 The Evil Dead Saga |
 Woo and hoo! |
So let us go back and pay homage to one of MRFH’s mainstay film trilogies, and all of its surrounding quirks. (Thanks to Deadites Online for their excellent Evil Dead resources!)
1970's
Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi become friends in high school, and work on several low budget super-8 films together. Raimi quickly becomes the director of the group, while Campbell assumes the lead acting positions.
 Bruce the Zombie |
Following a literature assignment at MSU, Sam Raimi directs a “warm up” film called Within The Woods, a short 32-minute, $1,600 romp designed to raise money for a fuller version (which would become The Evil Dead). Bruce Campbell stars as “Bruce”, one of four teens who gets himself transformed into a zombie courtesy of an Indian burial mound. Foreshadowing some of the events in the Evil Dead trilogy, Bruce gets possessed and his hand gets cut off (well, mostly cut off – it dangled from a bit of skin, and Bruce improvised and bit it off). Ellen Sandweiss and Scott Spiegal, both in this flick, also return for Evil Dead.
1979
Principal photography for The Evil Dead (originally titled The Book of the Dead) begins in Morristown, TN, and carries on in spurts over the course of two years (the main shoot took three months). Several actors who left the project midway through had to be replaced by “shemps” (stand-ins). One of the more innovative camera tricks that director Raimi devised was the Evil POV – made possible by mounting a camera on a board, and having two people run through the woods while it filmed. The total cost for the film would run around $375,000.
 Ashley J. Williams |
The Evil Dead is completed and released. Budget: $375,000. Although Ash uses a chainsaw at one point, he doesn’t attach it to his arm until the sequel. Filmed at an actual cabin in Tennessee, which burned down since. Useless trivia: each Evil Dead movie features a different actress to play Linda, Ash’s unfortunate girlfriend. Mostly, it just travels along the college/indie theater circuit, until it makes waves in England and officially becomes a cult classic. It’s also helped a great deal by a blurb by Stephen King, used on the back of the VHS box: "The most ferociously original horror film I have ever seen".
 Notice the high scorers... |
A little-known fact is that a Commodore 64 game came out this year called The Evil Dead (based off the movie). Played off of a cassette tape drive (!), you controlled Ash, running around the cabin, trying to find all the pieces of the Book of the Dead and killing the evil monsters.
1984
Wes Craven uses a clip from Evil Dead on a TV screen for his mammoth horror hit A Nightmare on Elm Street. Sam Raimi responds by including Freddy Kreuger’s glove in the basement of Evil Dead II’s cabin.
 When diplomacy fails |
Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn, both a sequel and a remake of the first movie, is released. Sam Raimi receives a much larger budget and creates a bigger (and much better) movie, one where Ash becomes a proper (if idiotic) hero and where Ash gets his trademark shotgun and chainsaw hand. Possibly the most famous scene is one of Raimi’s trademarks: a rapid-cut montage where Ash gears up for battle and says, "Groovy". Like The Empire Strikes Back, many hardcore fans of the franchise consider this middle child to be the best of the trilogy, citing a perfect blend of horror and comedy and innovation.
1990
Splatterhouse is released for a couple different gaming platforms (most notably the Turbografx-16), and is quickly discovered as a not-so-subtle homage to the Evil Dead flicks.
 GRAVY! No, that's not right. |
Dark Horse Comics releases three issues of Army of Darkness (Nov. 1992-Oct. 1993), based off of the movie. There’s also a board game sold this year for Army of Darkness, where players could lead good or bad characters in battle.
1993
Originally titled Medieval Dead, Army of Darkness comes to theaters as Sam Raimi’s biggest Evil Dead movie yet. It sees Ash propelled back in time to the middle ages, where he battles the Deadites with the help of King Arthur. More slapstick, more quips and less gore mark a change for the series, making it more of a action/comedy than anything else. The most quoted Evil Dead movie, period. Budget: $15 million. Cult composer Danny Elfman creates a few tracks for the score, including the "March of the Dead" theme. Although the movie bombs hard in theaters, it gained a massive cult following in later years, and is typically the first movie people see in the Evil Dead trilogy when being introduced to it. This movie is also famous for having two endings: the theater version (Ash in S-Mart) and the original version (where Ash sleeps too long and ends up in an apocalyptic future).
 Go home, ya rip-off artist! |
Duke Nukem 3D, a popular first person shooter, is released for the PC. It features many voice quotes taken from the Evil Dead series — such as "Hail to the king, baby". Some people unfamiliar with the Evil Dead movies henceforth attribute those quotes to Duke Nukem. Bruce Campbell was not amused by the "homages", citing, "They're rip-off artists. Let them get their own damn material. It's called hiring a writer. They're blatantly ripping it off and if I was any kind of litigious guy they would've gotten a phone call by now. It's depressing and I think it's wrong."
2000
Evil Dead: Hail To The King is released for multiple gaming platforms. Although it features Bruce Campbell as the voice of Ash, this Resident Evil clone is given a collective shrug by game review sites (average: 52%) and written off.
 Pass the popcorn, Harvey |
The cult movie Donnie Darko has two characters visiting a movie theater, where they watch the original Evil Dead. Sam Raimi allowed them to use the footage for free.
“If Chins Could Kill: Confessions Of A B-Movie Actor”, an autobiography by Bruce Campbell about his acting career, is published. Many chapters deal with the making and filming of the Evil Dead series, and Bruce’s thoughts on the cult surge following it all.
After long banning it from release, Germany finally allows Evil Dead to be sold as a DVD. Before then, the movies were only available as bootlegs, in this and other European countries.
2002
Spider-Man, Sam Raimi’s breakthrough blockbuster, has not just a few connections to his Evil Dead films. There’s a costume creating montage (aka Evil Dead II) and Bruce Campbell appears in both this and the sequel for cameo roles.
Warcraft III features a bit of Evil Dead homage: if you repeatedly click on a dwarf hunter, he’ll eventually say “This… is my BOOMSTICK!”. World of Warcraft, the immensely popular MMORPG that was released in 2004, also featured numerous Evil Dead references.
2003
Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick is released for multiple gaming platforms. This game has Ash battling evil in Dearborn, MI (yay Michigan!), in both the present and the past, with Bruce Campbell voicing Ash. It gets lackluster reviews and scores a 62% on Game Rankings.
 He's back, baby! Yeah! |
News is released that Sam Raimi gave permission for an Evil Dead remake, although by another director and not with Bruce Campbell. It later petered out.
Evil Dead: Regeneration is released for multiple platforms. Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi return to lend their voices to the project. In this chapter of the Evil Dead saga, Ash is captured by the police, convicted of killing people (who were Deadites), and sent to a mental institution. The Necronomicon is used, mayhem ensues, and Ash gets an undead partner named Sam. While it’s seen as a vast improvement over the earlier Evil Dead games, it scores an average of just 69% on Game Rankings.
Army of Darkness is re-born in comic book form, by Dynamite Entertainment. This continuing series would feature Ash and his various deadite-fighting escapades.
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