TED RAIMI INTERVIEW
BY ALAN JONES.
1992 STARBURST MAGAZINE
(UK)
( VISUAL IMAGINATION LTD.)
TED RAIMI INTERVIEWED
MEDIEVAL DEAD
(EDITED EXTRACT)
STARBURST INTERVIEW BY ALAN JONES
Who's that guy who looks like director Sam
Raimi?
Why, it's his younger brother Theodore, the actor in
that
multi-talented family.
Well, it figured someone had to become a thespian while Sam fiddled with zoom
lenses and older brother, Ivan dabbled in script-writing. You probably didn't realise
it but you've already seen Ted Raimi in many disguises on film and television.
He's played small parts in his brother's Evil Dead II and Darkman .
"Shemping Dead"
Most recently however Ted Raimi could be found "Shemping" again for brother
Sam in his highly anticipated Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness. ( For the
unconverted, "Shemping" is Raimi-speak for playing background roles in heavy
make-up, an affectionate term coined due to the Raimi Brothers' influential
love of the violent brand of slapstick indulged in by the Three Stooges. In
a few of the comedy team's vintage shorts, a stand-in played Samuel "Shemp"
Howard).
" I play five parts in Army of Darkness, all with different British accents.
They won't fool you, but they will Americans. I'm in the picture as a gimmick
really. It all stemmed from a bet I made with Sam. He said I'd never get away
with playing five different roles audiences wouldn't guess were all me.
You know my face though, so you'll recognize me now. Damn, I lost."
Produced by Dino DeLaurentiis Communications, as was the first sequel
in the trilogy , the $11 million Army of darkness, written by the Sam and
Ivan Darkman duo , was filmed last summer in the Californian desert and
at Universal Studios.
Raimi continues, " Bruce Campbell is back at the helm as Ash. This time
he's battling the Evil Dead in 1300 AD as he tries to return to his own
time period . He's still got his chain saw , plus a broadsword, to slice and
dice the Deadites wanting to wipe out the friends he's made in a little English
village."
Campbell is practically on screen the whole time , either as Ash or his evil
mirror image, in this sequel designed by Sam Raimi as a homage to Ray
Harryhausen's classic stop-motion sequences, in particular the skeleton
fight from Jason and the Argonauts. There are many other genre references
too in the fast moving script, which borrows from Mark Twain's A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court the Round Table legend itself, and The Day
The Earth Stood Still. Do some advanced homework in readiness to spot
them all, especially with regards to the latter movie's immortal phrase
"Klatuu Barada Nikto".
Planned originally to be filmed in Manchester Raimi says the dollar exchange
rate nixed that expensive Idea.
He's glad about that as he explains, "It looks more like an old style Holly wood
adventure now. There's this giant castle in the middle of all this sand doubling
for England. Again Americans will say,' How quaint/ I didn't know it looked
like that ' : The British will go,' What the bloody hell's that supposed to be?'."