SAM RAIMI INTERVIEW
BY ALAN JONES.
1987 STARBURST MAGAZINE (UK)
( VISUAL IMAGINATION LTD.)
DIRECTOR SAM RAIMI INTERVIEWED
EVIL DEAD 2 : DEAD BY DAWN
STARBURST FEATURE BY ALAN JONES
Continued from page
2
Raimi wanted Evil Dead 2 to be a wild roller-coaster ride and his two favourite
expressions during the location filming were "The gore the merrier " and "Slime's
no crime". But even so, Its the humour which has attracted all the attention this
time out. He said, " It was a conscious decision because I found a lot of people
thought the first film was offensive and I reacted to that . As a result I cut one
major sequence from the final print, not because the American ratings board
objected but because I did. It was a very horrifying moment and I'll describe
it as girl meets stump. Also horror movies these days seem mostly comprised
of spoof elements so I wanted to go all out in that direction but to the extreme.
The Evil Dead built up to a climactic symphony of violence but the sequel starts
on that key and never lets up as I purposely wanted to give the audience
something different to what they had seen .
In a twisted way the sequel is an hommage to Hitchcock, Speilberg and my
friends, Joel and Ethan Coen's movie Blood Simple especially when Ash
shoots at his severed hand hiding in the wall and the streaks of light emerge."
Obsessive innovatory camera
angles
Part of the entertainment derived from Raimi's films comes from his obsessive
use of innovatory camera angles. In Evil Dead 2 there were DIY crane-shots
dubbed by Raimi as Splash-o-cam, Ram-o-cam, Torso-cam, all a nostalgic
reminder of the Shaky-cam he invented on the first film which consisted of
nothing more than a camera nailed to a long pole.
" Most of these comprised of a large steel pole fixed on a dolly with a camera
perched on the end 40 feet away. We would need twenty people to raise it over
the car-the same car we used in Evil Dead by the way- with two spikes at the
end to push it through the windshield and guard it against hitting the cabin's
side windows. This, and myself acting out the sound effects of the monsters
the cast were supposed to be reacting to, gives the film an exiting edge."
Sam Raimi,s sequel has only done average business in America where it
was released unrated by a DEG offshoot called Rosebud Releasing.
In the UK where The Evil Dead reached number one in the box-office
charts and spearheaded the video nasties debate it is expected to do
much better . But for the time being Raimi is turning his back on horror
once again to either direct , produce or write one of these future projects:
The Dark Man, Tales of Manhattan, Dark of the Moon, We Saps Three and
The Hudsucker Proxy . But what about Evil Dead 3? " I did actually write
another treatment for Evil Dead 2 with Sheldon Leddich but we decided
it was far to expensive to make. But with a few rewrites the script could
be tailored to continue where the new film leaves off. The myth about
the Evil Dead keeps evolving and all we can do is go along with it."