'Dead' and kicking: It's been 20 years, but the Detroit-made cult horror flick is hotter than ever

February 18, 2002

BY JOHN MONAGHAN
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

They call it Ash Friday. Each year, two days after the start of Lent, Matt Twomey and three old college friends gather in Twomey's house in Ferndale for another screening of "The Evil Dead" and its two sequels.

'THE EVIL DEAD' WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Sam Raimi, director: Raimi made "Crimewave" and "Evil Dead 2" out of Renaissance Pictures' Ferndale office before heading to Hollywood in 1988. Among his director credits: "Darkman," "Army of Darkness" ("Evil Dead 3"), "A Simple Plan," "For Love of the Game" and "Spider-Man," which opens in May. Rob Tapert, producer: As head of Renaissance Pictures, Tapert spent the past decade producing the successful "Hercules" and "Xena" TV series, splitting his time between Los Angeles and New Zealand, where the shows were filmed. He is married to "Xena" star Lucy Lawless and expecting a child in April. Bruce Campbell, Ash: Campbell's book, "If Chins Could Kill," chronicles his past two decades in movies and television, including all three "Evil Dead" movies and as stars of the quirky TV shows "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." and "Jack of All Trades." His next role: a 68-year-old Elvis in "Bubba Hotel." Ellen Sandweiss, Cheryl; Betsy Baker, Linda; Sarah York (real name: Theresa Tilly), Shelly: After stints as mothers, businesswomen and part-time actresses, the trio have started making autograph-signing appearances at horror film conventions as "Ladies of the Evil Dead." Hal Delrich (real name: Rich Demanicor), Scott: The pseudonym came from mixing the names of a pair of college roommates. Aside from a small role in Raimi's "Crimewave," the West Bloomfield actor and businessman has confined his talents to the local stage. Tom Sullivan, props, makeup, animator: Sullivan provided special effects for the first two "Evil Dead" films and did preproduction work on "The Fly 2." He displays his movie props in a mini-museum in Marshall, where he works as an illustrator for role-playing game books. Joe LoDuca, composer: This was the first of many projects with Renaissance Pictures, including "Hercules" and "Xena." He has recently been nominated for a Cesar (the French Oscar) for his score for "Brotherhood of the Wolf." He lives in Bloomfield Hills. Ted Raimi, credited among the "Fake Shemps": The director's brother, a young teenager at the time, lent a hand in his ongoing job as gofer. Star of the Renaissance-produced "Lunatics: A Love Story," he has since enjoyed regular roles on TV's "Sea Quest" and "Xena." Joel Coen, assistant editor: According to Raimi, the future Oscar winner had a hand in several key sequences. He and brother Ethan coscripted Raimi's "Crimewave" before launching their own successful careers with such movies as "Raising Arizona," "Fargo," for which they won best screenplay, and "The Man Who Wasn't There."

Viewing the movie, in which a hapless college student named Ash watches his friends turn into monsters, has turned into a ritual, as the guys recite dialogue and shout at the screen. Twomey even named his son Ash after the movie's hero.

A bona fide cult phenomenon made on a garage band budget, "Evil Dead" remains the most influential film ever to roll out of Detroit. A subsequent generation of filmmakers has been weaned on its acrobatic camera work and editing. And, though he hightailed it for Hollywood more than a decade ago, director Sam Raimi, now 42, is still that kid from Franklin who made good.

On Friday, Bruce Campbell and the other "Evil Dead" stars will reunite at Royal Oak's Main Art Theatre after screenings of a new 35mm print of the movie. The event not only marks the 20th anniversary of the film but also heralds a new DVD release next month from Anchor Bay Entertainment in Troy.

"Evil Dead" is about five friends heading to a remote cabin in the hills. In the cellar they find the mysterious "Book of the Dead," bound in human flesh, and a tape recording that invokes an unseen creature. One by one, the friends turn into horrifying monsters that can only be dispatched in the bloodiest ways possible.

"We set out to make a really good crackerjack horror picture," recalls Raimi. "We wanted to make it as scary as possible, but of course we added humor, too."

By the time they began planning the film in 1979, Raimi and producer Rob Tapert were already old pros. Since high school, they had been making 8mm movies with regular star Campbell and other friends, showing them to paying audiences at Michigan State University. They shot the short "Within the Woods" as a vehicle to lure a dozen investors -- mostly family friends -- at $10,000 a share.

The bulk of the shoot took place in a cabin in Morristown, Tenn., in fall 1980 -- though, as Raimi notes, bits from the finished film were shot everywhere from a farmhouse cellar in Marshall, Mich., to the director's front yard.

Makeup man Tom Sullivan can't remember if he had an actual budget or not.

"None of it cost very much, maybe $200 tops," he remembers. "Liquid latex and foam rubber. Cake batter. Rubber tubing, Karo syrup and food coloring. I remember lots of conversations about the consistency of blood, because movie blood doesn't look like real blood. Movie blood is thick, so Sam wanted something thicker, denser, darker."

Originally called "The Book of the Dead," the movie premiered at Detroit's Redford Theatre in 1982, complete with spooky organ overture and fog effects. Tapert remembers packing the place with family, friends, investors and high school kids. The response was phenomenal, he says: "People were laughing and screaming, loud as any hockey game."

"Evil Dead" stands up because it does more than shock. It's also wildly inventive, entertaining and funny -- sometimes unintentionally so. Raimi remembers one of the investors walking up to him after the screening: "He looked disappointed. He said, 'You told me you were going to make a horror movie, not a comedy.' "

Those investors got the last laugh. Take St. Clair Shores' Phil Gillis, the movie's lawyer, who waived $20,000 in legal fees for two shares in the film.

"They would call me from Morristown and say, 'The crew wants to go to McDonald's; they haven't eaten yet. Can you wire us some money?' " he remembers.

Gillis' investment paid off.

"With Hollywood accounting, they could keep the money for themselves, but I think they have gone out of their way to reward the investors," he says. "One year I got a check for $165,000, but that was the biggest year, when they sold merchandising rights or something."

The filming finished, Raimi and Tapert formed Renaissance Pictures and rented a former dental office in the Pioneer Office Building in downtown Ferndale. Distributors didn't show much interest until Raimi's trip to the Cannes Film Festival and a surprise endorsement from Stephen King, who proclaimed it "the most ferociously original horror film of the year." The result: a deal with New Line Pictures. Like many other cult films, it opened to mixed reviews.

"We really marketed it for drive-ins, which at the time made up something like 22 percent of the market," recalls Tapert. He never dreamed that the movie's biggest success would come from the fledgling video market and overseas, especially in Great Britain, where "Evil Dead" was hailed as a masterpiece of horror.

Fans have since proven equally enthusiastic in the States. During its first week of release through Anchor Bay in 1998, it hit No. 3 on the Billboard domestic sales charts, just behind "Titanic" and "Lady and the Tramp."

"I've heard about the Ash Fridays, also the Ash Wednesdays," says star Campbell, now a cult figure in his own right. "There are even drinking games, one where you drink every time Ash gets hit in the face. Another every time I overact -- now, that one sounds dangerous."

If Janet Leigh couldn't take showers after seeing herself cut up in "Psycho," Ellen Sandweiss is likely wary of walks in the woods. As the first character possessed, she had the unpleasant job of being violated by lecherous vines and limbs in the film's most infamous scene.

"I wasn't misled per se," she says. "I knew about it from the script. But it was shot in so many pieces, over so much time, that I didn't realize exactly how descriptive it was going to look on film."

Now a manufacturer's rep and mother of two living in Huntington Woods, Sandweiss has spent the last 20 years downplaying her role in "Evil Dead.

She attended Wylie E. Groves High School in Birmingham with Raimi and Campbell. She had performed with them in school plays and was in a few of their 8mm epics before they cast her for the feature. Sandweiss says she was paid $800 plus a small bonus when the movie hit a certain dollar amount at the box office.

The actors, says Sandweiss, with the exception of Campbell, "have all gone through different stages with it -- some embarrassment, some resentfulness, and the fact that we didn't make any money from it."

Though she insists that her feelings are now upbeat, she shudders when recalling the grueling shoot, for much of which she was covered in Karo syrup and wearing painful white contact lenses. "Most of it was filmed at night in an unheated, uninsulated cabin in 40-degree weather," she says.

Sandweiss recently showed "The Evil Dead" to her 15-year-old daughter. Again, the woods scene proved awkward: "She argued with me, said she could handle it, but when she saw the scene starting, she was fine with me hitting fast-forward."

The new DVD, which comes out March 5, is not only a frame-by-frame cleanup of the film with an improved soundtrack; the audio commentary by Raimi and Tapert is an invaluable primer for anyone who has ever considered making a low-budget film.

It's worth hearing just for the car story. The brown 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 used in "Evil Dead" belonged to Raimi's mother and has appeared in nearly every Raimi film since. It even has stunt doubles, which allowed it to be crashed by Liam Neeson in "Darkman" and then return for Cate Blanchett to drive in last year's "The Gift." Look for it in Raimi's upcoming "Spider-Man," piloted by Peter Parker's uncle.

More than a running gag, the auto cameos have become a tribute to where Raimi came from. "It's a little bit of my past," he says with a laugh. "My way of saying, 'Made in the Motor City.' "