AN: Institutional Context: The Evil Dead

Independent Production: The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)

Production

• To generate investment to make the Evil Dead, Raimi made a short film called Within the Woods to show off his talent as a horror director to potential producers.
• The Evil Dead was made on a very small budget of just $100,000 as Raimi failed to attract any large investment leaving him to ask for donations and i some cases beg people for money to make the film.
• Most of the crew for the film was made up of Raimi's and his friend (also star of the film) Bruce Campbell's friends and family with the actors coming either through ads or were previously cast in his short film.
• Steve Frankel was the project's only prop/ set designer and as a result made most of the props for the film.
• The film was shot on 16mm film and was blown up to 35mm for printing.
• Due to the low production values the camera had very little proper mountings or rigs with the camera being strapped to a piece of wood to emulate steadicam for some sections.
• The film heavily used "fake shemps" (a replacement actor for someone in a film) when the actual actor wasn't available.
• The film used large amounts of practical pro-filmic effects including gallons of fake blood, prosthetics, stop motion animation for melting corpses,and large glass contact lenses.

Distribution

• The film was shown to Stephen King who loved it and gave a key line to the advertising campaign saying "the most ferociously original horror film of the year".
• The poster art for the film was made by an undiscovered artist Graham Humphries and became a huge success for the film's distribution with it's old and grungy aesthetic.
• The film was banned for a period of time in many countries for it's excessive violence and gore which helped drum up interest around it's controversy.
• The film caught the interests of New Line Cinema which after great response from preview screenings gave Raimi enough money to pay back his investors in full and agreed to distribute the film.
• The film had the unique for the time marketing spin of being released on DVD and home video simultaneously which heped to further increase buzz around the film.