Sam Raimi is a filmmaker for all tastes. Horror fans know him best from The Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell, comic junkies love his Spider-Man trilogy, Academy voters supported A Simple Plan and probably also saw Oz the Great and Powerful, and your dad loves his underrated baseball movie, For Love of the Game. Some of us even consider The Quick and the Dead to be his best film, but we would never admit that on a horror-focused site.
Raimi is finally returning to the horror genre for the first time since 2009 (unless you count that one scene in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) with his latest feature, Send Help. In honor of this, we’re looking back at the movie that arguably made his name outside the indie circuit – 1987’s Evil Dead II.
After bombing in theaters with Crimewave, the gang found a guardian angel in Stephen King, who had previously given them a boost with a blurb on The Evil Dead. King is the one who convinced Dino De Laurentiis to pony up the cash for a sequel, and the rest is history.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Evil Dead II (1987)
Commentators: Sam Raimi (director/co-writer), Bruce Campbell (actor), Scott Spiegel (co-writer), Greg Nicotero (special make-up effects artist)
1. De Laurentiis’ company, DEG, wasn’t allowed to release an X-rated film at the time, so they had to create a stand-in production company. It was called Rosebud Releasing Corporation, and since both Raimi and Campbell “were in love with logos,” they decided to make one for Rosebud. They designed the look – a stop-motion rose growing in front of a WB-like backdrop – before handing off the animation duties to someone whose name they can’t recall.
2. The tape recorder belonged to Campbell’s dad, and they used it to add sound to the Super 8 movies they made as kids. It’s the same recorder from The Evil Dead and one of the very few items to be in both films, seeing as the set was newly rebuilt for this movie.
3. The exterior-use cabin was built on personal property where The Color Purple was also filmed in North Carolina, while the functioning cabin set (used for interiors) was actually a two-story set built in a high school gymnasium.
4. The pov shot that starts at 6:43 was filmed by Raimi on a dirtbike with a camera mounted on its front. An early take ended poorly when the crew failed to open the second door in time for Raimi to pass through.
5. The connected shot of Ash (Campbell) flying backwards through the air took an entire day to film and was shot on a long road in South Carolina.
6. The script supervisor, Francoise Charlap, exited the film’s early preview in NYC with tears in her eyes because they had failed to include her name in the end credits. “Well, she should have supervised that,” adds one, while the others recall how she would threaten to quit every day over Raimi moving furniture between shots and Nicotero applying mismatched blood splatter. “She did a very good job.”
7. De Laurentiis wasn’t thrilled that so much of the film was just Campbell running around alone.
8. The character of Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley) was originally inspired by Holly Hunter, who lived with Raimi, Spiegel, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, and Frances McDormand for a bit in Silver Lake, CA. They wanted her for the role, but Spiegel says producer Robert Tapert insisted they needed a “sexy chick” instead. It all worked out for Hunter, though, as she landed a lead role in Broadcast News that same year, for which she received an Academy Award nomination.
9. Ash stabs his own hand at 30:02, and the effect was done with a prosthetic hand made from gelatin. They had to keep it refrigerated beforehand as they were filming in near one hundred-degree temperatures, and Raimi still loves how it moves and jiggles. The eyeball that flies into Bobby Joe’s mouth was also a gelatin creation.
10. The shot of the blood shooting out of the wall holes (and later, from the hole in the floor) required multiple fifty five-gallon drums of fake blood. They couldn’t film in the room for a full day afterward as they had to wait for it all to drain out.
11. Campbell mentions, perhaps facetiously, that one of the trims to the film made in the UK was of the shot where a man kicks Ash while he’s unconscious – “because you can’t kick a man while he’s down.”
12. They all agree that the only person tortured more on-set than Campbell was Ted Raimi, who’s buried beneath prosthetics as Henrietta. “He had no idea what he was getting into.” Nicotero gives a shout out to the great Mark Shostrom, who designed and applied the Henrietta make-up.
13. “This was our lame attempt to get an R-rating,” says Campbell as we watch Ash chop a possessed guy with an ax, causing green blood to splash all around. It didn’t work, and after realizing the necessary trims would end up being far too excessive, they decided to release it unrated instead.
14. The scene where Bobby Joe is attacked by the tree branches and vines was a little different in early drafts of the script. Originally, they had a group of convicts who were tormenting Ash, and one of them was going to be grabbed, dragged, and split in two by the tree.
15. Ash replaces his missing right hand with a chainsaw, but a brief shot at 1:09:12 sees him holding up a piece of the book with his right hand. They flipped the shot (left to right) in the edit to stay consistent with the character’s screen direction and simply missed the incongruity at the time. Campbell says he still gets emails complaining about it.
16. Henrietta comes bursting through the trap door, grabs Annie’s (Sarah Berry) hair, and begins spinning around above her head – and at 1:11:36, you can see a large tear in her crotch with Ted Raimi’s clothes visible within. “This was the last week of the shoot,” says Nicotero, “and the suit had been destroyed.” Also visible while filming in the intense heat of a North Carolina summer? Raimi’s sweat can be seen pouring out of Henrietta’s ear at 1:11:56.
17. That’s a fake foot on Henrietta’s head before it blows up because the cast and crew had to exit the room for safety reasons.
18. The giant “rotten apple head” that bursts through the front door as the cabin is being destroyed was left behind after the shoot. They discovered later that a local haunted house attraction had acquired it and used it in their haunt that October.
19. While Sam Raimi makes some voice cameos throughout the film, his only proper onscreen appearance comes at the end as the knight who lifts his face guard to hail the hero from the skies. He says that his wife has barred him from appearing in any more of his movies. “That’s her contribution to the industry.”
20. Nicotero was joined by Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman on the film, and it was right after this that they formed KNB EFX Group, which would go on to become a powerhouse in the world of practical effects.
Quotes Without Context
“There’s been some confusion of whether Ash would be stupid enough to go back to the cabin for another night, which, of course he is.”
“I’m terrified of all these bluescreen shots.”
“I remember making jars of goop for you.”
“We’ve gotta shout-out Bruce’s jaw.”
“I love it when actors get beat up, they don’t get beat up in movies anymore.”
“I should have helped you with a camera thing there, probably, and relied less on your, quote, acting.”
“Never walk backwards in a horror movie, folks.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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