Making a Cult Classic: Behind the Scenes of 'Evil Dead 2'

Exterior Set

From left: Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and producer Rob Tapert on the exterior set of Evil Dead II, a location previously used for Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple.

'Horrific' Moment

"The scene where Ash is in the work shed and Linda's head is in the vice, the door flies open and Linda's rotten, headless corpse comes charging at him with a chain saw … that scene is not in the original script," said SFX coordinator Greg Nicotero. "That was written once we got to location. I think there was one rewrite. I remember reading that scene and thinking, 'This is one of the most horrific moments.' "

Character Development

"I would get the call sheet every day and there was always some stupid rig that I had to be in, or some monster makeup, or me cutting my arm off, or shooting someone in the face, and that always kept me busy," said Campbell. "I never had to sit down and go "Sam, listen. Let's talk about my character …"

Bigger Budget

"Evil Dead II was really a big-budget remake of the first Evil Dead -- the idea that they had a couple million dollars to make this movie versus the few hundred thousand they made the first movie with. Sam really pushed the envelope. By hiring a Hollywood makeup effects company, he wanted to elevate the quality of the makeup effects. Evil Dead was a couple of guys who did it in their basement," said Nicotero.

Makeup Call

"If I had an early call -- early for that character would be like 9 a.m. -- the process would typically start at 3 a.m.," said Ted Raimi, Sam's brother, who played the villainess Possessed Henrietta. "They would begin gluing prosthetics on my face. That took about two hours. Then they would do the hands. Then the suit would go on, but the suit had giant bean bags to give it girth, which increased the weight by 20 pounds. [After] the suit went on, it had to be blended into the face."

'I Need Naked Fat Ladies'

"When I started sculpting Henrietta's body, I didn't have any reference photos," said creature designer Mark Shostrom. "I had one European photography book, these cool art photos that had some fat people occasionally. So I sent someone out -- this is before the Internet -- to a couple magazine stores. 'Find me porn magazines, calendars -- I need naked fat ladies!' And he only found one, a calendar. But I later saw a rather fat lady at a pizza shop and she had these varicose veins on her legs, so I added that. I had very little reference."

Taxing Work

Henrietta jumps into attack mode. According to Ted Raimi, wearing the costume was so taxing on his body that he required a respirator in between takes. "There are several shots in the film where he's up on the wire and you can see this huge stream of sweat. Not a drip -- a faucet stream coming out of his ear," recalled Shostrom.

Blood Work

"We went out of our way to change the color of the blood so that it didn't seem too realistic," said Tapert. "But [the MPAA was] always going to be harsh because we took the first picture out without a rating. To Dino [De Laurentiis]'s credit, he thought that was the strength of it. He didn't want to cut it. So he formed another company to put it out because Dino couldn't put it out without a rating."

Handy Man

Greg Nicotero, who operated a number of puppets on Evil Dead II, prepares a set of hands for a scene. "I didn't understand the comedy aspect until I got to know Sam," he said. "We were shooting the eyeball fly ball, where they step on the Pee-Wee head and the eyeball flies into Kassie Wesley's mouth. He was like, 'This is a direct rip-off of one of the pie fight episodes from The Three Stooges!' It all fell into place. He has a fantastic imagination and also a great sense of humor."

Helping Hands

Co-writer Scott Spiegel on the movie's comedic animated hand brawl: "I had done a short called Attack of the Helping Hand, [where] the Hamburger Helper hand gets frisky with a housewife. She battles him -- most of the gags ended up in Evil Dead II."

Finishing Touches

Howard Berger adds the finishing touches to an Evil Dead II prosthetic. "We had about 12 weeks in my shop with seven people on the main crew," recalled Shostrom. "But there was so much stuff to make. We basically finished Henrietta's molds and shipped them to North Carolina. When we got there, we had the lab set up in the high school [where the interiors were shot]."

Hard to Soft Contacts

Campbell got down and dirty while wearing Evil Dead II's signature glossy contact lenses. "With the first Evil Dead they were sclera lenses and they were made out of glass," the actor recalled. "They were a hard contact. For Evil Dead II the breakthrough was that, though they were still the sclera lenses, they were finally 'soft.' So it was like putting a piece of Tupperware under your eyelids."

Schlock Horror

Nicotero was amazed with how much violence they were able to actually show in the movie. "So much of the violence in Texas Chainsaw Massacre was implied. That was the brilliance of Tobe Hooper. Then it went into Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Dead, movies that celebrated the gag of it all. Evil Dead II was at the pinnacle of that."

'Like 'Jackass' With Plot'

Raimi, Campbell and Spiegel all came from slapstick backgrounds, fully exploited in their days of Super 8 home movies. "We were like Jackass with plot," Campbell recalled. "The sad thing about all this is that most people will not see the ridiculous physical capabilities that Sam has!"