SAM-RAIMI-INTERVIEW-1987

TED RAIMI INTERVIEW
BY ALAN JONES.
1987 STARBURST MAGAZINE (UK)
( VISUAL IMAGINATION LTD.)

EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN

STARBURST FEATURE BY ALAN JONES

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Shot on 16mm

The Evil Dead was shot on 16mm with a very low budget and Raimi relied more on friends rallying around than practically anything else. " It was very tough to make that picture, so in many ways Evil Dead 2 was dream come true. We had the money to hire professionals which made a great difference and we could afford to do lots of special effects I'd never been able to do before. Bruce Campbell was not only the star but the co-producer and that's the sole reason why he is alive in this picture, because he had extra pull! Actually I felt sorry for the actors on this picture because although we wanted good performances we also needed the actors to perform their own stunts and take a lot of physical bashing . It is basically Man versus Monster and the fact they all pull off convincing performances amidst such absurd circumstances says a lot about their stamina in withstanding the trials and tribulations I put them through. It was a killing schedule. We shot for 11 hours a day during the nine and a half weeks and it was very hot on the North Carolina locations."

Filming of Evil Dead 2 began on 10th May 1986. The first three and a half weeks were spent on the same location used in The Color Purple and then switched to a dilapidated high school. He continued,
" We used the school gymnasium as a sound-stage and built the cabin set there. The locker rooms were turned into costume and make-up rooms and it worked out perfectly. The only promise we had to fulfil under our agreement was to fix the leaky roof which we did at a cost of $2,000. So the community got a repaired school and we got enormous production use out of it This way all the spare money went on the 250 special effects we required. All our post production was done in Detroit but we had to go to Los Angeles for the sound recording and optical facilities. We could have done that in Ferndale but we got a better price in L.A. It's all very well giving money to young Detroit film-makers but if they can't afford to use the facilities what's the point?".

Why bother recapping?

When most people see Evil Dead 2 the first question which seems to arise is why bother recapping the first film using newly filmed footage? Raimi
explained." Firstly I don't have the Rights to The Evil Dead and therefore could not legally use anything from it. I thought of reassembling the old actors but when I gave a dinner party for them to see how viable it was, I was horrified at how fat the original Linda had become. So few people had seen the first movie I thought I'd better retell it simplifying the process. The investors of the first movie were a group of doctors who had retained the rights in America. Overseas it was Palace Pictures and Thorn EMI who had the video rights. The first film wasn't profitable for me at all you know. I went about $40,000 in debt because of that picture. I was 21 and I'd never even seen a thousand dollars let alone that amount and I had to repay it which is why I wanted a sequel made in the first place as I had promised the investors I could make a horror movie as good as they were showing at the local drive-in but for a third of the cost. It meant peanuts to the original investors as it was all pocket money they probably would have gambled away in Las Vegas. In a nutshell people acted unfairly because no-one apart from Palace returned any profits. Obviously I can't name names but morally I still owed these people and I wanted the debt repaid for my own piece of mind as much as any other reason. So we made Evil Dead 2 to break even. It's strange because all the magazine articles at the time of the first film and the media coverage fooled us all into thinking we had a blockbuster. Some people have made a fortune out of it but it wasn't us unfortunately. The sequel has paid off all my debts plus the interest and now I even have a little money in the bank."

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