The Evil Dead is the reason I've worked in the UK film & TV special effects and modelmaking industry for the last ten years, I first saw it in 1992 when I was 12. It was my first proper horror experience, and made a huge imprint on my life.
The idea for EvilDeadChainsaws was first started in July of 2002. I bought a Homelite XL chainsaw through EBay. As a pet project, I modified this to make it look like the real working chainsaw from ‘Evil Dead II’, although this only meant a small amount of work changing the handle shape and adding a grill to the side, and I was happy to leave it at that.
Before starting EvilDeadChainsaws I spent much of my spare time working on special effects gags; trick machetes, retractable knives, compressed air squibs, etc... I was sinking money into new ideas, but not doing anything with them once they were finished, so not seeing any return on the money I was investing.
Someone suggested I should try to sell my effects in 2005. After some thought, I decided to keep it simple and concentrate on one really good idea, maybe introducing other items later on. Any profits could be used to fund additional new effects ideas without spending vast amounts of my own money.
During this period I discovered NightmareGloves.com making replica Freddy Kruger gloves, run by Anders Eriksen. His site gave me the idea to do much the same thing; find a prop I can replicate and setup a website selling them. After a little research I settled upon the chainsaw from ‘Evil Dead II’.
Someone suggested I should try to sell my effects in 2005. After some thought, I decided to keep it simple and concentrate on one really good idea, maybe introducing other items later on. Any profits could be used to fund additional new effects ideas without spending vast amounts of my own money.
During this period I discovered NightmareGloves.com making replica Freddy Kruger gloves, run by Anders Eriksen. His site gave me the idea to do much the same thing; find a prop I can replicate and setup a website selling them. After a little research I settled upon the chainsaw from ‘Evil Dead II’.
From May to December of 2005 I prototyped the idea until I knew I could make something I could sell. I launched the website around December of 2005 with the first of the 3 model saws; the workshed saw. The remaining two saw models were designed & added to the website by the middle of 2006.
After I first started EvilDeadChainsaws I found out about the first Toronto run of Evil Dead The Musical, and I emailed them in December of 2005 to see if they’d be interested in buying one of my saws. The production run that was well underway at that point and they decided to stick with the trusted props they already had rather than chopping & changing mid production run.
In May of 2006, I was emailed back regarding the upcoming New York production and it went from there. To date I have supplied saws to the 2006 New York run, the 2007 Toronto run & the 2008 Korean Run. Tom Sullivan has one of the first two chainsaws supplied to the 2006 New York run in his Evil Dead museum, although by now it looks rather sorry for itself after all the abuse its taken.
The Musical's saws were a fine compromise between reducing the weight to the bare minimum (as the actor has to dance around with it), making it very easy to maintain, and trying to keep the look right. Having leant lessons from each previous saw, I feel the final pair of saws sent to the Korean run came very close to achieving this fine balance. I also introduced many of the improvements from the musicals saws into my standard line of saws, if they survived the musical run relatively intact then they would easily be strong enough for the odd fancy dress party.
The Musical's saws were a fine compromise between reducing the weight to the bare minimum (as the actor has to dance around with it), making it very easy to maintain, and trying to keep the look right. Having leant lessons from each previous saw, I feel the final pair of saws sent to the Korean run came very close to achieving this fine balance. I also introduced many of the improvements from the musicals saws into my standard line of saws, if they survived the musical run relatively intact then they would easily be strong enough for the odd fancy dress party.
At the start of 2007 I decided to stop making Deluxe 'working' saws and concentrate on the standard three saws. This was for a number of reasons, but mainly because they took so much time to make. A 'working' saw took roughly 5 times longer to make than a 'non-working' saw. I also always had issues finding a reliable supplier of battery packs as the individual batteries had to be configured in a particular (non-standard) way to fit into the tight space inside the saw. The price of a deluxe saw was only double that of a standard saw, and I was never able to find a happy balance between getting a decent price for each saw, and making the price low enough so that units were sold. Those factors combined coupled with the fact I also had a full time job working in special effects, meant I had to make a choice.
As it was no longer needed, I made a little pet project out of the huge workshed photo backdrop display which was sitting in my workshop, starting just a few days after closing on March 4, 2008. I settled on the idea of moving it into the front room of my house to display my own personal cabin chainsaw, although having thought it through, I came to the conclusion that having an 8ft x 8ft x 4ft deep monolith to Evil Dead sitting next to my sofa might be a little excessive. So I decided to convert the background into a much smaller 3ft x 4ft freestanding display instead, and added some additional new touches, all of which took about 2 days work.
I called time on EvilDeadChainsaws around the start of 2008. Even only producing 'standard' chainsaws, all my spare time was being eaten up, which left me no time to spend on making other new effects gags, and that was the reason EvilDeadChainsaws was started. Because I was investing any spare money I made into prototyping new modifications or getting new equipment specifically for producing chainsaws, I wasn't really earning anything out of it either. Finally I decided to pull the plug and move on. I produced my final two chainsaws at the end of 2007, and I think they are my best work, one was made for me, and one for my final customer.
With the workshed display gone from the workshop, all the moulds and other related bit & pieces were either scrapped or boxed up and stored. EvilDeadChainsaws was an interesting experience, having made chainsaws for Evil Dead: The Musical, I don't think when I started up I could have expected to get any higher up the ladder, and I was still sorry to leave it all behind.
In 2009, I opened my own Evil Dead trilogy fansite called 'Book Of The Dead', which has since given me a platform to interview many of the people involved in the trilogy's creation, including; Scott Spiegel, Josh Becker, Danny Hicks, Tom Sullivan, Bart Pierce, Mark Shostrom, Shannon Shea, Rick Catizone, Cheryl Guttridge, and Tim Quill.
Some years later, around the start of April in 2012, I thought about restarting EvilDeadChainsaws.com. I re-registered the .com domain, upgraded the site, and put it back online. In April of 2013, I basically started from scratch, setting up a new home-workshop (most of which was sold-off in 2008), making new moulds and revising my designs based on all the various tweaks and upgrades built up over the chainsaws I made between 2005 to 2008.