Top 5 Facts About The Evil Dead Trilogy
As Halloween draws nearer, here is a breakdown of the top five facts about Sam Raimi’s famous horror trilogy.
Top 5 Facts About The Evil Dead Trilogy
As Halloween draws nearer, here is a breakdown of the top five facts about Sam Raimi’s famous horror trilogy.
5. The original was made on a shoestring budget
Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead began as a short film called Within the Woods, created to attract investors. With help from friends, Raimi and star Bruce Campbell scraped together about $350,000 to shoot the full feature in a remote cabin in Tennessee. The conditions were brutal — freezing weather, no running water, and actors often covered in sticky fake blood for days. Raimi famously said the crew called it “the most miserable experience of their lives.”
4. Raimi’s camera tricks changed horror forever
Unable to afford professional equipment, Raimi invented his own camera techniques to build the movie’s chaotic, possessed energy. He created what became known as the “shaky-cam” — a handheld camera mounted on a two-by-four and run through the woods by crew members to simulate the evil spirit’s point of view. This inventive use of low-budget cinematography influenced generations of horror filmmakers.
3. Bruce Campbell gave everything to Ash Williams
Bruce Campbell wasn’t just the star — he was also a producer, stuntman, and occasionally part of the clean-up crew. Playing Ash Williams turned into a career-defining role, but it was grueling: Campbell performed his own stunts, endured gallons of fake blood, and even dislocated his jaw during filming. By Evil Dead II, Raimi leaned fully into Campbell’s gift for physical comedy, turning Ash into an unlikely action hero. Campbell later joked in Fangoria: “I got beaten up in every movie — by monsters, trees, and Sam Raimi himself.”
2. Evil Dead II was part remake, part sequel
Because the rights to the first Evil Dead were tied up with different distributors, Raimi couldn’t legally recap its events in Evil Dead II. Instead, he recreated much of the first film’s setup in the opening sequence, leading to decades of fan debate over whether it’s a sequel or a reimagining. The film famously shifts from pure horror to splatter comedy, mixing cartoonish gore with Three Stooges-style humour. Raimi once told Empire: “I wanted to make a movie that could scare you and make you laugh at the same time — preferably in the same scene.”
1. Army of Darkness almost killed the franchise — but fans saved it
The final entry in the original trilogy, Army of Darkness (1992), took Ash out of the cabin and into medieval times after a time-travel spell gone wrong. Its mix of stop-motion skeletons, over-the-top one-liners, and dark fantasy initially confused audiences and underperformed at the box office. However, it later became a cult phenomenon through home video and midnight screenings.
