From moonshine to oatmeal to vaseline, the cast and crew of "The Evil Dead" had to use
some awfully strange substances to make their movie.
These are some of the wildest highlights from behind the scenes of Sam Raimi's undead romp.
Clocking in with a crisp runtime of 85 minutes, Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" wastes no time
dropping audiences straight into the deep end.
Not long after the spectral title card vanishes, we assume the perspective of a lurching steadicam
- a point of view shot that doesn't so much float as whip, careen, bob, and dive through
the frigid marshland of the Tennessee backcountry.
After that, the first line of dialogue tells us everything we need to know about our protagonists'
situation.
"Heya Ash, where are we?"
"Well, we just crossed the Tennessee border…"
Not off to the best start.
As Bruce Campbell - executive producer and Ash Williams himself - describes in his autobiography
"If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor," the disorientation wasn't limited
to the screen.
He explained -
"Right from the get go, filming was a comedy of errors, or terrors, if you will.
Within minutes of leaving for the first location, an abandoned bridge, the production van got
lost, and we spent a half-hour trying to locate it.
No sooner had we found it than Sam drove his 'Classic' into a ditch, and we had to get
a tow truck to haul it out."
As if that weren't enough of a bad omen, the crew then proceeded to hop into a cow field
occupied by an "angry bovine," which chased Sam Raimi around until the director could
scramble to safety.
The Deadites are some of the most iconic foes in horror history – ultra-violent, wise-cracking
puppets for the evil occult force contained in the flesh-bound Necronomicon ex Mortis.
While Deadites are distinguished by a laundry list of unsavory descriptors, from lurching
limbs to cackling laughter, a sure-fire way to tell that your sister or girlfriend has
been possessed by evil is the blank, all-white eyes.
"Did you see her eyes?
Ash, I'm scared, what's wrong with her?"
If it was their lucky day, actors simply had their eyelids painted white - as is the case
when Betsy Baker's Linda gets decked by Ash's trusty beam of wood.
While quite literally easy on the eyes, this technique did leave performers as blind as
can be.
"Okay, ready and action."
"Ow!"
That's why, more often than not, the possessed actors were outfitted with opaque white scleral
lenses.
These weren't your grandma's contacts — they were enormous, made of glass, and covered
roughly two-thirds of the eye.
According to Sam Raimi's director's commentary, the lenses could only be worn for fifteen
minutes at a time - which was complicated by the fact that it took ten minutes to put
them on.
To say that Sam Raimi is a visually oriented director would be an understatement - and
"The Evil Dead" is hard proof of this fact from its very first moment.
Without a doubt, one of the most mesmerizing aspects of the film is its door-kicking approach
to cinematography.
Cameras slam through windows, chase characters endlessly in protracted tracking shots, and
slam repeatedly through obstacles with ease.
Raimi's unique ideas resulted in a number of handmade, low-tech camera rigs made out
of wooden planks.
These rigs allowed the low-budget production to accomplish complex, expressionistic camera
movements with relative ease thanks to some creativity and a good pile of lumber.
The "Vas-o-Cam" amounted to, as Campbell puts it, a "poor man's dolly" - consisting of a
saw horse, a bracket, and a big tub of Vaseline.
The crew's no-budget version of a shaky cam rig was just a giant board with the camera
bolted onto it.
Finally, the appropriately named "Ram-o-Cam" allowed the evil entity to burst through plate
glass windows.
As Bruce Campbell described it in "If Chins Could Kill" -
"[It was] a two-by-four with a 'T-Bar' at the end which would prevent injury by smashing
the glass well ahead of the probing camera."
Campbell hilariously added -
"When all else failed, we just taped the damn camera to Sam [Raimi's] hand."
"Ow!
F--!"
If you've actually seen "The Evil Dead," you may be wondering why on earth the cabin would
become the target for thieves.
Well, once you add film gear to a remote cabin - even one as dank and dingy as the one in
"The Evil Dead" - you invite thieves into your life.
As "Evil Dead" crewmember Josh Becker wrote in his on-set journal, Sam Raimi's solution
to these worries was to sleep in the cabin himself to guard the equipment.
As Becker put it -
"Our director is a first-rate mess.
He's sleeping at the cabin (someone has to since all our power tools were stolen) [...] and
seems to get more frazzled and less organized by the day."
Miraculously, the $20,000 Arriflex BL camera and the $5,000 reel to reel tape recorder
were spared from any midnight raids.
While "The Evil Dead" producers probably didn't have room for a security guard in their budget,
it may have been smarter to have anyone other than the director keep watch over the valuables.
Either way, it's a testament to the passion and dedication Raimi had for his directorial
debut.
While everyone's favorite final boy didn't christen his boomstick formally until "Army
of Darkness," there's no doubt that Ashley Williams has been making ample use of firepower
from the get-go.
As they explore the basement of the cabin, Scott and Ash come across a sizable shotgun
lying under a beat-up poster for Wes Craven's exploitation classic "The Hills Have Eyes."
When occult shenanigans get out of hand and Ash finds himself in a bleeding haunted house,
the shotgun definitely comes in handy.
"AAAAHHHH!
AAAAHHHH!"
Now, if you've seen "The Evil Dead," you'll know that one of the film's great charms is
its scrappiness - a visceral quality that is caused, in large part, by the production's
rag-tag sensibility.
So, when it came to the shotgun stunts, the production team just straight-up shot a loaded
shotgun live on set.
As Bruce Campbell put it in an interview with DVD Talk,
"We used real ammunition in the shotgun, and we shot it at the real cabin in the woods,
with hunters and howling dogs in the background.
[...] It was an early version of guerilla filmmaking."
Nowadays, using a live weapon as a prop on a film set is considered unacceptable - but
Raimi and Campbell were able to get away with it back in the late '70s and early '80s.
During an appearance on "Conan" promoting the TV show "Ash vs Evil Dead," Bruce Campbell
opened up about one of the more illicit tidbits about "The Evil Dead" shoot - namely, that
they got stoned on set.
The cast and crew were inspired by the tale of Jack Nicholson smoking copious amounts
of marijuana before - and during - the filming of "Easy Rider."
"And we thought, well, if he can go on to become a very famous, notable actor, we can
do the same thing."
Campbell had never smoked before, and the weed that they had procured was particularly
potent.
Needless to say, not much usable footage ended up getting shot that night.
If you're wondering what scene was specifically ruined by Mary Jane, Campbell revealed the
answer during his "Evil Dead" DVD commentary.
As he tells it, they were attempting to film the moment in which Ash and company gather
around to listen to the recorded reading from the Book of the Dead.
Not only was opening up the Necronomicon a bad idea, but so was toking up beforehand.
If shooting a movie in the middle of nowhere isn't stressful enough, try doing it during
the coldest winter in recent memory.
That's what happened to the cast and crew of "The Evil Dead" when the film's Tennessee
shoot was rocked by a particularly brutal cold snap.
While the filmmakers' home state of Michigan enjoyed an uncharacteristically balmy winter,
Raimi and Campbell were seriously suffering.
Campbell wrote in "If Chins Could Kill" -
"The muddy driveway to the cabin froze, rendering this difficult-at best road impassable by
car.
The cabin, lacking any hint of insulation whatsoever, became astoundingly cold inside.
A roaring fire and two space heaters didn't seem to help any."
Campbell also recalled that the equipment - including the camera - began to freeze,
and needed to be regularly thawed out in front of the fire.
Raimi's description was a little more dramatic.
He said in a 1982 interview —
"I couldn't stand the slow torture of freezing to death so slowly.
So I actually crawled outside and laid down to die.
But [producer] Rob [Tapert] [...] came outside and covered me with a blanket, and here I
am today."
As crew member Josh Becker wrote in his on-set journal of the production, the temperature
dropped to negative 17 degrees Celsius on December 17, 1979 - just one degree Fahrenheit.
He also wrote that the crew burned some of their furniture to stay warm.
There's a lot going on in "The Evil Dead," with all the possessions, ancient evils, arboreal
assaults, and disembodied camera movements.
You'd certainly be forgiven for asking nitpicking questions like, "How is the fireplace still
burning through all of this?"
If you were paying attention to the fire in the midst of all that chaos, we'd be surprised
- but if you've seen "The Evil Dead," you'll know that the survival of the roaring fire
is integral to the film's final act, in which Ash realizes that burning the Necronomicon
may be the one way to end this nightmare.
Spoiler alert: it isn't.
So, here's a director's conundrum - you have a very limited budget, and you're tasked with
keeping a fire alive.
As an added wrinkle, it is genuinely frigid on set, meaning a roaring fire is exactly
what the doctor ordered.
If the director's DVD commentary is to be believed, it was actually locally procured
moonshine that kept the fire blazing during the shoot.
In January 2021, Bruce Campbell told The Deadite Slayer of his time in Tennessee -
"We learned a lot about moonshine.
Too much.
Too much."
"Smooth!
Here, try it."
"Nuh-uh."
He continued -
"The moonshine they couldn't drink went onto the fire just before cameras rolled to make
the flames roar.
[...] So simpler times, but stupider times.
Hell yeah."
As Ash and the gang drive the long road up to the cabin, Scott warns the others that
their destination might not exactly be considered luxurious.
"Well, the guy that's renting it says it's an old place.
Little run down, but it's right up in the mountains.
And the best part is, we get it so cheap!"
Scotty's guesswork turns out to not be that far off.
The cabin is absolutely worse for wear, coated in a thick layer of cobwebs, dust, and pine
needles.
But however "rustic" the cabin may appear on the screen, its country charms pale in
comparison to what the crew had to deal with when they first acquired the cabin for the
shoot.
In "If Chins Could Kill," Bruce Campbell describes the cabin's many derelict charms in detail,
writing -
"There was no electricity, no running water, and no telephone service.
[...] Cattle had the run of the place and had managed to deposit easily four inches
of manure in every room."
Even after a home makeover - which included sawing out windows and adding a fresh layer
of stone to the fireplace - the plumbing situation never did work out.
What makes the "Evil Dead" cabin so eerie?
There's the dust in the air, the unfinished walls, the shed full of bones and rusty tools
- and of course, there's that dark, dank cellar.
"Hey, look!
This place has a dungeon!"
It's in the cellar that Ash and Scotty stumble across the Book of the Dead, and it's where
they lock up a pesky Deadite that tries to tear them apart.
It's also where Ash tangos with bleeding pipes, exploding lightbulbs, and all manner of spine-tingling
third-act shenanigans.
That's why fans of "The Evil Dead" may find it surprising to learn that the cabin's cellar
didn't actually exist - at least, not the way we see it.
As Bruce Campbell explained on his DVD commentary -
"We had to dig [it] about four feet down.
And you'd think, 'Well, why didn't they dig the rest of the cellar?'
Because we knew there was a perfectly good cellar back up in Michigan."
Using a root cellar in a farmhouse outside of Marshall, Michigan as the real cellar,
the cast and crew had to make due with a glorified trench while filming in the cabin.
Keep this in mind when you see the shivering hacked-up body parts in act three, all of
which were portrayed by actors contorted between the ground and holes in the floorboards.
The reputation of "the tree scene" precedes it.
It's arguably one of the most infamous sequences in horror history, and it's lost none of its
skin-crawling creepiness all these decades later.
It's also pretty problematic, and some viewers prefer to fast forward past it entirely.
"SHUT IT OFF!"
"Oh my God!"
The moment in question involves Cheryl Williams, sister of Ash, leaving the cabin to investigate
disturbing noises.
This proves to be a very bad idea, as Cheryl is attacked by gnarled, creeping vines.
What follows is an absurd and deeply disturbing sexual assault scene that aligns "The Evil
Dead" with many of its cohorts on the infamous Video Nasty list.
Today, Sam Raimi regrets the sequence, as he explained in a 2012 interview with The
San Diego Reader -
"I think it was unnecessarily gratuitous and a little too brutal.
[...] I think my judgment was a little wrong at that time."
As with much of "The Evil Dead," the visceral quality of the sequence owes a lot to the
intense way in which it was shot - particularly the latter half of the sequence in which Cheryl
runs through the woods.
As Bruce Campbell pointed out in his DVD commentary -
"Ellen, as you can see, is wearing very little.
[...] These days, an actor would be padded from head to toe.
They'd have knee pads, they'd have elbow pads, they'd have butt pads, they'd have pads for
the pads.
But this was 1979 with a very rough and ready to go actress, and she was like, 'Well, let's
just do it.'"
Campbell described how, while filming the chase, Ellen Sandweiss sustained a good number
of bruises, scrapes, and scratches.
He continued —
"So she was a pretty good sport.
It was also freezing."
Production of "The Evil Dead" was originally scheduled for six weeks - but somewhere between
the cow manure and the frozen cameras, things were lagging behind.
In fact, the filmmakers were already behind schedule before they'd even called "action"
for the first time.
This caused something of an issue when the holidays hit and the cast and crew began to
dwindle, leaving behind a skeleton crew of five individuals behind to film Ash's final
descent into goopy madness.
That was where the fake Shemps came in.
You may have noticed the wall of names in the end credits attributed as "fake Shemps"
and wondered what the heck that meant.
They're basically body doubles: if the actor you want isn't around for inserts or some
other shot where the face is obscured, just use whoever is on hand.
Speaking of hands, whenever you see a disembodied hand in "The Evil Dead," there's no telling
who it actually belongs to.
As Bruce Campbell explains in "If Chins Could Kill," shemping takes its name from one of
the later-stage Three Stooges, who was portrayed by a double after the original actor suffered
a heart attack.
He elaborated -
"With 'Evil Dead,' we decided to elevate 'shemping' to an official, on-screen credit category
mainly because they soon constituted the bulk of our cast."
While it's certainly not bizarre for films to borrow from preexisting movies for their
sound design, the source material for some of the noises in "The Evil Dead" is definitely
a little left of field.
As Bruce Campbell revealed in his DVD commentary, the ethereal atmospheric noise you hear when
the gang ventures down into the cellar is taken from the renowned 1949 Orson Welles
thriller "The Third Man."
In the film's final moments, as the noises of the cabin encircle Ash, we hear the sound
of footsteps on the ceiling.
As Campbell described -
"[It was Raimi] walking around in a recording studio with high heels taped to his feet because
his feet were too big to fit in the shoes."
The very faint droning noise that sometimes fills the background also has an interesting
origin.
While Raimi and Campbell were mixing the film back in New York City, a technical problem
caused feedback and reverb to be amplified whenever the volume knob was open.
Campbell wrote -
"We could just lay down long sections of this sound because we thought it was a good ambient
sound [...] didn't cost us a nickel."
Not long after Ash Williams' over-the-top, yet completely understandable meltdown, another,
somewhat more literal meltdown takes place.
After noticing one of the Deadites smoking when the Necronomicon falls precariously close
to the roaring fire, Ashley heroically chucks the nefarious book deeper into the flames.
Sure enough, the formerly lively Deadites begin decomposing before our very eyes, rotting
in hyper speed as their skin peels back to reveal bone, gross unidentifiable goop, and
flailing tongues.
Then, if all that weren't dramatic enough, clawed hands burst through the necrotic flesh,
sending what's left of the corpses hurtling to the floor where they explode like piñatas
- if piñatas were full of jawbones, slime mold, and creepy crawlies.
As Bruce Campbell relayed in "If Chins Could Kill," the sequence required three months
of animation work courtesy of Bart Pierce, who'd been tasked with making sure the film
ended on a bang.
The melting scene included everything from oatmeal to cockroaches, but Campbell really
sold the "ick" factor when he revealed that the "monster guts" substance that was hucked
at his face was made of Alpo dog food.
It was the last scene in the film that Campbell shot, and having a can of processed animal
food sprayed on his face by his old pal Sam Raimi seemed like a good enough way as any
to finish off the wild experience.