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DOUBLE FEATURE: The Evil Dead (1981) / Evil Dead 2 (1987)
76 Plays13 days ago
In anticipation of the release of EVIL DEAD BURN (2026), Rick and Trav begin their trek through the entire franchise, starting with a first for the podcast, a DOUBLE FEATURE, diving into the lore and cultdom of Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD (1981) and EVIL DEAD 2 (1987). Welcome to The Groovy Road to Evil Dead Burn.
(01:42) - Movie News
(06:05) - Introducing our new franchise series: The Groovy Road to EVIL DEAD BURN
(14:40) - Our Relationship to Evil Dead
(20:57) - Synopsis
(21:15) - The History of THE EVIL DEAD’s Production
(42:00) - The History of THE EVIL DEAD’s Distribution
(50:15) - The Brief History of EVIL DEAD 2 & Continuity Questions
(56:42) - Cast & Crew
(01:01:40) - Scare-o-Meter
(01:06:08) - Awards
(01:36:15) - Scream King or Queen
(01:38:57) - Next Week
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Transcript
Dormant Creatures and Podcast Anniversary
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, what'd you that for? It was just getting good. I just don't want hear it anymore, that's all. first few pages warn that these enduring creatures may lie dormant but are never truly dead they may be recalled to active life through the incantations presented in this book it is through recitation of these passages that the demons are given license sex yeah what'd you do that for it's just getting good i just don't want to hear it anyway that's all
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey, come on, I just want to hear the rest of it. No big deal. army throw be ah start
00:00:52
Speaker
And we are back. Look at us, Rick. A few weeks in a row. And actually, I think we just hit our one-year anniversary of the pod. So now that we're back in full stride, we made it to your man. Congrats.
00:01:06
Speaker
That's groovy. ah Yeah, three days ago was our first episode a year ago, June 7th, 2025. Bring her back. And we're bringing ourselves back. It almost didn't happen. We almost are. What if our ah what if our hiatus had eclipsed our year anniversary? That one sucked. I know that would have been such a shame. So I'm glad we, you know, right at the ship a few weeks just prior, few
Pivot to Franchise Series
00:01:30
Speaker
weeks in a row now. And we are pivoting here from new releases to another franchise series leading up to new release. So we'll talk more about that shortly.
00:01:40
Speaker
um But before we do, we've been doing this for a few weeks, Rick. We haven't really talked to anything horror movie news other than our repeated sentiment that ah movies are so back or it's another good year for horror.
00:01:52
Speaker
so do we want to Do we want to talk about horror at all? what's What's kind of going on in the news? We do. Can I use this opportunity to to say one thing that I wish I had said last episode that I've been thinking about since?
Essence of Analog Horror
00:02:05
Speaker
Which is... Yeah. I wish... We were talking about back rooms and we you know discussed how... Not just about the box office success, but like it's...
00:02:17
Speaker
it's It's essence. It's analog essence. It's kind of like it's it's hitting a ah type of horror in the fields that we don't normally get. And I should have mentioned Skinnamarink, 2023 Skinnamarink, directed by Kyle Edward ball Ball. And then also I saw the TV glow from 2024 by ah Jane Schoenbrunn.
00:02:39
Speaker
like Both of those, I think, also capture that weird... Nostalgia, focus on analog in the 90s. And um kind of like a, they're also heavy on atmosphere, heavy on vibes. So I just wanted to throw those names out there. Two movies, I think, I know you and I both love. You like Backrooms. I think those are both great films. I really actually like both those films. That and I saw the TV glow.
00:03:02
Speaker
And Skidmer Inc was another YouTube to feature film creator too. Yeah. Didn't do quite as well as Obsession and Backrooms, but shows that the pipeline... That's a sleeper. It's a sleeper. Yeah, the pipeline is hot, man. we' We're getting a few of them. um But as far as news goes, i mean, the only thing I had was um that...
Sequel News and Box Office Analysis
00:03:23
Speaker
David Robert Mitchell's They Follow, the highly anticipated sequel to It Follows from 2014, is starting to crop up in the trades again. This time because Naomi Aki, who's an ah actress I really liked in Blink Twice. don't you saw Blink Twice with Channing Tatum. Oh, yeah, I did. is she the She's the lead. Yeah, yeah, she's great. And... um So her name is being thrown around i don't know she's officially attached to the project yet, but that's a if it's her and um our scream queen, Micah Monroe. If it's Micah Monroe and Naomi Aki, that's that's pretty good billing there.
00:04:02
Speaker
So, I mean, you know how these things work. It doesn't mean anything is happening, but the the fact that it's being, there's an f there's an update, ah and it would if this goes, it'll happen at Neon, yep who's having a good run themselves. So yeah aside from that, the only other thing I had on my list was just the continued box office domination of a back sessions. Yeah.
00:04:28
Speaker
Back sessions. Oh, back room obsession mashup here. It's like a Barbenheimer thing. Yep. Yes. i've I've heard a few people equate it to Barbenheimer. Two young horror directors absolutely smashing it out of the park. I think one of our friends just texted us right before we started recording. Yep. Because Obsession has, yeah, Amanda Woman who's been on the pod, Obsession has surpassed The Mandalorian and Grogu for its box office gross thus far, its box office haul.
00:04:56
Speaker
I have not fact-checked this, but um i mean, it sounds believable with the trajectory. No, it's true. The second and third weekend, this film kept climbing with the amount of ah box office sales, which is historically extremely rare. I think E.T. was the last film to do that, to go into its third weekend and pick up like that. a movie that's it's almost 50 years old is the last movie for its third weekend to make more. This is for Obsession, at least, than its first two weekends.
00:05:25
Speaker
um But yeah, so if you're counting domestic gross, I guess so Mandalorian, what I'm seeing is that they've made 296 million worldwide and we're still at and million respectively between Obsession But I think what Amanda is referring to is that it that obsession and backrooms are winning the weekends like Mando had a big opening on it.
00:05:53
Speaker
But in the weekends since then, despite Mando coming out more recently, the dailies obsession and backrooms are both catching up and then will likely surpass Mando Mandalorian and Grogu, which is
Evil Dead Franchise Introduction
00:06:07
Speaker
wild. Good for those young guys. But speaking of those young guys, Trav.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, we got um an older guy now who started his film as a young guy. yeah as i think he was turning 20 when he started filming his first feature. So very apropos for back rooms and Kane Parsons, who is 20 himself. um So without further ado, this is the Sunday Scaries. I'm Travis Telerik. I'm Ricky Townsend. Welcome to our Evil Dead franchise series. And we're going to kick it off with a rare double feature here for Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and go right into Evil Dead 2, which I realize some people call it Evil Dead 2 Dead by Morning. Yeah, Dead by Dawn. Dead by Dawn. Thank you. Yeah, I didn't realize that until very recently. There's promotional material that they use that in. And in some cases, um it's used as a subtitle. But... Officially it's dead ah Evil Dead 2, but we'll get into all the weird naming conventions and continuity and rights issues that these movies have. It's chock full of those things. yeah but
00:07:19
Speaker
But yeah, so I think what's if you talk about ah doing a double feature, what's also exciting is that we have a... double upcoming new Evil Dead movies. So ah July 10th, 2026, here in a few weeks, Evil Dead Burn is coming out by Sebastian Vanacek. He's a French guy. So that's what this series is leading up to. But then right after Burn wrapped its production, or sorry, as it was doing its ah ah test screenings, Evil Dead Wrath, another standalone project by Francis Galupi,
00:07:52
Speaker
is coming out April 2028. So Evil Dead is ah continuing to be a bloody good time. um I think, Trav, I'm sure we'll get into this later in the franchise series, but there is a pretty big distinction between the original trilogy and the movies that have come after it, because the movies that have come after it have have kind of been like incubators for young filmmakers to just try their hand at anything within this universe. Like we'll we'll talk about it a lot, but like continuity is not really a priority for the producers, ah Sam Raimi, Robert Tapper and Bruce Campbell. They're like the the stewards of this franchise.
00:08:33
Speaker
They don't really care about that, especially 2013 onward. um But it seems that burn and wrath are continuing that cycle of we give the keys over to some younger, oftentimes international filmmakers, see what they can do with it.
00:08:47
Speaker
And little Easter eggs here and there, but not really a tight through line between all these movies. Yeah, you kind of have the Necronomicon, which we could talk about a bit, being the catalyst in these films. But outside of that, i mean, very different movies, different characters, different vibes, I'd say. Different tone, for sure. Yeah, if it's horror comedy, if it's more like straight horror. um it's fast's It's so interesting that like they've continued to be received well and do well the box office because if you look at the...
00:09:17
Speaker
you know, iconic stature that the first three hold in terms of what they did for horror, what they did for horror comedy, what they did for video nasties, VHS hits, ah you know, mitt kind of midnight showings of like these cult classics.
Evolution and Production of Evil Dead
00:09:33
Speaker
with a little wink to them and then ever since then we've gotten since 2013 on with evil dead 2013 and then evil dead rise in 2023 they're like brutal kind of unflinching not really winking movies but people kind of give them a pass because they're just made well and like they're not trying to be they're not trying to incorporate a bruce campbell's ash they're not trying to be funny and maybe one filmmaker in the future will do that but so far that's not been the case Yeah, you know, we mentioned for the 28 Years Later franchise, which we've covered all those films, but I think why we like Bone Temple so much is they let Nia DaCosta run with it, and it feels very different than the rest of the franchise. And I i really like this. I like, you know, franchises having a few firm...
00:10:19
Speaker
rules or this is generally what the universe is about, but then letting different filmmakers kind of run with it and make it their own. And so agree the original trilogy is all Raimi. And it's also important, you know, it's going off a bit of a tangent, the original trilogy was made roughly what, within 10 years from 81 to 91? Is that when Army of Darkness? Army Darkness is 92 93.
00:10:41
Speaker
two or ninety three Okay, so a little over 10 years. And it was very much a cult following without any feature films coming out for 20 years. And now we're kind of seeing it back into the mainstream picked up. But instead of just rehashing maybe what Star Wars has done one too many times, um they really said if we're going to ah revive this franchise, so to speak, if we're going to bring it back from the dead, we're going to do it in a new way. And I love that where you still get a few of the you know, the nostalgia hits are like, yes, this is, you know, an important cult following movie that I'm glad that we still get to see new iterations of. But they're different enough where you feel like they're not just milking the plot and the vibes from the first film again and again and again. Yeah, I think people who are longing for that old campy kind of comic
00:11:31
Speaker
ah relief would probably be better be better suited to watching the TV show Ash versus Evil Dead, which um had a great I want to watch it I haven't seen any of the episodes. Sam Raimi directed the first episode, but um apparently the first two seasons are amazing. the third season sputters a bit, but then was like unceremoniously canceled by stars because of low viewership and a lot of reporting going on that like it was a very heavily pirated show because not everybody has stars. That's a subscription.
00:11:59
Speaker
That makes sense. But, you know, that has Bruce Campbell in his older age. um They couldn't reference Army of Darkness at all because Universal Pictures has the rights, half the rights to that movie. So they have to dance around that a little bit. But I've heard it's great. And I think it's a great crossover between like...
00:12:15
Speaker
the modern day brutality of these newer movies, but also a lot of like the charm and wit of Bruce Campbell, who, um dude, we didn't, I think this was during our hiatus, but like some pretty big news in March hit when he announced that he had um treatable, but non curable cancer. he He won't go into details about what it is, but it hit the horror community really hard because this is like the first Comic-Con hero, like the first like video rental store,
00:12:45
Speaker
like Hercules, like the the a face who, you know, you walk into a convention and he's a hero and he's on the street and not many people recognize him. I mean, now they do probably, but that's huge. And I, I hope he's, i hope he battles this as long as he can, but I think it's worth just mentioning that some recent news.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yep. So yeah, we'll talk a lot about Bruce Campbell. We'll talk about Raimi. I did want to shout out Raimi again, especially knowing there's new iterations of this series coming out. He's still a working director. It's not like he's retired. um Send Help, which was during our hiatus or else likely we would have covered it earlier this year. Fantastic horror film. um He's still got it. Drag Me to Hell is another one of my favorites of his. um So it's cool to see he's working on other stuff while still, like you said, being a steward overall and a producer of these evil dead films.
00:13:36
Speaker
He did. He did. He did have some ah success with another trilogy, a little ah ah other, a smaller little trilogy called Spider-Man. Yes. Which Tony McGuire. We have too many Spider-Man trilogies now. Cemented him as, you know, not just ah a filmmaker, an important American filmmaker, but also like pretty much set the blueprint for modern day comic movies.
00:14:00
Speaker
Mm hmm. yeah he's respond Yeah, that predated iron man predated Iron Man and the big Marvel pickup. This is back when Sony was doing it is fuck superhero movies.
00:14:11
Speaker
It is fun to have to go back and watch Spider-Man after recently he has have seen his earlier horror schlocky stuff because he still has some like pizzazz. He still has some... like you know, ah crazy camera movement and kind of like earnest but silly moment. I don't know, like ah he's a bit more contained because it's part of a bigger machine. But there's still a little glimpses of like of what what what made Raimi Raimi, which is yeah pretty cool.
00:14:40
Speaker
Cool. Well, let's ah so we're talking about again just the first two films today, the Evil Dead and then ah Evil Dead 2. What's your relationship with these movies? Again, these these predate us. So when did you see them? um Are they you know top your list for horror over time? Have you grown to like them?
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, so um i I probably first watched these movies in my teen years. um Their reputation precedes them, obviously. And i had I had seen a lot of Raimi's stuff.
00:15:11
Speaker
like I think I probably saw Drag Me to Hell before um'm seeing these movies. Me too. I I had i had heard that they were just great fusions of comedy and horror. So I was very surprised seeing the Evil Dead one.
00:15:27
Speaker
noting that it was like mainly just a straight up horror, but just made in a campy way because of a low budget. So there was like unintentionally funny things in it, but it was played not as it was played a bit more straighter. And then um probably that same week as a teen, I saw Evil Dead 2 and it was like blown away. Like I kind of felt I heard Griffin from Blank Check ah make the same comparison, but I felt the same way too when watching it for the first time. Like,
00:15:54
Speaker
I had the same reaction to watching Mad Max and then Mad Max to the road warrior. Cause it's basically the same movie, but just turned up to 11. Just like everything's amplified. Everything's more, uh, so there's a larger budget. They, they take bigger risks. And so, um, I, yeah, I guess my relationship is like, I saw them,
00:16:16
Speaker
you know much much after they were already came out, but was pleasantly surprised. and like really I actually liked Evil Dead 1 more this go-around. You have to go into that movie knowing that it's more about appreciation and like understanding what they went through to make it. and I think I enjoyed it a lot more this time than my first time because its reputation's up here, Trap. It's like this titan, but really it's a small little indie thing that kids made.
00:16:45
Speaker
Yeah, i I think that's right. And that was pretty much my take is I saw both of these while back. If it wasn't for Evil 2,
00:16:54
Speaker
And then that kind of springboarding, you know, Sam Raimi's career, Bruce Campbell's career, how great that second film was. i don't think I would love The Evil Dead, but I think the sequel elevates the first film, weirdly, to know like, oh, this totally makes sense. Like, look, again, you you appreciate it for the great lengths they had to go to as a very, you know, talking like obsession here, kind of a young filmmaker,
00:17:21
Speaker
kind of bootstrapping or trying to raise ah a small amount of money, less than a million dollars to make a horror film. And you you appreciate it for that. But like, thanks to the sequel, and I think where you see the vision is more fully realized, like it elevates the entire franchise, it elevates the first film.
00:17:37
Speaker
And it's one of those rare sequels where I think pretty universally most people like yeah that too over the evil dead. i think it's one those classic cases of like, You know, Mad Max one, Terminator one, Evil Dead one are probably considered more, quote, important because they they broke all these rules. They changed the game.
00:17:58
Speaker
But Terminator two, Road Warrior and Evil Dead two are considered better movies because of they were able to take those initial visions and just blow it up.
00:18:10
Speaker
um So yeah, I think i think it's hindsight's 20-20. I do wonder if they never made Evil Dead 2 and this was an Evil Dead 1 just existed in ah in ah in a vacuum if its reputation over the years. Because at the time, it was a huge hit, like relatively speaking, for a small indie film. It was big on a video. But I think a lot of that had to do with like people hadn't seen stuff like this before.
Impact and Legacy of Evil Dead
00:18:35
Speaker
this kind of gonzo, ah silly horror, not, not silly, but like really ah unrestrained way of like having some personality behind the camera and a horror film was just not something that was happening.
00:18:49
Speaker
Um, But yeah, I think i I largely agree with you. What was your what what was your relationship? You you saw these. I mean, so I saw these films like in the last few years, which is funny because I saw Evil Dead, the 2013 release in theaters. So my first taste of the franchise was seeing that film.
00:19:07
Speaker
That one I thought was good, but not great. So that's why I wasn't like clamoring to be like, I need to go watch the original trilogy. um But it was it was mainly like rewatching Drag Me to Hell recently, which I also saw right when it came out.
00:19:19
Speaker
And then starting to become more of a film buff, largely thanks to you. And realizing who Sam Raimi was, right? I used to look at the directors behind the films and say, wait, I need to go back and see these original Evil Dead films. And so it was very rewarding that i was a lot more familiar with his work, a little familiar with the franchise already from at least the first of the the newer films that have came out now in the 21st century. um And so I was able to enjoy them pretty well from the get go. But again, like I said, that I really liked the first film. and
00:19:52
Speaker
honestly it's more lore rich that we could talk about like the production today it's so fun but um but the second film man if it wasn't for that it i know you said the first one was a success but like if you look at ramey's career he he had another movie crime wave that came out after this that he actually made with like the cohen's yeah um and it was it was a flop it wasn't good well and that's why evil did too Well, a lot of reports were saying that it was kind of his like, you get one more chance. Like if you get two strikes here, he might be dead in the water. Like that could been his career. Let's go back to the baby.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah, instead it made his career. So anyways, I'm sure we have a lot to talk about there on the production side. Should we should we jump into some of that? Is there anything anything anything else just framing like a general narrative we need to do No, I mean, if you're listening this podcast, you more than likely have seen these films. And so I don't know how much new things we're going to try to package this in a way that like you're getting the best of of of the history and our thoughts of these movies. um I'll say the synopsis for each of them, just in case we have new listeners and need to be reminded and reminded what they're about. The Evil Dead 1981, five friends travel to a cabin in the woods where they unknowingly release flesh possessing demons.
00:21:03
Speaker
Evil Dead 2, 1987. Ash Williams, the lone survivor of an earlier onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits, holds up in a cabin with a group of strangers while the demons continue their attack.
00:21:15
Speaker
um I think what what people know is that Sam Raimi was a young man with a bunch of his friends, and they went into the woods and they made a movie. um Obviously, a lot more went into that.
00:21:28
Speaker
A lot more happened before that. um Yeah. Bruce Campbell, childhood friend Sam Raimi. Yes. So Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, Bruce Campbell, Josh Becker, and then um Sam Raimi's brothers, Ted and Ivan Raimi, all grew up in an in and around Royal Oak, Michigan, suburb outside of Detroit.
00:21:47
Speaker
um Raimi actually had an older brother ah named Sander who tragically passed at 15. Sam was only nine years old at the time. um i mentioned this not just to say a sad story, but because it's kind of instrumental to Sam's kind of development. ah Sander had introduced Sam to two things.
00:22:08
Speaker
ah One was magic. And Sam had always wanted to be a magician. And then when he found a camera, realized that you could be a magician in different ways. You could time travel. You could like change people's perspectives on certain events there to capture on camera. But he also introduced him to Spider-Man.
00:22:23
Speaker
um Sandra gave him the first Spider-Man comic books. And so oh very cool that trilogy is very important to him for that reason. But it really shaped his view of the world. It shaped his priorities. um So he and his buddies start making super eight movies and a lot of them were inspired by the three stooges. They did a lot of dramas, comedies, romances, no horrors, Trav, which I found interesting. We'll get into that in a second.
00:22:46
Speaker
Fast forward a bit. So as the team kind of assembles, um a a guy that was not their childhood friend, but as a instrumental in in shaping their careers and getting Evil Dead off the ground is Robert Tappert. um He was Ivan Ramey's roommate at Michigan State. So again, Sam's older brother and um basically was like, hey, I like what you guys are doing because he saw that they weren't just inventive and creative with the camera, but they would they were like little showmen, dude. Like they would wear suits and like charge people tickets to see their shorts and stuff.
00:23:20
Speaker
And he was like, hey, you guys have something here. I think you have the chutzpah and like the skill to make a feature. But there's only one genre we should try because of the economics and, you know, the scale of how, you know, you can raise money and like how much things would cost. You should do a horror film. And Sam's like, dude, I don't do horror. Like i don't like horror I don't like being scared and but Tapper like just kind of convinced him. And so I thought of you, Trav, because ah it reminded me of getting this podcast off the ground, um especially in the early days when we were like binge watching zombie movies, because that's what they did. Like so the three main shepherds of of the Evil Dead franchise, Robert Tapper, producer, Sam Raimi, director, Bruce Campbell, star and producer.
00:24:07
Speaker
would go around the drive ins and just watch as many horror films as they could and to get an idea of the formula. And so Sam had a ah phrase called the Gore the Marrier, which is like he just started to see that people started to react more when there was like bloody mess. Got to make a graphic.
00:24:26
Speaker
But isn't that great, though? Like their homework was just to like stay up late, go drive ins and learning how to make horror films. um So then eventually Sam also drops out of Michigan State.
00:24:39
Speaker
So you have two dropouts after not even completing a full year. ah The three of them cobble together like sixteen hundred bucks to make within the woods, which have you seen? No, I have not seen the short film that okay you know precedes this. I've seen part of it. I've tried to watch it before this pod. It just didn't work, but um it's about 30 minutes.
00:24:59
Speaker
It's like a horrible transfer on YouTube. It's like you can hardly see anything, but it's basically like the the general bones of the evil dead. Like, you know, kids go to a cabin. Things happen. Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
But the main thing that ah what I thought was funny was Bruce and Sam got jobs ah at restaurants with the main, the main goal of to be good, to get matching suits for all three of them so they could go pitch local business people. So there just I just can imagine the three of them with like, with baggy over, over, like, over size. Step brothers when Dale and Brennan have like the matching tuxedos. Yes. Rolling into job interviews. Yeah. Who could be investors? You. yeah
00:25:44
Speaker
And so they're out of school. They start pitching. They they they put together a little LLC, Renaissance Pictures Limited. They go to dentists, accountants. um Their goal from doing the bookkeeping was $150,000 wanted to put together.
00:26:00
Speaker
um So Trav, you're in Michigan, you're far away from Hollywood, but you're kind of a, you you like film. You see a ah a baggy clothed, Sam Raimi, Robert Tapper, Bruce Campbell come up to you and say, hey,
00:26:12
Speaker
thousand bucks you'll you'll get your earnings back twofold is what they said what do you give it anything trab they're going to see you as a secured man investing in film seems so so risky i have friends who are you know trying trying their luck with this and so it is a pitch i've been presented with before really and i I love to support in other maybe non-financial ways, but I know if I am giving any money, that's money I should just kiss goodbye. Say goodbye to you. Yeah. Exactly. Well, I thought of you because one of the three occupations they targeted, dentists, accountants, and real estate folks. Yeah. Yeah, that's two out of three. yeah I know, right? And so, ah you know, they're going around, they're trying to, they're telling people they're going to get their money back. And spoiler alert, they did about 5X.
00:27:02
Speaker
But, ah and also what I think helped here, Trav, was that there's a sense of novelty because, again, they're in Michigan. They're not in New York. They're not in LA. I think these people were just, they wanted to support some local young ah artists. And it's also something that you don't see a lot around there. um So I think they use that their advantage.
00:27:22
Speaker
Another name I should have probably mentioned who's hugely influential in all this is Tom Sullivan, who is the special effects slash makeup guy, which is insane that the same guy that's doing makeup is doing effects. I mean, this is what you do in an indie. It's, you know, a man of many hats, but like that's a lot. that He was like 10 years older than me. He's like 30 something. Yeah.
00:27:40
Speaker
So 1979 November, they they drive out to a to Tennessee. They learn right before they leave that the cabin that they were going to stay at is no longer available. There's squabbles between the producers about who they should if they should tell the rest of the crew. They decide not to because they're like, if we don't leave, we're just never going this movie made.
00:28:04
Speaker
Now, you know why they went to Tennessee, Travis? No, other than like Appalachia and some good mountain locations. There was it was a terrain element for sure.
00:28:16
Speaker
But the driving factor was weather because Michigan was known for having just horrible winters. And they had heard Tennessee, that part of Tennessee had some nice winters. Well, what one of the first things that that made this a cursed production um was that it flipped that year.
00:28:35
Speaker
Michigan had one of its like most mild winters ever, like very chill. And Tennessee had its worst winter of all time at that point, like 14 degrees, 20 degrees. Yeah. um So they get out there. They're able to find a new cabin in pretty short order. Yeah.
00:28:54
Speaker
They had scheduled six weeks to shoot. ended up being 12 weeks. I also saw, and you're probably going to bring this up, but they didn't have enough money to book accommodations for the cast and crew. So it was everyone just kind of huddled together in this small log cap, the one you see the film. That's reported by a few ah publications, but if you look at Josh- It's been debunked? It's been debunked. One of my best resources on all this is Josh Becker. He's like one of the PAs on the shoot. um
00:29:25
Speaker
His journal is ah is live, and or not live, but like his journal is accessible on the internet. like He wrote every single day what happened out there. Um, they did have to sleep in the cabin on the latter half of the shoot, but I'll explain that why later. um no, they had a six bedroom rental house that was kind of a 20 minute drive away.
00:29:45
Speaker
But again, they had a lot more than six people. So they were, yes, they had, they had 13 and they had to cram in 13 people in a six bedroom rental house. um And most of that rental house was used for two things, the chef to make all their food. And then Tom Sullivan had his whole like claymation FX set up over there. So there's not a lot of places to sleep because it's an active like production office. um So, yeah, you so but you you get that's like their base camp. But the cabin is where they spent most their time. And.
00:30:19
Speaker
There's no sewage. There's no running water. There's not even an outhouse. So if you want to take a dump, you got to go in the woods. So the bathroom in the movie wasn't a real functioning bathroom then. Was there a bathroom in the movie? Pretty positive there's a bathroom. Maybe I'm confusing with the second film, but could. I don't remember ever seen a toilet in either movie. But so they had to, if you wanted to go pinch a loaf, you're going in the woods. ah All the blood that they use was a mix of Cairo corn syrup, powdered coffee creamer, red food dye, and a little bit of blue food dye.
00:30:53
Speaker
Now, it looks great. but that stuff would get caked to everybody. It would freeze because it's like 20 degrees. And the only way to get it off was to pour scalding hot water on themselves because they had a coffee maker on set.
00:31:08
Speaker
So they would take the hot water from the coffee, do that. They would get burns from that. They would get skin irritations. Um, Okay, some of the deadites, some of the eye contacts they had to wear. I didn't know this.
00:31:19
Speaker
Do you know what we had before soft contacts? Yeah, yeah. You had glass lenses. Yes. Like literally hard contacts. I had no idea. I saw this. They they could only leave them in their eyes for like 15 minutes max at a time because the irritation was so severe that they'd have to take it out.
00:31:37
Speaker
put their eyes breathe for a bit before they can put it back in Well, so that was the doctor's orders was 15 minutes at a time, five times a day at most. that's So that's 75 minutes a day.
00:31:48
Speaker
As somebody who works on film sets, you better believe that they they're working like 15 hour days. There's no way they kept it to 75 minutes. And I have a list of injuries that I'm not going to read.
00:32:01
Speaker
I'm not going to exhaust a list list here, but some of them include Several of them were scratched corneas from Ellen Seinweiss, scratched cornea near blindness from Bruce Campbell, scratched cornea from Teresa Tilly. So a lot of these are from other accidents like, you know, camera equipment falling and stuff.
00:32:20
Speaker
But some of these were because they had to keep these damn contacts in. You're completely blind while you're in. Yeah, that's what they said. They said it's like looking through a thing of Tupperware. Yeah. you You really can't make anything out. No.
00:32:33
Speaker
um Did you hear about any of these injuries, by the way? Yeah. I mean, it so like you said, the film is fairly cursed. Ramey, I saw this published as well, was maybe not encouraging them, but embracing like if you want to do a real horror film, you know, you kind of got to get down in the dirt. You got to get a little beat up. yeah You got to embrace the suck to make it a little more real.
00:32:54
Speaker
But it makes sense because like, you know ah A lot of the film, you're seeing the cabin get destroyed, people get knocked around. Again, I'm assuming they don't have full stunt crew. They're running through the woods like multiple times. i mean know it's When you say stunt crew travel, the first thing I think of is like one of the first jobs they had people do is when they got to the cabin, it's completely three to four inches caked in cow manure.
00:33:19
Speaker
And the first thing they had people do, including the cast, was to clean that shit out. And so if you're having your primary cast shovel shit on their first day, you can pretty much, that like sets the tone for what the rest of their production yeah would be.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. um And so, yeah, I think the what you're referring to is like is Sam Raimi's. He's like the sweetest guy by all accounts. But on set, he can be considered a little sadistic because he'll get them to go insane. He'll kind of prod at them. Bruce Campbell had a really gruesome ankle injury. And at one point he literally poked it with a stick because he needed him to be more affected by what's going on. And I think there's also an element to this of, of, you know, Sam Raimi is, is a nerdy, smaller, soft-spoken guy. And his, his, one of his best friends is a six foot, whatever jock. There has to be some pleasure in enforcing his good looking friend into precarious situations. And what what can we get Bruce to do on camera? Um,
00:34:20
Speaker
And also his his filmmaking style, which he's, you know, i he's one of the reasons he's such a genius is that he's so dialed into what he wants. He doesn't do a lot of masters. He doesn't do a lot of wide shots where everybody knows what's going on. a lot of his close-ups So these people are having to recreate movements and and redo scenes and actions ah that you normally wouldn't have to do as many times because he's being so precise and getting this Dutch angle and this like this and instead of having, you know, a wide shot of all, you know, yeah and hanging out. a lot of tight shots.
00:34:55
Speaker
Which works so well, though. I mean, it's so inventive, the stuff he's doing with the camera. And it's fun, you know, thinking about camera stuff. So today, if you're running and trying to capture scene of characters running, but you're also, the camera's following them. You could have like a steady cam or something. For the movement, I read that they didn't have that. no So what they took is like, they literally had like affixed the camera to like a wood board or support system had one guy on either side holding this wood contraption and just essentially like running through the woods. he called him They called it a shaky cam.
00:35:31
Speaker
and There's so many shots of that and in both films, but I mean, I'm assuming this is most notably used in the first one. It's just funny to think that there's like two guys on either end of the, either side of the camera just running fills with it. I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up. Cause it's a good segue into the, what to end, to end this, um, the, the, the describing their shoot out there because they get to the end of six weeks, Trav, and they still have a lot of shit to do.
00:35:57
Speaker
Most of the crew leaves because they said, we have to get back to school. My contract said for six weeks, I got to go. So everybody leaves except for so the three producers, Sam, Robert Tappert, and Bruce Campbell.
00:36:11
Speaker
ah Two PA stay. Josh Becker ended up being a DP pretty much, and David Goodman, and then Tom Sullivan, the FX guy. So it's just those six guys.
00:36:21
Speaker
they lose their mo they They lose their rental house um accommodations because it's turning into a brothel, which is random.
Distribution and Title Change
00:36:29
Speaker
And they have to go stay in scattered like really cheap motels. I brought this up because the latter half of this shoot is insane to me. um You have the first six weeks, everybody's there. It's going crazy. The last six weeks, you don't even have your DP. That is when they introduce what you just called, what you just mentioned, the shaky cam. The shaky cam, yeah. They could not afford a Steadicam. It was just used for the first time in the Shining like earlier, later that year, that year, pretty 1980, the Shining came
00:37:00
Speaker
There's like three people on Earth who know how to use that thing. They cannot afford one of those three people. So they implement the shaky cam. This is without their DP. So Sam Raimi is now taking over on camera. um They use what they call the Vasso cam, where they would put a piece of board here, Vaseline in the middle, and then the camera on a board on top of that so it it can slide a bit. Slide around, yeah. Yeah. And then they also had an Evil Dead 2 the Sammo cam, which is basically...
00:37:29
Speaker
They would strap Bruce Campbell to a cross, so he's kind of arms extended like this. And then the camera's on some board that is rotating with him, which is how they got that initial shot of him flying through the air. Yeah, flying through the woods. Yeah. Sort of like the recap at the very beginning of the second film.
00:37:48
Speaker
the At this point, a lot of their gear gets stolen in those last six weeks, and so they had to now start taking turns sleeping in the cabin so nothing would get stolen. That's where we get the lore that they all slept in the cabin, because they actually did, but they would trade off. Smaller crew at the very end. Yes, the skeleton crew would. Just watching their stuff, yeah. And it got so bad at one point. This is my final note before we get the box office on the first one, at least, is that at one point, Sam Raimi was awake for 52 hours straight and he finally fell asleep to take a nap on set and he was comatose like nobody could wake him up for like hours. I just stayed up for 41 hours recently driving from Dallas to here in New Jersey where I'm at now.
00:38:33
Speaker
I could not imagine another 10 hours. much less I was not supposed to operate a motor vehicle after yeah that long without sleep, but glad you made it safe. You know, Jesus took the wheel track.
00:38:45
Speaker
Um, so yeah, there's somehow any other notes from the actual shoot before we talk about release for that. No, I think we had at least all the high points. It's hard. It really highlighted just how cursed the shoot was and how unlikely.
00:39:00
Speaker
it just i love to see the hustle. I love to see the hustle too, right? To see where they are now and know that's how they had to make it come about. Yeah. It's... a It's just crazy to think that these Midwestern kids who are, you know, in their 20s just go out in the woods with 85 grand and just shoot shit.
00:39:23
Speaker
um Josh Becker's journal is so great. ah there's a There's so much written about these movies, Trav, that, like, you know, we have to just distill it into the highlights. But ah I'll just read one thing he said.
00:39:35
Speaker
This is the first night there. I don't have any idea as to what time it is. I've gotten twice as much sleep as anyone here. I awoke today to dinner being made, spaghetti that was okay. Then dope smoking and beer drinking wiped me out in a few hours and I was back to sleep.
00:39:49
Speaker
When I awoke this last time, I found Sam and Tom still up working on the actual Book of the Dead. Sam was having a rubber cast of his palm made to use on one of the pages of the human skin. And ah he says, it's a strange grouping it together of people. I'll wait to see how everyone functions as a team. And he goes on to like talk about how difficult the shoot is and how he's pissed he's being left at the cabin or the the rental house to clean up shit and stuff.
00:40:12
Speaker
um Okay, so then they production shuts down for a long time because now they have to go back and raise more money. um ninety They had 85 grand.
00:40:23
Speaker
they had They had to raise... Do you know the final budget on this, Trev? It was like $350,000, I think. Yeah, $350,000 to $375,000. They almost had to raise another $300,000 after that. And the only way they were able to do it was crazy-ass 20% interest rates on people's returns. Bruce Campbell convinced his dad to put a loan against his house.
00:40:45
Speaker
oh Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah. ah But they're able to do it. um The editor on the film's assistant was Joel Cohen, a young Joel Cohen, which then forms a relationship between the Rameys and the Coens later on, which is pretty cool. Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
In a funny little anecdote, ah right before their premiere in Detroit at the Redford Theater, October 15th, 1981, they're still blowing the 16 millimeter up film into a 35 millimeter, and they need a way to get the film that's being developed in New York over to Detroit in time. And so they, Sam Raimi calls Joel Cohen is like, Hey, don't you have a brother that's still in New York? He said, yeah. He's like, okay, can you please have him fly the film over to Detroit? And Joel's response was something like, yeah, he's got nothing else to do, man. He's like an accountant for Macy's. He's got nothing else to do. ah He's, he, he can make sure he's this little errand boy. they ah end up being two of the best filmmakers of all time. That's amazing. um
00:41:47
Speaker
Did you hear how it went at that premiere, the local premiere in their hometown? No, no. It's a hit, but two things happen that they don't expect.
00:41:58
Speaker
One is that people are laughing. People are laughing at things. And again, and compared it to Evil Dead 2, it is not nearly much as of a comedy, but there is a lot of outlandish excess, a lot of blood gushing everywhere and head decapitating and flying across the What they did for the audio too. I don't know if they had a Foley artist or if they were just doing this themselves. You know who the Foley was? It was Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.
00:42:23
Speaker
Well, that makes sense because it's like, it's straight Looney Tunes sound effects. So even though it's a fairly serious film, I think that's where some of the comedy comes in from hearing like the whoop or and like noises like that as they're like slipping and falling. And, yeah you know, was so over the top that it it does kind of,
00:42:42
Speaker
cast a comedic light over what I think they were trying to make a slightly more serious horror film. Well, what Sam, you know, I love this about Sam Raimi because his, his ethos, his philosophy of filmmaking is this, and it's so different than many other filmmakers. A lot of the film was like, I have something personal I want to say, or I'm trying to say something political.
00:43:00
Speaker
He wants to entertain. He's going to do whatever it is that's going to entertain the audiences the most. He wants to make a magic show. And so they show this film at this point is titled book of the dead is what it's still titled.
00:43:12
Speaker
And i think he really leaned into, okay, people are laughing, which is why he leaned so heavily into that in the second movie. But the other thing which we can get into later or now that they didn't expect to happen was because of how Sam Raimi shoots and everything is so tight.
00:43:28
Speaker
And again, the, um, the actress, Ellen San Weiss had no idea who played Cheryl ah Williams, ashes, sister had no idea that she signed up for basically what was a tree rape scene.
00:43:42
Speaker
Um, yeah, the scene that has aged the worst by far, the filmmakers have have all agreed that they should not have done it, that it was, they went too far. They weren't really thinking, They kind of doubled down in the second film, though. this Those trees are getting a little frisky in that one as well with Bobby Joe. The difference, though, Trav, is that it's not it's more alluded to than anything. and The first one, it's you you are watching this from the POV of the tree yeah as it slides up her skirt, and she's, like, moaning in a weird way. It just... it it
00:44:15
Speaker
It begs and asks and says a lot of weird questions and statements that I think I think they're just they were kids trying to do something shocking. But it was, you know, I would think I would say it in pretty poor taste. And clearly Ellen did not understand what she signed up for because the the Vine stuff was all filmed reversed. So she's being filmed with vines being pulled off of her. That makes sense. Yeah. And after the screening, she was just livid with them. Her parents were livid. And um Sam goes on to say that that was a pretty that was a telling time in his career. yeah And yes, they they allude to it again in the second. And even in the Evil Dead 2013 reboot, whatever you want to call it.
00:44:54
Speaker
But it's much less sexual. It's more of like it just a parasitic infestation. They don't go back to the well um the same way, i would say. But um anyways, as as much of a raucous good time that everybody has, nobody wants to distribute it. Nobody wants to touch this movie because it's so out there.
00:45:12
Speaker
um They start i don't i want panicking, but they're they're they're doing whatever they can to get this movie to be seen by anybody. Mm hmm. A saving grace and a 74-year-old film sales agent named Irvin Shapiro walks into their life. And he pretty much is the reason that we now even have this movie has gone on to do what it does because this guy repped Night of Living Dead.
00:45:39
Speaker
He's a co-founder of the Cannes Film Festival. um But most importantly, he understands international sales and distribution in a way that I think the boys did not.
00:45:50
Speaker
But even more importantly than that is probably that he's also at the same time working on Creepshow with your boy Stephen King. Yep. Yep. And so that comes into play a little bit later. But what happens first is that Shapiro, the first thing he says is you got to rename it. All right. Nobody wants to read anything. Book of the Dead. No, no books. Let's call it a thousand and one percent dead. And the guys are like, no, that sounds dumb. He said, OK, what about Evil Dead? And they said, eh, OK.
00:46:19
Speaker
He starts selling it, not for parts, but like selling bits and pieces of distribution all over the world. So Scotland, you know, Brazil, France, like he is just in a really odd way.
00:46:35
Speaker
Divvying up the rights to this movie in international distribution, which will make for a huge copyright headache later on. But what it allows the kids to do is that each time they get a new agreement, they now have leverage.
00:46:49
Speaker
and proof of success to then up the deal for somebody else later down the line. Um, but then it screens out a competition in Cannes, which is when Stephen King finally sees it. And then I think, you know, what happens here. Yeah. Well, yeah. King sees the film. And again, this is pretty early King, but he had a meteoric rise with Carrie, which he released in the seventies. he's been on the scene for like seven, eight years at this point.
00:47:14
Speaker
Um, and he sees it and he speaks extremely highly of it. Um, I think at the time there was like a, I forget the publication, he was interviewed for like five favorite horror films, top of his mind. And he includes this film, the evil dead on his short list of like what he's watching and what he'd recommend, which kind of, you know, boost it to the stratosphere with picking up more momentum and distribution, especially here in the United States. Exactly. New line. It is probably the reason new line even decided to even look at this. Um,
00:47:48
Speaker
But by the way, before I go any further, i should I do want to give a shout out to three podcasts and two sources that were really helpful, at least putting together some of my research. Podcasts are What Went Wrong, um The Evolution of Horror, and then Blank Check.
00:48:03
Speaker
They were just great summaries of I'm i'm taking bits and pieces of of things that they said, but I also looked through Josh Becker's journal as well as excerpts of ah if if chins could kill ah Bruce Campbell's book. that That's awesome. Yeah, there's just like so much literature out there on this stuff, but I just want to highlight those five pieces. So, yeah, they get New Line Cinema's attention.
00:48:27
Speaker
um It gets an X rating and then subsequently an NC 17 rating. It's banned in the UK. It's considered one of the have you heard of the term video nasty, which is like a UK term? ah It basically means movies that are so offensive and schlocky that they don't get theatrical releases, but then they're huge on video.
00:48:49
Speaker
um And Evil Dead became a a video nasty because oddly enough, all of these sales that they're doing one of the agreements was that they are releasing it in video at the same time. It's like an early pre-streaming model thing they're doing because they're so concerned about not their money back. Like, no, you need to buy the video rights too right now, please. You know, 60 grand here, 60 grand there.
00:49:09
Speaker
um It finally does premiere. Like, Trav, if we were doing our Letterboxd list, we would actually consider Evil Dead a 1983 picture because it's officially released in the US for more people to see it in April 1983. It's wider release.
00:49:24
Speaker
wideer release ah It doesn't do as well in the US. It does this internationally. it only makes 2.4 million in the US, but does 29 around there. It's hard to tally up all of the different places they get distribution, but ah ends up doing about 30 million, which is just insane. right yeah all the in yeah All the investors make their money back 5X. And to this day, some of those same people still get six-figure checks in the mail um because they re-release these movies all the time. Mm-hmm.
00:49:54
Speaker
And Bruce Campbell goes on to say that it took six years for them to break even um because of all the like the 20% interest rates and stuff like that. um But yeah, it it it's becomes their calling card. And um and obviously, as we know, they they dip back into the well a few years later. Yeah.
00:50:13
Speaker
Well, again, they they make this film. After this, they make this film Crime Wave, which I have not seen with the Coens, and it doesn't do as well. um But you know we don't have nearly as many notes for Evil Dead 2 other than you know Stephen King again heard that they were shopping around a script for a sequel.
00:50:32
Speaker
And when he found out, he was the one who puts them in touch with their producer, which you could touch on and kind of makes the connection to help get them funding to make The Evil Dead 2. So Stephen King for both films, I think, was very instrumental in this franchise.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah, thankful to him. um You know, Sam's feeling a little bruised because that movie didn't go well. um But they they had been wanting to make a medieval sequel for a long time um that's based in the 1300 AD. Because if you remember, they they mentioned that, I think, in the first movie, that the book came into the first. Yeah, they they definitely touched on it more heavily in the second film. And as we know now you get Army of Darkness, which is that vision fully realized. But at some point, they dial it back to...
00:51:22
Speaker
you know, going going back to the cabin, in the cabin yeah which is again, for Canon, it's kind of funny. Cause I, I've seen Raimi make comments that it is like a direct sequel, but it is heavily retconned.
00:51:34
Speaker
So from the first film, especially with like, you know, we'll, we'll talk about cast cast. briefly here after this, but besides Bruce Campbell, they don't return to the cast as far as characters they're portraying. It's just Ash and his girlfriend, Linda, in the second film. They get rid of all the other friends.
00:51:52
Speaker
yeahp but Yeah, so the the producer that you're talking about, Stephen King, is Dino De Laurentiis, which is a very famous Italian film ah producer who is known for being a big character and making some shitty movies, making some high art movies and making some blockbusters, everything in between. He just wants to make movies and, and really did take chances on a lot of people.
00:52:12
Speaker
um David Lynch, ah Michael Mann. ah But one of his notes was like, no, I'm not giving you a bunch of money to make a medieval thing. Like do what you did last time. Just better. They didn't just do better. They did bigger. They, they wanted $4 million. Dino gave him 3.6, which is a pretty good deal. Yeah. And 10 X what their budget was for the right first film.
00:52:35
Speaker
And so ah it's ah it's Sam and his buddy Scott Spiegel, who one of his childhood friends, they they they write the script. So because of how they divvied up the rights for the first film, Trav, they had they did not have the rights to their own film to use previous footage to explain the recap of what happened previously. And so they had to reshoot the first seven minutes of Evil Dead 2 is basically their way of condensing the most important elements of that movie to retell what's happened to catch us up. Because if you if you start the movie right when the entity hits him in the chest and he's spinning,
00:53:17
Speaker
m that's pretty much right where Evil Dead 1 ends. Yep. Which is funny because if in in Sam Raimi's headcanon before Evil Dead 2, in his headcanon, Ash dies.
00:53:29
Speaker
Ash is dead at the end of Evil Dead 1. But now he's like, you know, actually, he's alive. Spins through the air. So Bruce Campbell goes to great lengths to explain this. He's like, I know it's not too clear. We could have done it better, but we didn't have access the footage. Just know that those first seven minutes is just our way of condensing what happened.
00:53:47
Speaker
before him. What's funny is that, I mean, was the last time you saw Army of Darkness, Trav? ah A year ago? Two years I assume that's going to be our next one we do, right? Yes. Next week. yeah So, the ending of Evil Dead 2 is inconsistent with the beginning of Army of Darkness. Yes. He ends Evil Dead 2 everyone like bowing down to him, but they retcon Army of Darkness to where he's a slave because They did again did not have the rights to Evil Dead 2 because it was Universal Pictures versus Renaissance Pictures.
00:54:22
Speaker
And they needed them to start at the bottom instead of yeah you know whatever. So continuity is not, again, a huge important part of this whole thing. And it's also why you know it's one of the franchises where a lot of people say, you know you should go watch every movie. But if you have to, it's fine just jumping in with the Evil Dead 2. You're not really missing a thing. Oh, yeah, you could start evil. The two you won't miss a thing. I think, know, I think if you're a horror fan, you should see the evil dead one. But if you're short on time or whatever, um again, like you said, not as many production notes in evil that to accept that they ah they shot in North Carolina several hours away from Dino De Laurentiis in the production. So they could not visit set easily, which i thought was funny. So they could do whatever the hell they wanted. um
00:55:05
Speaker
Also, kind of like hearkening back to their younger days, Sam, in the same way Sam would kind of pick on Bruce Campbell in his own way, he would also do it his younger brother, Ted Raimi.
00:55:16
Speaker
So he hired him to be the possessed Henrietta in this. yeah And initially it was because he's skinny and the and the possessed person was going to be skinny. But then at the last second, he's like, no, we're going to add in pounds and pounds of layered fat, which was apparently a huge pain for Ted. And like he's sweating all the time and stuff like that.
00:55:35
Speaker
ah Edgar Wright is on record saying something like, you know, he's one of the filmmakers heavily influenced by ah by Ramey saying something along the lines of, you know,
00:55:50
Speaker
in most horror films, the people are picked off like one by one. In this case, Bruce Campbell is picked on. Like he's just kind of bullied the whole time.
00:56:01
Speaker
um And so, yeah, bigger, better budget and what they do with it. We'll, we'll talk about what we liked about it. um Again, box office wasn't crazy good. I think what? 22 million not 5.9 million. wow.
00:56:18
Speaker
So didn't, didn't do that well, but again, kills it, kills it in the, uh, in the video rentals and and purchases and stuff. Um, But yeah, that's that's what I got for trying to keep it on, you know, not going too crazy with time here. But ah if you want to look up stuff, anybody listening, there's a treasure trove of information. All right. So let's briefly talk cast and crew.
Casting and Filmmaking Style
00:56:43
Speaker
I mean, crew, we've we've mainly covered here. um Casting, it's just worth, I think, giving a shout out to, you know, Bruce Campbell, obviously,
00:56:52
Speaker
the star and has gone on to a great career after this. The rest of the cast, and we were kind of dancing around this, but these were some of their like childhood friends. This was not A-list talent by any means. um It was kind of people they could find on the cheap to like go face pretty rough conditions and go film a movie here.
00:57:10
Speaker
So Ellen Sandwies plays his sister Cheryl in the first film. Richard de Manicor plays his friend Scott. Betsy Baker plays his girlfriend Linda. And Teresa Tilly plays their friend Shelly.
00:57:23
Speaker
That's really the main... This is Evil Dead 1. Yep, this is the Evil Dead. All four of them, nothing really of note after this. i think one of them or a couple of them were also appeared in the Ash versus Evil Dead TV show. The TV show. okay Yeah. yeah um Yeah. A quick note about two of them, though. Richard DeManticore and Teresa Tilly were both in SAG and.
00:57:49
Speaker
you're not allowed to be in a non-SAG production. So what you do in those cases, you use a pseudonym. And so Richard D'Amantecourt used Hal Delrick and Teresa Tilly used Sarah York because they had never thought anybody would see this movie. They were not too worried about it. But then SAG found out and they were both fined and suspended for like six months. Which is just funny to me. The sacrifices.
00:58:12
Speaker
That's funny. and then so Evil Dead 2, they again, they get rid of the the friends and a sister, but they bring back ah kind of bring back Linda. But this time she's played by Denise Bixler, the new ad new actress.
00:58:26
Speaker
um they They have a few other roles as well with the daughter of the paleontologist. Annie is played by Sarah Barry, her boyfriend. ah Richard Dommier plays her boyfriend, Ed. And you have Dan Hicks, not the famous sportscaster for NBC, but um actor who who's actually had a decent acting career. He plays kind of the hillbilly Jake and his girlfriend, Cassie DePavia, plays Bobby Joe.
00:58:51
Speaker
Then again, there's not huge filmographies after this. Dan Hicks, probably the most notable outside of Bruce Campbell. Well, no, I was just going to say that there's there's a revolving door element for Bobby Joe's character because. ah So have you heard this, Trav, that during this time after Evil Dead one,
00:59:12
Speaker
Ramey and some of his buddies moved to LA. And at the time, this is who the housemates were. They all just happened to meet through various odds and ends. Sam Ramey, Joel and Ethan Coen, Francis McDormand, Holly Hunter, and Kathy Bates. I have heard that. All lived in the same house. we We brought that up when we were doing... um our our our own film club with our guys, our burglars.
00:59:40
Speaker
You're right. And we were watching some Coen brother films. Yeah. So it's incredible to think that all of them, like you're saying, they're so interconnected at the start of their careers and all living together. I bring it up because Sam had put forth Holly Hunter to star as Bobby Joe and Robert Tapper was like, no, we need a babe.
01:00:01
Speaker
I'm like, dude, have you not seen Holly Hunter? She's a smoke show. ah Turns out fine because she, you know, after Crime Wave bombs, they go on to make Evil Dead 2.
01:00:13
Speaker
Holly Hunter and the Coens go on to make Race in Arizona. And both of those movies just change everything. Yeah. with Those guys. So, yeah. There was Oh Brother Where Art Thou as well with the Coens. So she's worked with them a few times. Since them all living together. Frances McDormand obviously worked with Coens multiple times. Isn't she married to one of the Coen brothers? Frances? Yeah, she's married to Joel.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, okay. um That's mainly what I wanted to talk about with cast. Trying to think. The only other production note, these are both like a tight, almost almost exactly 85 minutes, both films.
01:00:48
Speaker
And I love this era of not trying to have too much blow. Again, i I do like some degrees of elevated horror, which usually leads to you need a longer narrative.
01:00:59
Speaker
But like you said, with Raimi's intention being solely to entertain, right? Not weigh on you too heavily. He's really good at making these tight run times.
01:01:10
Speaker
And it's fun. it lends itself to the film where like a two hour Evil Dead 2 would have probably dragged on a bit too long. Yeah, I mean, he's a showman, man. Got his oversized suit on. He still wears a suit to each production he goes to. And his answer for why he does that is, well, I just want people to know that I i respect i respect the art form. I respect the process of filmmaking. this and It's not because I think it's more important. It's just ah you know I respect it.
01:01:35
Speaker
don't know why I did New York exit there. Yeah, was about to say. I'm a Michigan guy. Let's get to our awards then. Let's start with our scurometer, but for, I guess we'll do the first film and do that independently and then go right into the second.
01:01:51
Speaker
Sure. where would you put out of 10, the evil dead, dead, two, one, five. Okay.
01:02:01
Speaker
All right. i think that's right. Four and a half. right That feels right. so tra It is gory. If gore alone made horror scary, like it it'd weigh a lot heavier there. But um there's there's not a ton of very intense moments. There's some creepy... I mean, a lot of running through the woods, branches snapping...
01:02:22
Speaker
It is scary to a degree, but it wasn't ah as frightening as some of the other horror films we've covered. I think if you're younger catching this at like a blockbuster run and you're not expecting it, it can kind of haunt you. But yeah, if you see this later in life, I don't think it's going to you. um All right.
01:02:40
Speaker
Evil Dead 2. Evil Dead 2. All right. Three, two, one, two. Four. Wow. You're still up at four for Evil Dead 2. I thought the makeup and jump scares were enough to at least get me a little, it was little, you know, it's not as scary as the first one. i was, to consider me titillated Trav. Yeah. Especially the head, the headless girlfriend was just very uncanny when she's dancing. Yeah. That dance number. Yeah. Yeah. That, that is, we say it a lot, but even though these are cheap practical effects,
01:03:20
Speaker
Like you said, a lot of like claymation. and it It feels scarier than even something like the Uncanny Valley stuff that's forced and CGI-driven today.
01:03:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Because there's something tactile about it that is real. yeah And we didn't mention this in production notes, but when I said production shut down for a bit, they didn't just go into post-production. They had to do a lot of pickups at the Tapert Family Farm and other places. But one thing that took forever was a lot of the basement scenes because there was no basement at the cabin, obviously.
01:03:53
Speaker
But also that stop motion stuff where they're dissolving at the end, the meltdown stuff, that like took months of work that Tom Sullivan had to do. And I just thought that in both first and the second one, yeah, the stop motion puppetry, it is effective. I mean, you can tell when it happens, but I'll take that over CG any day of the week. Yeah, I think that feels right. Again,
01:04:19
Speaker
the The scariness gets dialed down in the second one is they lean more into comedy horror, but it's still scarier than like, I think we had like Final Destination Bloodlines, like a two or something like that. It's a little scarier than that.
01:04:31
Speaker
If Evil Dead 1 is 4.5, that puts it, do you say it's, yeah is it above or below a Long Walk?
01:04:43
Speaker
Oh man. I'd probably say below Long Walk. I would agree. I would agree. So we'll put it below long walk. And then for a three for Evil Dead two, we also gave Frankenstein, him.
01:05:03
Speaker
Frankenstein and him were both three as well.
01:05:08
Speaker
feel like it's scarier than Frankenstein. I agree. um Maybe sandwich between them. Him e was a little bit scary. I swear it is.
01:05:20
Speaker
So now officially, officially Trav, we can say that the evil dead is our 22nd scariest film and evil dead two is our 29th out of the 32 films you've covered. all right. I'm not including nightmare for Christmas, which is off the charts from your daughter's rating. We'll never be beat. 65 or something. It's crazy.
01:05:42
Speaker
ah is The younger you are, hopefully I don't look back and regret showing them that film at the age of four, but um but they love it. They're excited for Halloween again this year. Talk about talk about scary stop motion, man.
01:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. i Honestly, Linda dancing in Evil Dead 2 was reminiscent of like early Tim Burton films, yeah specifically The Nightmare Before Christmas.
01:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. um All right. Well, highlights. And all these awards, we're going to kind of just seamlessly bounce between both films. Yeah, we're not going to be clinical about an award for one or and two, just whatever comes our mind. what high When you hear the word highlights, Trav, which movie do you gravitate towards and what scene or moment do you think about? It's Evil Dead 2. It has to be. And for me, it has to be Ash's first confrontation with his hand. Yes, that's what too. When his turns and it's just slapstick. Again, the inspiration from him Three Stooges. A lot of Three Stooges stuff. Hunting down his own hand, his hand dragging him around.
01:06:46
Speaker
it They give it sound effects. You can hear it like... wait Yeah, exactly. you You hear the slight cry and groan of his hand and it's it's the comedy aspect. It's some of the best parts of the comedy there.
01:06:58
Speaker
How about when he flips his own body over, like in a somersault? he like It was a strong hand. And that's actually him. like That's actually Bruce Campbell doing that.
01:07:10
Speaker
Yeah, the idle hand stuff is just genius. But also the camera work for that too. I mean, there's parts where, i mean, this happens right before he's talking in the mirror, right? When his other self is choking him.
01:07:25
Speaker
yeah And then it's a close up on the hands and then it zooms out and he's choking himself. Yeah, his own hands are off I just think it's a great depiction of going insane in a scary cabin. um I'll add to your fighting the hand thing um because this all happens in the first 30 minutes of Evil Dead 2.
01:07:42
Speaker
And it's when all of the inanimate objects are laughing at him. Yes. And then he starts laughing with them and he has this crazed look in his eye and he starts dancing with the lamp.
01:07:53
Speaker
It's just so great. I think if you if you, ah you know, split up the the second movie into three parts, I feel like it goes from horror to comedy to bloody action movie. And it's seamless in that way. It's like it starts off pretty straight. It gets into zany Looney Tunes shit and then it gets into a pretty cool action film as he starts just, yeah you know, chainsawing everybody. To that point, like almost half the film of Evil Dead 2 is just Bruce Campbell doing it by himself, right? like the The other characters don't show up until over halfway through the film or roughly halfway through the film. Even when they do, they don't really make an impact. yeah you know They're just kind of cannon fodder at that point. So a lot of the best parts are just with Bruce Campbell alone in the cabin.
01:08:41
Speaker
um I also love when he his fine he's in his final form, if you will, when he has he ah attaches the chainsaw to his his stump. He's got all these straps on. and then there's these saws off the shotgun.
01:08:57
Speaker
yeah saws off the shotgun, and has that in one hand, has the chainsaw attached to his other stump. that's the iconic That's the iconic figure of Ash, which is you know held up so well, like you said, in Comic-Con and everything else.
01:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, oh and spawned not just more movies, but comics and novels and, you know, video games. It's just it starts there, I think. um I want to pick something from Evil Dead. I know we're not trying to do this for every category, of every award, but yeah.
01:09:28
Speaker
Evil Dead one, there's a moment. I just think the camera work is my highlight for that movie. It's so inventive. The fact that half of the production was shot without their DP and it still all kind of cuts together in this weird way. um It's it's the POV of the entity as it's shooting through the forest. Yes. It's also when things are wrong, he's not afraid to do these Dutch angles or just go completely upside down on ashes, back of his head near the fireplace and then kind of rotates to see the front of him.
01:10:01
Speaker
it just felt like somebody who is shoot, you know, what went away from formal training and was just like, Oh, what can I do with this camera? Nobody's telling me what to do. I'm going to do whatever I want with it and breaks all these rules and ends up making new rules for future filmmakers.
01:10:17
Speaker
Yeah. You know, for, uh, I got to get one real estate plug per episode roughly. And so for a lot of my listings, we'll, we'll take photos, but we also shoot video and real estate videography, you know, this is not Hollywood cinematography. And so I do embrace like a lot of my, I use the same videographer, but like when he gets a little crazy with it. Like, yeah like these slow sweeping shots or zoom in on certain pictures and, you do any the more entertaining It's the more entertaining videography. These are like one minute long features of these homes, but you got to get a little wild with it. i like about it and It's a little too but boring. It feels like every other real estate video you've ever seen. I can't wait to see your post-Raymie series, your post-Evil Dead ah film filmography area filmmaking style after this, Trab. You're going to...
01:11:06
Speaker
You're going to have Anna attach the phone to like a board and just run through the house. should start, you know, I'm paying for it. I'm essentially like the producer here. I should start just showing up with him and just like call out shot by shot what I want him to get of this.
01:11:20
Speaker
And then i'll I'll let you see the Travis cut for for my next listing. Please, please. Okay. Yeah, I agree. Videography, cinematography in the first film, incredible. Knowing what he went through to do it, but even without knowing that, it's it's very entertaining. that I agree.
01:11:37
Speaker
um Okay. Well, let's move into our Ben Gardner Award for Best Jump Scare. It's Jump Scare, baby. I didn't really have one for the first film. If you have one, you know feel free to weigh in. Oh, I do. In the second. Yeah.
01:11:52
Speaker
I had ah I had two for the first film, actually. The first one was. a You're this is gonna be embarrassing because I don't know how this still got me, because my captions I was watching with captions on was delayed. And so Ash or somebody is in the basement looking around for something. And then the caption says, boo, like who's saying boo?
01:12:13
Speaker
And then Scotty. like goes boo to ash and i i fucking jumped i was like holy shit ah scottie came out of nowhere and so that i had to write that down as a jump scare i don't know if you remember that part i was yeah i do i do so kind of got me but the one that really got me in the first one was ah linda's hand out of the ground to grab ash's leg you remember that yeah i did not expect that i didn't see it coming and that that got me um i like those again not huge jump scares not the scariest film but in the second one again going back to that linda dancing scene she disappears from view and it's a more traditional jump scare right you're just waiting for in silence of like she's gonna pop up somewhere in shirt sure enough she does dance with me dance with i think that's the winner because that was mine for ed2 and
01:13:05
Speaker
That one i I did. I did jolt. I spilled some ah Greek yogurt and granola. You're always eating, man. Always snacking. I'm a growing boy. um Do you want to do, i know we mentioned like deep cuts or there's not a natural place to fit it, but you want to talk about those now? You want to go in dark? I consider it an award. It's like our favorite deep cuts. So, uh,
01:13:30
Speaker
I'll leave my favorite one for last, but the first one is um there's that 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, which the crew calls the classic. That is actually featured in almost every single one of Rami's movies. Really? It started with the Evil Dead. Oh, that's cool. It's his own car.
Humor and Meta References
01:13:47
Speaker
It's like his his own car. He loves it.
01:13:49
Speaker
And he just kept it around all these years. That's great. I only have one. So hopefully this isn't your favorite or if it is, you can echo it. But in Evil Dead 2, he traps his hand under a bucket um and he's looking for a weight to place on it. And just the gag where you can read the title of the book is a Farewell to Arms. And that gets to me every time. I've seen the movie multiple times. They hang on it for like an extra second just in case you didn't see it. It's not too heavy handed.
01:14:18
Speaker
Pardon the fun, but yeah, it's like a two second shot of just the title of the book. I mean, that's where you get the Looney Tunes. That's like shortly after he's literally shooting at his hand in mouse holes like Tom and Jerry. It's giggling back at him while it scurries through the wall, flips him off.
01:14:39
Speaker
um Another one I liked was ah in the credits, you'll see some people listed as fake shimps. Yes. That term is from the Three Stooges for when they had somebody in in their um in their original cast of the Three Stooges. One of them died, I believe, ah before they replaced him with somebody else. and or there somebody had to leave. But I remember one of the three original Stooges did die before they replaced him. They lost a Stooge. They lost a Stooge. And they...
01:15:08
Speaker
In order to film around that, they would put in stand-ins that looked like him. So you only see them from the back. So in those final six weeks, when they were just the only true actor they had was Bruce, well, they still had to have you know, behind the headshots of other actors. So they would use local townspeople, but as, as well as his little brother, as well as the Ted Raimi was, was the main fake shamp. Yeah.
01:15:34
Speaker
Yes. So fake shamp is just a term I thought was great, but my favorite deep cut, uh, and it goes between both of these movies, which is pretty cool. So i don't know if you noticed, but in evil dead one, there, when he goes in the basement, there's ah that Hills have eyes poster. Yes, I did. OK, so that's directed by Wes Craven, right?
01:15:53
Speaker
So that's in 1980. I guess you want to call it three when it comes out in the US. 1984, Nightmare on Elm Street comes out by Wes Craven. And to return the nod to Ramey, he has one of his characters watching the Evil Dead in his movie.
01:16:13
Speaker
I forgot about that. And then to close the loop again, Ramey puts kru Kruger's glove in the basement, evil dead too.
01:16:25
Speaker
It's kind of hard to see, but as he's walking in, you see it hanging above the doorway. And so these like these trading acknowledgements is, uh, I thought super cool. Yeah. Oh, those are all good. Yeah. Fun, fun stuff. Um, all right. Our cantaloupe award.
01:16:41
Speaker
Cringiest scene. this This one I have clearly from the first film. Yeah, i the i the the two I had were both from the first film. When that pencil gets stabbed into Linda's ankle, dude that is extremely graphic. And knowing how low budget they were, kudos to them because it looks very realistic. And that shot hangs on it long enough where it's it makes me a little squeamish.
01:17:04
Speaker
digging around in there. yeah It stabs. And then they, they jostle it in the hole a little bit. They get some more. I don't know why, but I feel like I could feel that like everybody knows what a pencil feels like to, you know, get stabbed or, or poked by a classmate or something. Well, I don't know how many people have been stabbed with a pencil, but poked. Yes.
01:17:25
Speaker
Yeah. That was, that probably is the winner. Uh, let's give a runner up though, to the eye gouging of Scotty at the end of, a at the end of dead porn when it's just raspberry mush in those eye sockets.
01:17:39
Speaker
We've brought up eye gouging a few times in other films. I know that um really stands apart for you and I agree. It's maybe a- Are you not an eye gouging? I've seen so many eye gouges now in film that it doesn't move the needle quite as much where like an ankle stabbing, like that's that's novel. you don't You don't see that too often.
01:18:00
Speaker
Yeah, I guess you're right. I think you're desensitized to it because of your prominent brow. You're pretty protected from getting your eyes It'd be hard to get to my eyes. Yeah, you've got to have some pretty long thumbs to get back there underneath my protruding brow. The creepy notion, long thumbs.
01:18:18
Speaker
the neck There's long legs. No, yeah, the next one's going to be long thumbs. Oh, all right. Well, let's ah let's talk about a few deaths. Cannon fodder. This one's a little tougher for me. It was hard for me too, despite all these deaths. These main characters. I mean, no one... It's tough for me to look at a single death and be like...
01:18:41
Speaker
I guess a few of them are just adding body count, especially in the first... Well, both films, they they added people just to die, but everyone had a decent like speaking role. None of them felt like it was completely throwaway. Probably Bobbie Jo.
01:18:53
Speaker
She's just the hot girl that throw in there to get killed. I initially picked that for Cannon Fodder, but... I removed it for two reasons. One, you don't technically see her die. Yeah. And and then secondly, I think she's perfect for the don't go in there award. So I took her off that. Okay. um I guess we could say Ed, the boyfriend of Annie. Yeah.
01:19:15
Speaker
yeah just kind of like gets like hit by something and then all of a sudden he's a deadite, a pretty scary looking deadite. Yeah. he's But he's, he's first to go out of the, out of the new crew who show up at the cabin in the second film. Yeah, but it's funny that ah such a a gore fest that we have trouble finding cannon fodder because because of the small cast, I guess. Each one of them is pretty significant. His his face was great.
01:19:41
Speaker
Yeah. And then best death, I would just have to say, because she dies twice, has to be Linda for me. You're going to see her die in... the first film and the second film, especially the second film when her decapitated head is clamped between, it's in the workshop and he has it clamped and just chainsaws through the middle. I mean, technically she dies three times if you include Army Darkness because they recap it again. That's true. And more than that, if you include her human form dying and then her possessed dead form being killed again. can probably find a cannon fodder ward in there for like that. Yeah, through sheer numbers. Like she really goes through the ringer here.
01:20:19
Speaker
I I would say the head in the vice grip getting taken to town by a chainsaw is pretty iconic. and You don't even really see it. You see the silhouette of it and it's pretty effective.
01:20:31
Speaker
um Although I will say my favorite death is Jake in Evil Dead 2 getting pulled into the attic and just blood spurting everywhere out of the attic. have that in my notes. Yeah. That's so great. That's probably
Supernatural Rules and Character Decisions
01:20:46
Speaker
the most memorable. Yeah, just a just a wave of blood just spraying out when he gets pulled. Not to the attic, down into the cellar. Sorry, yes. and Henrietta pulls him on down.
01:20:54
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's his skeleton we he finds – at ash finds in the end because this has got overalls and it's just a skeleton member he's like he's running around if you wonder like did henry just like because henry didn't turn him she just killed him yeah it's a zombie question of do you are you trying to turn them or eat them in this case i think she just murdered the guy I think the Evil Dead plays it fast and loose with its rules within the universe with like, can you be turned before you die? Some people turn while they're still alive.
01:21:26
Speaker
Are you going to get turned? Are you just going to get killed? um I've never really made too much sense like gla briefley we can We can discuss this in Dole Knives. I have some questions. Okay. um All right. Shyamalan twist. I mean, maybe the fact that the chosen one that you see from the 1300s, you find out is Bruce Campbell getting sent back to the time portal at the end of Evil Dead 2.
01:21:50
Speaker
that's the That's the best I could find there for twist. That's probably the best in-universe one. I think the you know i think the best twist, if you get a little meta, take a step outside the box a bit, is that viewers in 1987 were fucking confused when Evil Dead 2 opens with Ash going back to the same cabin with a different girl. Her name's also Linda. So until they dispel those rumors of...
01:22:15
Speaker
or this myth of what the the heck was happening. I think a twist for them was like, oh, they're just recapping the first movie. Yeah. Because it's like, why did he go back? Why is he acting like he's surprised? what he was doing. He seeks out woman named Linda and he brings him back to this cabin. Sick son of a bitch. Yeah. He's got psychological issues and hangs up, hang up. Maybe his mom was named Linda, you know, it's the mommy issues thing.
01:22:40
Speaker
um Don't go in there. You said you have one with Bobbie Jo? Yeah, Bobbie Jo, she gets scared by a hand. And so rather stay inside where people have weapons to protect her. She runs out into the woods, hits her head on a tree, and we never see her again.
01:22:58
Speaker
she She doesn't turn into a deadite. We don't even know if she dies or not, but she just hits her head on a tree and that's it. When Ed is outside later and he's running at that tree, there's like a second of recognition where he looks at the tree where i assume like Bobby Joe got taken to. So I don't know.
01:23:16
Speaker
if she was consumed, you know, I was going to save this for winners and losers, but this has to join our evil know hall of fame. i I put that in there. I'm how do you not think of this? We got Poltergeist, tree trying to eat the boy. We have a keeper where a tree consumes, as far as we could tell, one of the characters there. And so that's what I was thinking here as well, is maybe was just consumed by the tree. Yeah.
01:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. But I just still thought it was a so horrible idea. she should have ran out of there. Did you have anything else? No, I mean... The first film when they decide to go down and explore the cellar.
01:23:51
Speaker
You know, it probably wouldn't be me. I probably wouldn't be staying in that cabin to begin with. Like, I i like to rough it a bit. i go camping. But it had all the telltale signs of this is clearly a haunted cabin.
01:24:04
Speaker
Not going to read that book of the dead. Just start reading passages from it. Now, to be fair, to be fair they didn't read passages out of the book. They just played a tape. It's a lot easier just to sit there and play a tape and let it get spooky. yeah You're not really expecting demons to come out of nowhere. Yeah. All right. Best lines. I think some of my favorite quotes are from, are from the first film.
01:24:23
Speaker
um I mean, it it has to be, it has to be Ellen Sandwise for me saying killer. If you can love her boy to Ash, when he's trying to kill Linda.
01:24:37
Speaker
And i don't know. That's, i think that's the most iconic that stuck with me between these two films. Aside from groovy, I assume. Yeah. And his catchphrase. Um, one I had from evil dead is also one involving Linda. But do you remember when Linda's trying to do magic tricks with the cards with Shelly and she's trying to show off to, to Ash and she's like, Ash, look, I can guess this or that. he's like, yeah, yeah. Truly amazing. Linda like he keeps doing what he's doing. Very sarcastic. Just, yeah, whatever.
01:25:10
Speaker
And then from both movies, join us. I really like join us. Join us. Join us. Join us. I like, um I mean, Bruce Campbell, again, is acting carries a lot of these films. But um at the very end of the second film, he shoves the shotgun in Henrietta's mouth. Oh, yeah. Swallow this. Swallow this. I'll swallow your soul. I'll swallow your soul. Swallow this. Yeah. ah But yeah, I think groovy is the, that's the catchphrase. That's what he's known for. And it comes at the perfect time.
01:25:40
Speaker
You know, he just made this machine arm and he's all locked and loaded. and it's a quick zoom into his face. And a moment where they could have said something really serious or sinister, or it's just groovy, which is both funny and badass at the same time. Mm-hmm.
01:25:59
Speaker
All right, Dole Knives. All right, one I had was from Evil Dead 1. This had to be just, the they don't have a script supervisor, clearly. They didn't have the budget. They only had 13 people in the crew. but ah Cheryl is floating.
01:26:15
Speaker
She gets possessed for the first time and she's floating. And then she comes back down. And the first thing that it's either Shelly Linda, they say, did you see her eyes? Like nobody said, hey, did you see her floating there? Like, did you see her levitating up in the sky? but no, it's her eyes that they're a little worried about. i guess it's probably all the trauma they had from those class contacts.
01:26:40
Speaker
I like that. You know what I had the one it's a funny movie. And so again, I'm suspending a lot of my disbelief to allow it to make it work. But in the second film.
01:26:54
Speaker
The fact that Dan Hicks character with the horrible teeth has landed a girl like Bobby Joe. I just can't believe it. Like, I can't get over that. I'm like, this isn't realistic. Like, what is going on here? Look, Trav, we're both batting above our average here. So, you know, maybe we're not as bad as Dan Hicks, but we're not Brad Pitts either, Trav. So we should maybe hat tip to the Dan Hicks of the world. Thanks for clearing the way for us. Good for Jake.
01:27:24
Speaker
He must have great personality. he's He's not rich, I think we can safely say. so he must have a great He's secure. He's got a government job, it seems. His checks are cleared. um They don't have dental, I don't think, though.
01:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. um The other one I didn't get. And again, I think it just goes back to the either like the mischievous nature of the spirits or whatever. But it really is one of my favorite scenes is um when this the entity is chasing ash all throughout the cabin. And it's the first time we see this motion out inside the cabin. Usually that whooshing movements outside in the woods. Right.
01:28:03
Speaker
And
Set Construction and Continuity Issues
01:28:04
Speaker
up until that point, I kind of assumed in my head canon that it can it can pursue you up to the door, but once it gets to the door, unless it possesses a human that is outside to get inside, whatever, but then it goes through the door, and it's this great Looney Tunes-esque chase and stuff, but then it like can't find Ash for a second, and like looks to the left, looks to the right, and then just bails out of there.
01:28:28
Speaker
So if it can enter into the house at any time, why didn't you go back again? like a few minutes later. i didn't yeah i don't really understand the motives or- It's a good point. Again, the the rules of the entity and the undead are very unclear here. It is funny just the sheer amount of tree branches that were snapped or windows broken in or doors broken down between these two films. Like that cabin yeah really went through a beating and the the woods around it.
01:28:55
Speaker
Well, it's funny is that in Evil Dead 1, they signed a contract saying that they would not damage the cabin. They would leave it exactly the way it was. The only thing they would add to it is that they needed a fireplace. They added a fireplace.
01:29:07
Speaker
So anything that was broken, they like used camera trickery. Like when the tree goes through the glass pane, it's like they filmed that elsewhere or something like that. But for the second one, they filmed inside of a high school gym or ah or a Yeah, they they created sets inside of a high school gym. Whoa. Which I thought was fascinating.
01:29:27
Speaker
um But then that cabin burned down, the first one. And the only thing left remaining was the fireplace that they built. i I saw again, maybe this has been disputed, but after the first film had such a cult following, a lot of people were making their pilgrimage out to see the cabin.
01:29:43
Speaker
And I saw that the owners burned it down themselves because they were so like disgruntled with everyone coming on their land to just be like, you know, it's not that valuable of a cabin. and So they're just like, screw you guys, stay out of here. And they burned it down themselves.
01:29:56
Speaker
I mean, i guess that's one way to solve a problem. A lot of Dan Hicks out there. yeah um I think yeah we could fill Dull Knives in with like all the continuity stuff. I i don't really need to because it's yeah it's not a continuity-laden movie. But one thing I didn't understand was, so Professor Noby finds this book and he he arrives at the conclusion that this is ancient Sumerian text, um, that is contained of like their rituals and burial rituals and stuff like that.
01:30:33
Speaker
The, so the spirits that live in the woods, Is it just coincidence that he happened to be in a cabin where those spirits were in the woods? Or is it like the spirits are just everywhere in the world and when you call upon them, they arrive? I think it's more the latter. It's in the woods. the woods. I think it's more the latter. I mean, Henrietta's been down in the cellar the whole time too. I think it's just calling all the undead presence in the nearby vicinity to you. But it's not just the undead.
01:31:04
Speaker
it's it's like ancient demons that have yeah died and now we're being awoken. so Maybe they they are attracted to like dark areas, but they're just like everywhere. I don't know.
01:31:18
Speaker
It's good point too, because the spirit that's outside takes a metal bridge in the second film, a pretty girthy metal bridge, and bends it into nothing. Sorry there was no hanging dong in this one, Trap. But then we're we're to believe it can't just like knock down the cabin just right from the get-go, like that rickety wood cabin, and get to them.
01:31:37
Speaker
If we could do that to Steel Bridge, like what's it but's stopping it from just going straight to the cabin? Mischief. Mischief and and sadism. They want to see people suffer, I think.
01:31:48
Speaker
They're taking a page out of Hellraiser's book. Trying to figure out pain versus pleasure. Pleasure. All right, winners and losers? Yeah. I mean, my my big one was The Trees.
01:32:01
Speaker
Well, yeah. The filmmakers. um Adding to the poltergeist tree and the keeper tree, you've got the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, Ents, trees. but those are good trees.
01:32:12
Speaker
I know, but they do damage. I thought it was like, ah you do damage. i was thinking more evil trees. Okay, if it's evil trees, yeah. Poltergeist, keeper, and evil dead are like the ah a big three. um We haven't said this one in a while. Basements. Basements are back, baby. yeah We were doing dank...
01:32:33
Speaker
basements for a while and they kind of lost their, you know, we had, we hadn't mentioned them in a while. So back to basements. Yeah. Sellers even scarier than basements.
01:32:44
Speaker
What's the difference between a seller and a basements plus? Well, a lot of times, okay. So if you have a basement, usually means you have foundation and you have flooring underneath it.
01:32:55
Speaker
Where a cellar is usually, you know, the foundational walls go down beneath the main level, but you're going to have like dirt flooring. Like that is not a finished space. a lot of times the head height might be cramped.
01:33:06
Speaker
um There's not slab flooring or like a crawl space then directly underneath that as well with the floated flooring. How many how many sellers have you just put some plywood down and called to the basement so you can up your listing price?
01:33:20
Speaker
I mean, it's tough because usually you don't have You don't have the headspace and you don't want to just put plywood down on dirt because that's going to get wet over time. You know, a true floor, right? You need that off the soil because the groundwater is going to come
Special Effects and Safety Concerns
01:33:35
Speaker
What is a true floor, Travis?
01:33:37
Speaker
What's a true floor? I don't know. Something that will stand the test of a a few years time. You you could throw a blanket down over dirt and that's, that's not true floor in my opinion.
01:33:49
Speaker
That's a big floor. You could put a few sticks together and call it a house. I mean, at some point you get to, okay, there has to be a certain amount of carpentry and structure required here. Another winner I had was Kero syrup.
01:34:03
Speaker
Just lots of Kero syrup, ah which is a a brand of corn syrup that they used. Apparently they had the budget to use like real, you know, special effects blood mixture stuff, but...
01:34:18
Speaker
Bruce Campbell said, you guys can use that when it's your stuff. But when it comes to me and what's on my face, it better be caro syrup and coffee creamer and red dye like we did in the first one. Cause I'm not fucking up with that.
01:34:31
Speaker
So they still for his, for his scenes when it was blood on him, which is a lot of the movie yeahp care syrup. Any losers? Um, clear continuity and rights issues. Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:43
Speaker
Uh, Yeah, mean this is a it's a good it's a problem the whole franchise. pro i say problem with a lowercase p. and it It doesn't really bother me, but it is it is unique that you have this many movies and like none of them stringed together in a really like easy way. Yeah.
01:35:00
Speaker
We already called it out too, but tree rape scenes. Those of them not around. Not great. not Not a great hill to die on. Yeah.
01:35:12
Speaker
little shocking i think that's the other part was like for a movie that's otherwise pretty campy it just takes a turn like rape yeah can and should be in movies if it calls for it if it can be part of the plot or whatever you have tasteful nudity in campy horror films right 80s horror films a lot the already ones had a lot of that prerequisite and so it's almost like they wanted to just be like how are we going to get someone's top off here and going to be that scene yeah yeah Also, it's Ash's sister, which just, i don't know, makes it little more difficult. Another loser I had was Onset Safety. Onset, oh yeah just yeah, just with the production conditions, especially for the first film.
01:35:51
Speaker
I mean,
Bruce Campbell and Raimi's Collaboration
01:35:52
Speaker
you had a severely sprained ankle from Bruce, a gash leg from Richard Dim Manicor, sliced foot from Betsy Baker, scalp burns from Betsy Baker, ripped eardrum and hearing trauma from Bruce Campbell, and the entire cask of hypothermia.
01:36:04
Speaker
So, not... not ah Suffice to say that of the 13 crew members, there was no medic on the set.
01:36:17
Speaker
ah All right. I am very curious what your answer is here because I feel strongly about mine, but I'm not sure if we have the same one. For scream Scream Queen. Scream Queen. Yeah.
01:36:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:33
Speaker
So it's across the two films. I mean, it's really between two two people, I'm assuming. and that Probably. i think that's, yeah. Yeah, that's tough. um and I guess we don't do a countdown here. said i I think for me, I'm going to give credit to Bruce Campbell. Same. um because That's mine. Because it's incredible what Raimi did making this film.
01:36:59
Speaker
But I think you know he struck gold with having his friend just being such a dynamite personality to help help you carry it. And I think if it could have been just someone else, another friend he had, I don't think this film would have ever taken off. This franchise would have ever taken off this way.
01:37:15
Speaker
You're exactly right. i the The charisma and and like effort that he puts into both of these movies is off the charts. But not only that, I think he's a good stand-in for his for Sam's filmmaking crew. Because Bruce was not just an actor, he was a producer. He helped with the script.
01:37:38
Speaker
And I think he's a good stand-in for what Scott Spiegel and Robert Tapper and his brothers... like Sam Raimi's a genius, don't get me wrong, but he is heavily aided by those around him. yeah And I think Bruce represents that. He rest represents the everyman. And he's also like a really good people person like in these pitches for trying to get money to raise this stuff. Each town they went to, he kind of got the community involved. It was like, hey, can you help us with like this or that? Or you can be part of this. He's just he's a great asset. and um he's one of he's he is like the initial screen king like He is the iconic...
01:38:14
Speaker
When you think of Screen King, I think of Bruce Campbell. To me, it was like, i think he's got to go to him. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. i think you're right. um Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I think Ramey, again, is is such a great talent. He's very much a product of the the people who also helped make this film come into fruition with the Bruce Campbell being good stand-in for them. It's also...
Excitement for Army of Darkness
01:38:36
Speaker
I've seen...
01:38:38
Speaker
I've seen a lot more Raimi over the years too. So I don't want like Bruce Campbell peaked with Evil Dead, but it's what he's most known for easily. And so I think we need to give him his credit here. Where Raimi, you could go with the Spider-Man trilogy or some of his more recent films. Yeah, that's what's Apex. Yeah, exactly.
01:38:58
Speaker
Well, I'm excited for Army of Darkness. I started watching it just because i I wanted to see the beginning because of how the Evil Dead 2 ends. And it's, you know, again, they shift tones completely. It's like horror. It's like fantasy heavy horror light and much more comedy.
01:39:14
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. They keep going further down the comedy route. And like you said, more into fantasy. um Yeah, it's a great film. I'm i'm glad we're revisiting the series. It'll be very interesting after Army of Darkness when we then pivot to the tour installments that I'm sure we'll have a lot to say, but it's just a different conversation instead of like very different us all smiles just reminiscing on all the funny bits. It's like, oh yeah, this was pretty fucked up. Yeah, yeah. The Evil Dead 2013 is about drug addiction and trying to get the stop cold turkey and then bad shit happens. Yeah.
01:39:46
Speaker
um Cool. Well, that'll do it for us. Again, we'll be back next week with Army of Darkness as we continue our, ah what is it? Road to... Our groovy road to Evil Dead Burn.
01:39:57
Speaker
Thank you. Our groovy road to Evil Dead Burn. Thank you guys for listening. We'll see you next week. Join us. Join us next week. Bye.
01:40:15
Speaker
All right. right I might be projecting because I literally have a piece of lead in my inner thigh from my brother when we were kids. It's still there. lead, not graphite? Well, is it?
01:40:25
Speaker
Let me see if it's still there. They don't make too many lead pencils anymore.
01:40:34
Speaker
Since we don't have video here, Rick just pantsed himself to look over his body for scar. Well, if it's graphite, it's some pretty strong graphite.