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All the text, programming & graphics for this website were produced by myself (Rob aka EvilDeadChainsaws or SeeNoEvil), along with a couple of text contributions by James (aka DJSmokingJam or Evil James), and Shaun. Please see the 'Site Design & Content Credits' page for more credits & thanks.
Below you can read the story of how & why this site came about, and how it's progressed over the years to become the huge Evil Dead Trilogy fansite it is today.
About This Site
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Being a lifelong fan of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy of films, and the many Super-8 short films he and his small group of friends made, I have have accumulated a great deal of knowledge and rare material over the last few years, making contact & trading with countless people, digging through information on old forums and websites, amassing a large collection of the Super-8 shorts themselves, along with a lot of other rare Evil Dead trilogy related material, and even transferring some very rare material from NTSC VHS tapes to DVD personally. Using all this, and creating an unofficial Evil Dead Trilogy fan website seemed a logical progression, and a worthy pet project which afforded me the ability to use my accumulated knowledge for the benefit of other like-minded fans.
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The original idea came out of an older project. WithinTheWoods.co.uk is another Evil Dead fansite run by fellow UK fan Mark Dutton, which has been around in one form or another since the late 90's. In 2005, the site went offline leaving only a holding page and the forums. On June 21, 2009, I received a round robin email from Mark with news of his plans to resurrect the site. I offered my help, and he agreed.
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I began by redesigning the old website logo, which Mark wanted the style of the 1990 Palace Pictures The Evil Dead artwork campaign illustrated by Graham Humpreys. I created the image using GIMP (an excellent & better freeware alternative to Adobe Photoshop) using elements taken from the UK quad theatrical poster, cropping, rotating & warping the existing title letters to crate the new ones I needed. Over a number of months, my input on the site progressed to re-working the entire site & page layouts, adding many new graphical elements, and writing some new content. While Mark did made some content contributions, I basically ended up running the project rather than following his lead. By the end of September 2009, I just felt his heart wasn't really in it and he was loosing interest. Rather than leave the project behind, I decided to recycle all the hard work I'd done into my own Evil Dead fansite, a decision which would give me complete control of the content and layout, rather than adhering to someone else's requirements.
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Unused 'video nasty' headline, made from scratch using stock textures
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I formerly started work on my own site on October 4, 2009. I wrote all the HTML/JAVA code from scratch using Notepad, and the graphics creation & manipulation using GIMP. The new name of the site was one of the hardest decisions to reach. Quite a list of titles were proposed, of which the highlights included; 'Coffee, Milk & Karo Syrup', 'Blood & Gasoline', 'Weeds Gone Bad', 'Remember To Dismember', 'Grave Consequences', 'Super-Duper-8', 'Total Bodily Dismemberment', 'Behind The Screams', 'The Number One Nasty', 'A Farewell To Arms', and a personal favourite, 'Some Assembly Required'.
Rather than go for something quirky and obscure which may need some explanation; 'Book Of the Dead' was an obvious choice from the start, and the title I eventually went with. The .com domain was taken so went with a .ws domain instead, formerly registering it on the October 10, 2009, and uploading a the 'under construction' empty skeleton of the site while I began work filling in the content, the main body of which took 13 weeks and was completed by December 31, 2009, with further sporadic additions & updates over the preceding months, and years.
Given that a plethora of Evil Dead fansites have come and gone, my aim was create the all time definitive resource, being more comprehensive than anything else past or present. As well as the run of the mill film synopses, credits and the like which would be expected of a fansite.
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I wrote extensively on areas upon which have been little covered in the past, such as each films' deleted scenes, additional footage, and locations, the 'video nasty' era and The Evil Dead's UK censorship issues, the Palace Pictures UK advertising campaigns, the bootleg history of the Super-8 short films along with a full list of all the shorts with screenshots & synopses, the Evil Dead Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum early 80's game release, and Tom Sullivan's travelling Evil Dead museum, to name a few areas.
I also recreated & mocked-up a number of elements for the site, for which I either couldn't find at all, or couldn't find in sufficiently high enough quality to be usable. Among others; I created high quality versions of each films' title text, I remade the 'Palace Pictures', 'Palace Video', and 'Palace Software' company logos, and for The Evil Dead 'Censorship' page, I recreated both an 'X' & '18' BBFC certification cards, as well as an unused Daily Mail 'video nasty' headline newspaper front page, all made from scratch using GIMP and some stock textures.
The factual content draws together just about every source available, but mainly comes from four books; The Evil Dead Companion by Bill Warren, If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell, Rushes by Josh Becker, and The Unseen Force The Films Of Sam Raimi by John Kenneth Muir, but also a wealth of other books & magazines including The Ego Has Landed by Angus Finney, The Practical Art Of Motion Picture Sound by David Yewdall, Fangoria Magazine, Cinefantastique, Video Watchdog, Rue Morgue, various DVD releases including those of Anchor Bay & Elite Entertainment, and far too many past & present websites to list, along with additional major writing contributions by fellow fan & collector; James.
I have tried to use the rarest photos from my extensive collection, rather than trot out the same old promo images seen on most sites & blogs. With some image assistance from fellow fans, I assembled the most extensive Evil Dead 'Collectables' section there has ever been, with a range of diverse sub-sections covering nearly 800 individual items from around the world, such as; DVD, VHS & Other Media, Books, Magazines, Comics, Games, Soundtracks, Toys, Sculpted Pieces, Props & Replicas, Clothing, and Advertising.
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Early 80's 'X' certificate BBFC card, recreated from scratch
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late 80's '18' certificate BBFC card, recreated from scratch
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While creating the site I made contact with a number of people involved either in the Evil Dead trilogy, or the Super-8 Short films. Back whilst running EvilDeadChainsaws, I had become friendly with The Evil Dead's make-up effects artist Tom Sullivan, who gave me a fair amount of factual information and corrections for my new site. I also contacted Graham Humphreys, the artist who illustrated Palace Pictures UK The Evil Dead advertising campaign, and was able to add some of his never-before-seen rough sketch artwork & paintings. Since opening I have conducted interviews with a large number of people, including; Josh Becker, Howard Berger, Bruce Campbell, Don Campbell, Rick Catizone, Richard de Manincor (Hal Delrich), Angela Featherstone, Cheryl Guttridge, Danny Hicks, Graham Humphreys, Robert Kurtzman, Bart Pierce, Tim Quill, Ted Raimi, Kurt Rauf, Shannon Shea, Mark Shostrom, Scott Spiegel, Tom Sullivan, and Bill Ward, along with those who got in touch; Ellen Sandwiess, Randy Bennett, Greg Nicotero, Tim Philo, and Brian Rae.
As of May, 2017, the site is still growing with regular updates, and now spans 142 pages, with at site total of 12,224 files over 37 folders at about 16.4GB in size.
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