Introduction
The Evil Dead is a pure horror film and considered one of the best cult films ever made . Executed on a low budget (roughly 190,000 $ ) , firstly released as “The Book of The Dead “ in 1981. Directed and executed by Sam Raimi and produced by Raimi and Bruce Campbell who also starred in the movie as Ash , the main character. Campbell and Raimi knew each other from the college days in Michigan and that’s how they also met Tom Sullivan. After a bunch of 8mm films, they decided to execute a full length film that would be played in theatres. It’s worth to mention that Raimi “injected “ a lot of humor in Evil Dead because he loved “ Three Stooges “ . A really interesting part of the research made for the movie consisted in Raimi taking everyone to watch as many bad horror films as they could because as Sullivan admits “The theory was, and I agree with him, is you can learn a lot from bad horror films because they come up with (good) ideas, but they don’t execute them effectively. One of Sam’s mantras was, ‘Steal from the best, just make it your own.’” The film even got the interest of producer Irvin Shapiro , who helped screening the film at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and even the horror author Stephen King wrote a review for the film.
The plot was five college students going in a vacation in an isolated cabin in a forest . After they find a weird book made out of human skin and a tape that when played it released demons leading to the members of the group suffering a possession . That ended up in Ash losing everyone he loved in a gore “house of horrors” .
Main body
Studying the difference between old use of FX and stop motion animation to achieve supernatural shots , compared to how they would be executed today with the technology at disposal I have picked 2 shots that would outline this research very well.
As a first shot I chose one at the beginning where the evil is seen floating on its own path through the woods, smashing trees and hunting her down eventually catching up to Cheryl in an intense and dramatic way. The roots surrounded her arms and legs as if they were living. The way the camera would shake in these shots created by Raimi gave the film a very unique feeling , it happened mainly because they couldn’t afford the camera stabilizer and ended up being one of the things Raimi is known for.
Studying the difference between old use of FX and stop motion animation to achieve supernatural shots , compared to how they would be executed today with the technology at disposal I have picked 2 shots that would outline this research very well
As a first shot I chose one at the beginning where the evil is seen floating on its own path through the woods, smashing trees and hunting her down eventually catching up to Cheryl in an intense and dramatic way. The roots surrounded her arms and legs as if they were living. The way the camera would shake in these shots created by Raimi gave the film a very unique feeling , it happened mainly because they couldn’t afford the camera stabilizer and ended up being one of the things Raimi is known for even if Sullivan recalled that Raimi “told us to lie about how it was shot. He wanted us to tell a story that we created the Shaky-Cam footage with a motorcycle, Sam was on the handlebars, that we smashed through the doors, ran into Bruce and broke his arm, a leg, and one of his ribs! “
Cheryl had to actually run through the woods with the crew following her on a dolly track , and she scratched herself so bad that she left blood on the equipment. But no one had it as bad as Bruce Campbell who got hit by the possessed characters all the time and smashed himself into doors and book shelves . He grew to be a very respected actor after the film was made, even if having a male protagonist in a horror film is a recipe for disaster , and in this case it was brilliant.
Today , with the actual technology actors wouldn’t have to hurt themselves for a shot . If I were to remake this shot I would’ve probably filmed her in a studio on a greenscreen and adding the forest after . Or maybe she could run into a forest but without the risk of being hurt and afterward they would edit the footage to look a lot more harsh . The lighting is not very natural , it is too bright most of the time in the woods where realistically you don’t really have a lot of light. Also it was a bit too warm. This probably happened due to the lack of resources where today you can get pretty good lights that are very adjustable for a decent price anyway. As for the roots surrounding her body they probably have made something like stop motion where they slowly surrounded her with the roots and pausing the footage and playing it over and over again after the roots were moved . Probably nowadays , the shot would be filmed without any roots surrounding her and them make a model of them digitally and animate it on top of the actual footage .
The second shot I chose is focusing on the FX make up and the stop motion puppets used for the final shots . They are very well made for the almost non existent budget for FX ( approximately 400$ )
When the possessed Cheryl starts to decompose at first, it’s her with a mask and then it changes into a puppet. This kind of difference can be observed due to the movement of flesh . Tom Sullivan says that he had the freedom to be as creative as he wanted with the FX make-up and puppets, the low budget was the only thing that was stopping them from making the FX as scary as The Exorcist. “Almost all the make-ups were built up every day from scratch which took quite some time. “I’d wake the actors up, grab ‘em, bring them into the make-up section, lay them down on the cot, let them go back to sleep, and dab latex paints on their face for the next four or five hours. Then we’d wake them up, and they’d go act.” The blood was made from a classic formula of corn syrup and food coloring but they also added coffee to add effect to the shades of red that were used at the time, which would change the colors themselves of the blood to a dark-ish yellow kind of brown, (to add effect of puss and infection). When on the other hand , these days you can find fake blood that looks a lot more convincing and you don’t really have to bother with getting the perfect shade of red .
At the beggining of Cheryl decomposing , it’s still her with a lot of make-up on her . They used acrylic paint wich is toxic for human skin and latex . Sullivan got his supplies for R&D and he said that foam latex was “like whipping cake mix and bake it ” . Everything was applied straight to her face .
Everything was applied straight on her face, and therefore on every possessed characters face , making the actress feeling very claustrophobic and after fourteen hours of shooting they would become completely unbearable , when, on the other hand, today’s FX make-up would be a bit different, obviously without using acrylic paint and materials that are harmful to humans. They would take a mold of her face and make a mask with all the make-up saving her from staying lots of hours without moving for the crew to do their job. It is also worth to mention the full scleric contacts used when the characters were possessed making them completely blind . They had a plastic applicator that the lens is mounted on and popped onto the eyeball . It sounds very harsh and they also said that when they were out of sterile liquid and didn’t have clean water , they used coffee instead.
Today instead of all that suffering for wearing those scleric lenses, after the shot would be filmed , they would simply track her eyes and paint them white instead so no one has to be blind anymore.
The stop motion puppet that appears when she starts to decompose heavily ( they added few seconds on Ash’s face in between probably to make the difference less obvious ) Is made of painted clay and it doesn’t really look very realistic , also the movement of the clay due to all the frames that had to be recorded with every small movement makes It look a bit cartoonish . Today , as I could see in the video above, they would make a completely new person out of silicone or latex that looks so real even actors on set get frightened by it sometimes. It probably takes a lot more time and money for the FX makeup artists to create those duplicates and then animate them later on but the results are blurring the lines of what’s real and what is not and in my opinion it is definetly worth it . And the biggest difference between how they did that in the 80’s and how it would’ve been executed today is that stop motion animation is not used anymore at all for such realistic shots, and instead 3d modelling would take the place . Everything is getting digitalised . Not even the part with the book of the dead moving its tongue , instead, they would just film the book and add the tongue afterwards. And the flames would be executed a lot better today aswell because even the basic technologies are growing to be so advanced it’s mindblowing .
As Sullivan recalls, there were “no days off, the food wasn’t the greatest, you can only go on macaroni and cheese for so many days, but everybody was really focused on what they were doing.” Sullivan recalled he was running on just a few hours of sleep a night. “I was the last guy to bed, and the first guy to get up,” he says. “Almost all the make-ups were build up every day by scratch. I’d wake the actors up, grab ‘em, bring them into the make-up section, lay them down on the cot, let them go back to sleep, and dab latex paints on their face for the next four or five hours. Then we’d wake them up, and they’d go act.” As a conclusion I can say that for a film that has been made with such a low budget in that period of time , they did a really good job . Everyone must’ve been very passionate about what they were doing so much and suffered the really bad conditions they had on set as in no electricity , very bad food , toxic makeup , not having a warm place to relax while you wait or after you’ve done your job , everything proves how determined everyone was and the fact that if you really want to , you can make a good movie with your friends without having a very big budget. And that makes this film go into my top 5 old films from all the time and Sullivan to become a kind of role model for me as I am going on with my career in the film industry . Due to the first film’s success they got their hands on a bigger budget for The Evil Dead 2 .
Bibliography :
https://www.tested.com/art/movies/462662-how-evil-deads-tom-sullivan-mastered-low-budget-effects/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evil_Dead
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