Ten Things You Might Not Know About … The Evil Dead!
1. A cameraman slipped during filming, smashing his camera into Bruce Campbell’s face and knocking out several of the actor’s teeth.
2. At the end of a regular day of shooting, Bruce Campbell would return home in the back of a pickup truck because he was covered in fake blood from head to toe.
3. During the scene where Ash is about to cut up his girlfriend with a chainsaw, Bruce Campbell actually had to use a real chainsaw and hold it up to the actress’s chest.
4. Bruce Campbell actually twisted his ankle on a root of a tree and was in pain when Sam Raimi thought Campbell was joking. He started to poke at the ankle and told Campbell to “stop fooling around and get ready for the next shot.”
5. The original script called for all the characters to be smoking marijuana when they are first listening to the tape. The actors decided to try this for real, and the entire scene had to be re-shot due to their uncontrolled behavior.
6. Sam Raimi originally wanted to title the film “Book of the Dead,” but producer Irvin Shapiro changed the title to “The Evil Dead” for fear that kids would be turned off seeing a movie about a book.
7. Creamed corn dyed green was used as zombie guts.
8. Joel Coen was an assistant editor on the film. He and his brother Ethan Coen needed backing for their first feature Blood Simple, so Campbell and Raimi starred in a short film based on scenes of Blood Simple for the Coens to show to potential investors.
9. Most of the second half of the film features Bruce Campbell and various stand-ins (“Fake Shemps”) to replace the actors who left the project.
10. At the end of principal shooting in Tennessee, the crew put together a little time capsule and buried it inside the fire place of the cabin as a memento of the production. The cabin has since been destroyed, but the time capsule was found by a couple of Evil Dead fans who discovered that the fireplace of the cabin was still intact.
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