vs. Evil Dead: Reluctant hero and ladies' man Ash Williams (Campbell) strains and heaves before a full-length mirror as he laces up a fierce-looking corset.

Created by Sam Raimi as a sequel to his beloved horror trilogy - The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992) - the gory half-hour series premieres at 9 p.m. on Halloween.

You don't need to see the films to enjoy the quirky weirdness and low-rent charm of the show, but if you're interested, Starz will have a marathon screening the previous evening.

Ash vs. Evil Dead is part of the mini-invasion of the 1980s-style slasher.

The 1980s were boom years for the horror film, so perhaps it's fitting that TV horror enters its greatest era with iterations of 1980s fare.

Ash vs. Evil Dead caps a year that brought the premiere of two new shows based on the genre's tropes: Fox's Scream Queens, a paean to 1980s slashers, and MTV's Scream, an adaptation of the late Wes Craven's 1996 meta-slasher flick that paid homage to the decade of Chucky, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees. (Yes, MTV's show pays homage to an homage. It's the postmodern age. Get over it.)

Ash vs. Evil Dead has a simple premise: See, there's this ancient Sumerian book called The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (the title is a nod to the great American horror author H.P. Lovecraft). It's bound in human skin (the front cover is someone's face) and it contains powerful magical incantations that, if read aloud, open the gates of hell and unleash hordes of nasty, smelly, murderous demons.

Raimi's TV show, costarring Lucy Lawless (Xena, Salem, Spartacus) and Jill Marie Jones (Girlfriends), takes place nearly 30 years after Ash defeated the demons. Alas, it seems one night when he was stoned, he tried to impress a girl by reading from the book.

The pilot, directed by Raimi, finds Ash joining forces with friends Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) to beat back the hordes of demonic invaders his stunt has unleashed.

The Evil Dead films were made on alarmingly small budgets that forced the filmmakers to be incredibly inventive. The remarkable special effects were all hand-made.

Hardcore Evil Dead fans may find Starz's TV series disappointing. The series betrays the film's DYI legacy by using a great deal of digital animation for the fight scenes and gore. And as the CGI effects aren't particularly sophisticated, they give the action sequences a cheesy feel. Given the half-hour format, there is little space to develop the secondary characters.

Despite its shortcomings, Raimi's series is a welcome sign that the continuing TV renaissance has been a boon for the horror genre. Horror on TV has never been stronger.

How strong? Let me count the ways: Primetime is chock-full of horror procedurals (Sleepy Hollow), horror romances (Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf), biblical horror (Salem, Supernatural), blood-curdling vampires (From Dusk Till Dawn, The Originals), zombie-contaminated horror (The Walking Dead), fairy tale horror (Grimm), and even bio-horror (The Strain).

How strong? So strong that David Lynch's groundbreaking 1990s crime drama, Twin Peaks, a surreal, poetic creation that was decades ahead of its time, is due for a reboot next year on Showtime.

One series has established itself as the benchmark for TV horror excellence, FX's anthology series American Horror Story, which draws consistently high critical praise and a large viewership. The fourth season, American Horror Story: Freak Show, received 19 Emmy nominations and won five.

Series creators Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy have a brilliant knack for infusing new life and vitality into well-established horror tropes such as the haunted house, the carnival freak show, the madhouse, and the dilapidated urban hotel.

Falchuk and Murphy deploy a repertory cast of great talents, including Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Jessica Lange, Evan Peters, Denis O'Hare, and Frances Conroy, creating new and surprising characters for each performer.

Lily Rabe, for one, turned in a remarkable performance in American Horror Story: Asylum as Sister Mary Eunice, a nun possessed by demons. Rabe returned in American Horror Story: Coven as a trippy, Stevie Nicks-obsessed witch with the power to bring the dead back to life.

On Thursday, Rabe is due to return to the current season, American Horror Story: Hotel, for a two-part Halloween episode as infamous serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

I do wonder whether American Horror Story has jumped the shark with Hotel. The season, which stars Lady Gaga as a vampire countess who holds court in an old art deco hotel in contemporary Los Angeles, seems to fall short of fresh ideas. It may be too soon to call it, but so far the show relies far too much on music-video-style passages that show Lady Gaga wandering aimlessly to the music of Joy Division.

If one concept has had its heyday, it's the zombie. Enough with the walking dead!

After more than a half-dozen seasons, AMC's The Walking Dead has gotten very old and very tired. There seems no end in sight. Its prequel, Fear the Walking Dead, has some fresh material - but I can't see it lasting much longer.

BBC America had the right idea with its take on the genre, In the Flesh. An intelligent social critique that's viciously funny and wildly inventive, it's set up like a mini-series, with only nine episodes across two seasons.

The only zombie that brings a smile to my face is Rose McIver as the crime-solving medical examiner zombie in CW's charming police procedural iZombie.

Despite its efficacy, American Horror Story is child's play compared to the environmental horror portrayed in Pivot's Fortitude. An international production set on a small Arctic island north of Norway, this horrific, gory, and intelligent 12-part mini-series is about a long-dormant species of parasites that are awakened when the arctic permafrost melts due to global warming. One of the best dramas of the year, it's now available on disc and digital download.

Fortitude is one of a small handful of shows that has explored a subgenre with great potential: bio-horror. Other series include BBC America's stunning exploration of human cloning, Orphan Black, which recently ended its third season.

Starring Tatiana Maslany, who was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of a half-dozen clones, Orphan Black seamlessly blends a story line about cutting-edge science with gothic tropes familiar to readers of Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mary Shelley.

And that's where we end, with the Victorian gothic, the literary genre that gave birth to modern horror.

I'd be hard-pressed to name a more fertile soil for horror stories than Victorian London. True, that's no guarantee of success: Just ask Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who produced and starred in NBC's short-lived take on Stoker's Dracula.

Showtime has had much more luck with Penny Dreadful, which will return for its third season next year. Created by playwright John Logan and featuring a sublime turn by Eva Green as a guilt-ridden, devout Catholic who possesses demonic powers, it's a terrific jumble of a half-dozen Victorian yarns.

Fox will mine the Victorian vein next season with Lookinglass, a contemporary crime series inspired by Shelley's Frankenstein. A&E plans to hit it lucky with its Shelley-infused period piece, The Frankenstein Chronicles, starring Sean Bean and Anna Maxwell Martin.

As everyone in the horror biz knows, when all else fails, go to Victorian London.

tirdad@phillynews.com215-854-2736