6 Surprising Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About ‘The Evil Dead’
Tyler Doupe'
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More than 40 years ago, a fledgling filmmaker named Sam Raimi burst onto the scene with a little film called The Evil Dead. While the picture initially took some time to find its audience (and a distributor), The Evil Dead has since become a bona fide cult classic and gone on to spawn a franchise. To date, the flick has produced two direct sequels, a remake, and a television series. Moreover, the latest franchise installment, Evil Dead Rise, is slated to make its theatrical debut on April 21st. With that in mind, we thought now was the perfect time to take a look back at the cinematic effort that started it all and present you with some lesser-known facts about The Evil Dead.
You won’t find anything copied and pasted from IMDb here, dear reader. These pieces of trivia all come from interviews, commentary tracks, or other verified sources. So, read on and stay groovy.
The cabin where the film was shot didn’t actually have a cellar.
To create the illusion of a basement, the production team cut out a section of the floor and installed a trap door. From there, they dug a hole in the ground below the floorboards. The shots set in the basement of the cabin were eventually lensed in the cellar of Rob Tapert’s parents’ farmhouse.
The tape recorder that plays the recordings read from The Necronomicon belonged to Bruce Campbell’s father.
The very same tape recorder also makes an appearance in Evil Dead II. Sam Raimi says he and Campbell used the machine to record skits during their formative years.
The film’s budget was so low that multiple corners had to be cut.
Raimi and team couldn’t spend valuable budgetary funds on synthetic tears. So, instead, they had actress Betsy Baker (who plays Linda) dip her head in a bowl of chopped onions to make herself cry.
Since renting a smoke machine was too pricey, the creative team found a more innovative way to produce smoke for the scene when the cast first enters the cabin. The smoke you see was generated by Rob Tappert taking a drag from a cigarette and exhaling a plume of smoke.
If you can’t afford synthetic tears or a smoke machine, you certainly don’t have the funds to spend on a crane. But that was not a problem for the aspiring filmmakers. Director Sam Raimi got inventive and stood on a scissor lift (designed for construction workers, not film shoots) to capture the scenes filmed from higher elevations.
One thing is for sure: The creative team had no shortage of ingenuity.
Sam Raimi didn’t actually want to call his film The Evil Dead.
In an interview with Empire Magazine, Raimi revealed that he was initially put off by the now-iconic moniker. His original inclination was to call the picture Book of the Dead. But because advertising space in a newspaper was paid for by the inch, the preferred title was deemed too lengthy by sales agent Irvin Shapiro. Shapiro decided a shorter title was the way to go and gave Raimi and company the choice between 101% Dead or Evil Dead. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Rob Tapert’s partner (Lucy Lawless) saw The Evil Dead years before the two first met. She came away from the experience thinking whoever made the film must be a particularly sick individual.
Lawless was so offended by the vine sequence that she walked out of the theater. Years later, Tapert and Lawless met, fell in love, and got married. Lawless would eventually go on to appear as a series regular on Ash vs. Evil Dead. That’s proof positive that love really does conquer all.
The cabin where The Evil Dead was shot lacked even the most basic of amenities.
The crew filmed in the bitter cold of winter and they did so without the benefit of heat or even running water. Considering the entire production was drenched in Karo syrup, that made hand washing a real challenge.
That’s all the knowledge we have to drop for now. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on these trivia items via Facebook or Twitter!
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