45 Years Later, The Evil Dead Is Still Revolutionizing Horror
There was a cabin in the woods...
While growing up in Royal Oak, Michigan, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell loved movies and made several 8mm films together. By the time they got to college, they followed the old adage that the best way into the movie business is by making a horror film — a genre they were fans of — and created a $1600 short called Within the Woods, which they used as a calling card and proof of concept for greater ambitions.
By then, other upstarts like producer Rob Tapert, writer Scott Spiegel, and makeup effects artist Tom Sullivan had joined the fledgling production group led by Raimi and Campbell. Thanks to their efforts on Within the Woods, they raised around $90,000 to begin production on what was then called Book of the Dead, a feature-length expansion of the premise that first hit theaters 45 years ago today.
They eventually cobbled together enough of a budget ($375,000, from essentially anyone in Michigan willing to part with a few bucks) to make a movie starring Campbell and a handful of local actors, with friends and family as the crew, filmed in a single, abandoned cabin deep in the woods of Morristown, Tennessee — which doubled as the accommodations for all 13 production members.
The result was The Evil Dead, which not only launched a franchise and two iconic careers, but influenced generations of filmmakers seeking to replicate the movie's anarchic spirit and DIY aesthetic. The Evil Dead’s impact on the genre can’t be overstated, from the invention of a now-classic camera move to the fusing of several disparate influences — including comic books, the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, and the Three Stooges — to forge a new, ultra-splattery style of comedic horror that’s lasted for 45 years.
Campbell stars as Ash Williams, a college student who heads to a remote cabin for the weekend with his girlfriend (Betsy Baker), his sister (Ellen Sandweiss), and another couple (Richard DeManincor and Theresa Tilly). The group finds a book — the Book of the Dead, aka the Necronomicon — in the cellar, along with a tape recorder and several recordings left by an archaeologist, via which they inadvertently awaken demonic entities that begin to possess the group in a veritable orgy of blood, mutilation, and body horror.
Bruce has a bad time.
Raimi and company used their meager budget to pull off some astonishing makeup effects, while improvising certain shots — like the unseen demon hurling through the woods — by attaching the production’s 16mm camera to a wooden plank and having crew members run with it. The “shaky cam” effect became not only a trademark of the Evil Dead franchise, but a go-to shot in filmmaking. The film’s blend of genuine terror with slapstick humor, as well as Raimi’s fearless insistence on extreme gore and shocks, made The Evil Dead a horror experience unlike any other.
Although shooting commenced in 1979, the finished film wasn’t shown to the public until 1981, when Raimi premiered it at the Redford Theater in Detroit (incidentally, a little editing was done by Joel Coen, who was working as an assistant for Detroit-based editor Edna Paul). The movie developed buzz almost immediately, and Raimi began meeting with any film professionals he could to find distribution.
Raimi eventually got Evil Dead in front of producer Irvin Shapiro, who secured a screening at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. That’s where it was seen by Stephen King, who called it “the most ferociously original horror film of the year.” That weighty endorsement, along with the movie being championed by revered horror magazine Fangoria, eventually led to distribution through New Line Cinema, with the tiny indie grossing eight times its budget domestically, officially making it a cult hit.
The Evil Dead sported impressive effects work for its shoestring budget.
About that franchise: in addition to six films and a TV series, there have been video games, comic books, and even a stage musical. The Evil Dead is credited with influencing several other video games, including Resident Evil and Doom, while also inspiring films like Dead Alive, The Cabin in the Woods, and Shaun of the Dead, among many others. Although sequels like Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness leaned heavily into comedy, the original film is more intense than you might remember, a tone that recent entries, like 2026’s Evil Dead Burn, tried to emulate with mixed results.
Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert still collaborate to this day, with Campbell starring in numerous TV shows and movies, and Raimi climbing to the top of the directing world with his groundbreaking Spider-Man trilogy. It all began in that little cabin in the Tennessee woods, where they made The Evil Dead out of next to nothing — and made horror history in the process.
The Evil Dead is available on YouTube.
