Evil Dead with live commenetary by Bruce Campbell
Given current events, has there ever been a better time to bring back The Evil Dead, the original 1981 splatter-fest that single-handedly created a multi-media franchise and launched the career of self-avowed B-movie star Bruce Campbell?
Campbell doesn’t think so, and he will personally host a worldwide online watch party Jan. 23. In Milwaukee, the film airs at 8 p.m. and can be accessed through the Pabst Theater website. Campbell himself will provide commentary and back stories about the film’s production.
“We get to stop the film, rewind and tell stories,” says Campbell, who appeared in all four original Dead films, a subsequent Starz television spinoff, and did voiceovers for the film-based video game. “The running time will jump from the original 85 minutes to about 2 and1/2 hours. It’s a better way to watch the film. Just don’t expect to view it linearly.”
Making Movies
In 1978, Campbell was a college dropout in his native Detroit when he and friends Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert decided to make a movie. Although they were fans of Three Stooges comedies, they knew they couldn’t afford to attract a name performer like Bill Murray to sign on to their project. Instead, they went the horror route.
“Horror movies could be made with a lower budget and never included any known actors,” says Campbell. “We went to a lot of drive-ins to research the kind of cheap horror films people liked. If they didn’t like the film, they would start honking their horns and flashing their headlights. We definitely didn’t want to make one of those films.”
The trio first created Within the Woods, a 30-minute short shot in Super 8mm that tested the horror-in-the-forest thesis to show potential backers. As a result, the filmmakers raised the $400,000 necessarily to pursue a full-length project. The Evil Dead’s narrative penned by Raimi, who also directed the film, follows five college friends who spend a weekend at a cabin in rural Tennessee. They happen upon some research done by a previous occupant involving Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Sumerian book of the dead, something Raimi had come across in a humanities course at Michigan State University. In the film, their findings include a tape recording of incantations. Of course, they play the tape, which subsequently raises the spirits of the dead and, well, you can guess the rest.
Making Money
The film enjoyed limited success until it was booked into the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 1982 thanks to the help of Irvin Shapiro, an independent producer and distributor who helped introduce American audiences to famous European films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Battleship Potemkin and Grand Illusion.
“Irv said, ‘Well, it’s no Gone With the Wind, but I think we can make some money with it,’” Campbell remembers. “He also changed the title, originally The Book of the Dead, to The Evil Dead because he didn’t want anyone to think they had to do any reading.”
The filmmakers got a second shot in the arm when horror author Stephen King gave the film rave reviews as “the most ferociously original horror film of the year”. King’s review attracted the attention of New Line Cinema, which put the film into wider release. King resurfaced once again, personally pitching the sequel Evil Dead II to mogul Dino De Laurentis, who produced the film in 1987. The rest, as they say, is B-movie history.
Jinxed Set
Campbell, who played male lead Ash Williams, shares lots of stories about the production, including the number of people injured during the making of a film in which four of the five characters become possessed by evil spirits.
“I almost broke my ankle, my brother fell off a cliff, one crew member impaled his foot on a nail and another was hit by a log,” Campbell says. “We wrecked a rental truck and almost wrecked a 16mm Arriflex camera. We wrecked everything.”
Despite it all, Ash Williams would become central to Campbell’s personal mythos, and a role he would play four more time. He’s played many other roles as well, and relishes being a B-movie star, even entitling his biography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. “I call myself a thousand-aire, and I can pretty much do whatever I want,” Campbell says. “When you’re not an A-lister no one goes through your garbage or follows you on vacation with a long lens. And B movies try a little harder and take a few more chances because there’s less money at stake.”
Campbell was pleased by the fact that, during this past COVID summer, The Evil Dead was shown at some 1,200 drive-ins around the country. This month’s watch party may bode well for other similar events, he says. “If this works, we might try the same thing with Evil Dead II,” Campbell adds.
Let the spirits rise again.
For more information on The Evil Dead watch party, visit the Pabst Theater website at pabsttheater.org.
