Ed Getley was an associate professor of archeology and the boyfriend of Annie Knowby. In the early 1980s, Getley accompanied the Knowby family during the exploration of the ruins of Castle Kandar, where Professor Raymond Knowby would eventually find the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis. Sometime after this expedition, Ed would become a Deadite shortly after arriving at the Knowby's secluded cabin in the woods, where he would be quickly killed by Ash Williams.
Ed Getley's first (and only) appearance was in the 1987 film Evil Dead II. He was portrayed by Richard Domeier.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
There is no information in regards to Ed Getley's life prior to the incident at the cabin, though at some point he became an associate professor of archeology. Getley would at some point meet Professor Raymond Knowby (though the exact circumstances in which they met is unknown) and began dating his daughter, Annie Knowby.
Castle Kandar[]
In the early 1980s, Ed Getley would accompany the Knowby family to England to explore the recently unearthed ruins of Castle Kandar. During this exploration, Raymond (along with his wife Henrietta) would discover the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and Kandarian Dagger hidden within one of the castle's rear chambers. Raymond and Henrietta returned to the United States to begin studying and translating the Book of The Dead, with Annie and Ed remaining at the site to continue exploring the ruins. At some point shortly after this, Ed returned to the United States alone.
Incident At The Cabin[]
A week following Raymond and Henrietta's last correspondence with him, Ed made his way to Fairview Airport to pick up Annie, who had returned from England with several "lost" pages of the Necronomicon which she had uncovered in the days after her family's departure. Though he was elated to see Annie, Ed expressed to her his concern over not hearing from her father in a week, hoping that whatever fears he had would be quelled once they reached the family's secluded cabin a few miles away.
Departing from the airport in Ed's car, the two eventually came to a halt upon finding the road blocked off by a local man (named Jake) and his girlfriend (Bobby Joe). When Annie inquired as to why the road was closed, Jake simply turned on his truck's headlights, showing them that a truss-bridge spanning a long ravine had been completely destroyed. It was then that Jake and Bobby Joe offered to guide Ed and Annie through a trail leading directly to the cabin (for a fee of $100). Annie agreed to the deal under the condition that Jake carry her steamer trunk for her.
Eventually the group arrived at the Knowby cabin, only to find Raymond and Henrietta nowhere in sight. Instead, a one-handed, blood-covered stranger greeted them by firing a shotgun through the front door, which grazed Bobby Joe in the shoulder. Jake and Ed managed to subdue the stranger, with Jake almost beating him to the brink of unconsciousness as he and Ed tossed the man into the cabin's fruit cellar. Eventually finding her father's reel-to-reel tape recorder, Annie and the others learned that Raymond had unleashed a demonic spirit which had possessed Henrietta, forcing him to subdue her and bury her beneath the cellar's earthen floor. Much to the stranger's horror, the undead Henrietta emerged from the ground and slowly staggered towards him, only for Jake to release the man from the cellar just in time. As Henrietta began to attack, Ed ran over to monster and began to punch her directly in the head, only to be tossed into a glass picture frame hanging on the wall. Jake and the stranger managed to close up the cellar door once more, and Annie tended to Ed's head-wound.
The stranger, now identifying himself as Ash Williams, explained that evil itself was out in those woods, and any attempt at escape during the night would only get them killed. It was then that Henrietta made another attempt at escape, this time appearing as completely human from between the floor and the fruit cellar's door, asking that Annie let her out. At the moment Annie defiantly told the others that the "thing in the cellar" was not her mother, Ed succumbed to his injury and was turned into a Deadite himself. Levitating several feet off the floor, Deadite Ed taunted the humans around him, telling them they would all be "dead by dawn". Flying across the room, Ed bit a large chuck of hair out of Bobby Joe's head and attacked Jake. As the Deadite turned back towards Henrietta to unleash her from the cellar, Ash Williams charged towards Ed with an axe, swiping a large portion of Getley's head off. The Deadite Ed collapsed, and Ash continued to hack up and dismember the associate professor's body until it was truly dead, flinging the monster's emerald blood across the room.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Ed is the only character outside of the Knowby family to have their last name explicitly mentioned on-screen in the original three Evil Dead films.
- In the 1985 first draft of Evil Dead II, Ed is described as 35 years old and a professor at the University of Tennessee. In this version, Ed falls into a pit while Jake and Bobby Joe lead him and Annie on the trail, only to be pulled out by living vines after Jake and the others arrive at the cabin without him. He is then dragged along the forest floor by the vines, where he his split in half upon hitting a tree. A similar concept would be used for Bobby Joe's death in the final version of the film.
- Ed was completely omitted in the film's second draft.
- In the March, 1986 sixth draft of the Evil Dead II script, Ed is introduced in a scene in which Annie breaks into his office at the University of Tennessee's Museum of Natural History to take the missing pages of the Book of The Dead. Ed accompanies Annie to the cabin as he feels it is his duty of to protect the pages as the museum's assistant curator.