Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Evil Dead

Episode Date: March 20, 2022

It’s Sam Raimi time - groovy! Our new series PODCAST ME TO HELL kicks off with a banger - 1981’s ultra-low-budget horror classic “The Evil Dead”. We’ll be taking you back to Royal Oak, Michigan, to explain how Raimi linked up with Bruce Campbell and the Coen Brothers, thus establishing a very consequential partnership. We’ll be dissecting exactly why this film (from a lean 14-page script!!) works so well. David will admit that he first learned about this movie from watching “Donnie Darko”. And then all of a sudden…*CRASH*...a branch goes through the window! All that, plus TWO box office games! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

I believe I have made a significant find at the Kandarian ruins. A volume of ancient Sumerian burial practices and funerary incantations. It is entitled Naturum De Montum, roughly translated, Book of the Dead. The book is bound in human flesh and inked in human blood. It deals with demons and demon resurrections, and those forces which roam the forest and dark bowers of man's domain. The first few pages warn that these enduring creatures may lie dormant, but are never truly dead. They may be recalled to active life through the incantations presented in this book.

It is through the recitation of these passages that the demons are given license to podcast the living. Is it Possess? It is Possess. Yeah, figured. Okay, okay, okay. Very good. Right? What else were you going to do?

It's also, I mean, there are other things. I guess you could do the weird words. Well, I was thinking that. There's also the Linda singing, like, we're going to podcast you. Or you could do the cards. Yes. That would be fun actually

actually lots of great lines in the evil dead i take it back there is but here's the thing that i forgot uh watching this movie for the first time in a long time a movie i was very obsessed with when i was a teenager and just i had not seen so long the second half of this movie is essentially silent no talking yeah it is wild how dialogue list it becomes you know how long the script was how long 14 pages yep sounds about right that's how long the script for this film was sounds about right

it's a research bomb for you there I mean it's also a thing where like I mean we got JJ did some talk about an archaeologist going in and excavating the ruins and finding the book of the dead JJ and Nick are researchers found a lot of stuff for this but Talk about an archaeologist going in and excavating the ruins and finding the Book of the Dead. JJ and Nick are researchers, found a lot of stuff for this.

But this is one of those movies. This is such a canonical text of like modern cult cinema, right? And it's also one of these movies that is at the beginning of like every single person. Not the very beginning, but it's in the early stages. Halloween is maybe an earlier example of this. No, go on. person not not the very beginning but is in the early stages halloween is maybe an earlier example every single person who worked on this movie kind of has an identity based in i tell the stories about what it was like working on the evil death i right i actually and worse this isn't maybe an odd start to this episode but yes i i was sort of commiserating with jj because i was i know this must be one of those things where there's so many half truths and weird legends my exact point about

the making this movie because this one guy is like yeah i held the boom mic it was crazy you know very good at what he does well he's very thorough he really worked to he was like the wikipedia page is shockingly inaccurate it's insane yeah yeah but also i was watching i was digging into special features and this is one of the most famously re-released double-dipple, quadruple, quintuple-dipped... Many discs. Right. Scattered special features. I now think I own four different versions of this movie. Right. This 85-minute micro-budget movie.

Which I've been stocking up on them recently, trying to get more comprehensive special features for the sake of this episode. But within, like, one featurette on the same edition three people will contradict each other so you know it was a long time ago it's like everything about it becomes urban legend but it is one of those things where you're like 14 pages i think it was supposed to be six weeks of filming it became 12 okay yeah it was 11 or 12 right and the budget was ostensibly 150 and then depending on who you believe it either went up to 350 or 500 yeah 375 is a number

i see but but don't you think it's also it's just like and you're saying this i'm just like it was a a weird trying shoot Everyone was doing a million things. And, like, then 20 years on, you're kind of like, you're just going to sort of inflate some of it in your mind. Of course. Everyone lost their hearing. I'm trying to think of some, that's not true. Absolutely, yes. We were eating three-day-old sandwiches we took out of a garbage can, you know, whatever.

Just the legend of Disney shoots. There's so many stories like that. we took out of a garbage can you know whatever just the legend there's so many stories like that and and and that all the stories are based in like in some ways they were surprisingly professional and the shoot was so much better organized than you would imagine that this movie exists is right is miraculous and they were just like i was watching interviews with the actresses where they were like it was surprising when we showed up to set that they had like scripts printed they had the sides every day they had proper contracts figured out like in some senses they were very professional about things and in other senses it was total chaos and there are people who worked on this

movie who went on to have other careers there are people who have sort of made their careers off of being involved in this movie and everyone is constantly sharing these stories and going to conventions and doing retrospectives and interviews and oral histories so there are just so many accounts of this film uh a film called the evil dead the evil dead which you got to give it credit right off the bat pretty fucking great title which is hilarious because they did not like the title and it was like a pretty last minute it was supposed to be the Book of the Dead for most of its life. But in that sort of like William Castle, like, you know, Roger Corman sort of school of like, what are three words you can put on a poster that like I can sell?

There's such a beautiful simplicity to The Evil Dead. I think it's such a good title. It's so incredible. And. I think it's such a good title. It's so incredible. And not only is it like such a good title, but it also feels like a pretty good representation of what this movie is. Yeah. Like there are obviously a lot of movies with possession and with demons and with like fucking spirits fucking with people and whatever. But I'm like, how would you describe the forces in the movie? And you're like,

they're like evil dead. Pretty much. They're dead. They're evil. They're evil. They're dead. They're evil. And they kind of just keep coming back.

But also the fact that it's called the evil dead. Like there's not a villain in this movie. The villain is this force, right? Yeah. God, this movie is really good it is really good it seems like you know i mean i don't know why i didn't know this that you are deep on this

movie or were at one point in your life look the second i started re-watching this last night i was like i think this was kind of my halloween at the time the way you talk about your relationship to halloween and i'd sort of forgotten it because I hadn't watched it in so long, but I think this trilogy really functioned that way for me, and this movie perhaps was the first time that sort of primal horror film

gripped me in that kind of way. But it's got everything you like. It's got practical effects. The later ones have got a lot of humor. That's why Evil Dead 2 is perfect. Pantheon movie for me because it's i mean i love evil dead it's all of it i mean yeah i love evil dead one yeah i have only seen army of darkness once or twice that one i actually don't know that well but uh but i you know i i love the evil dead i love it but i

i'm not like you know i was it was not my i think i rate evil dead 2 so highly that in my memory i was sort of like and this was actually much like when we did our cameron series and it's like i love terminator 2 i saw terminator 1 once i think terminator 1 is the good ground you know sort of building uh and then watching terminator 2 as a slightly more adult person or terminator 1 is like more adult person i or Terminator 1 as a slightly more adult person. I'm like, oh, I appreciate the viciousness of this. I think I watched Evil Dead 1, like I rented it from the video store knowing like,

and now next week I get to watch Evil Dead 2. That's the one that everyone tells me rips. But I was surprised by how much more gripped I was by Evil Dead 1 and how much it sort of like burrowed into me. But I haven't watched it in a long time. Look, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. It is. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who

have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby. All true. And this is one of those ones inevitable, right? since we started the show we talk about directors being inevitable and people go they say so many people are inevitable

never get to them campion and ramey were two high ups on the inevitable list absolutely and they were always our plan for the beginning of 2022 we flipped them because of dr strange getting pushed back but say his full name sam rame. I wonder if he's a Samuel. Samuel Raimi. Samuel M. Raimi. Samuel M. Raimi. I don't know what the M stands for. I believe the name of this miniseries is Podcast Me to Hell.

I got no beef with it. I just think we should at least talk through the other options. Salute some fallen soldiers. Well, look, I put a valiant effort behind pod me of dark cast no you didn't i did i wanted you said it once i did not say it once i said multiple times and then when ben protested that our suggestions were not sweaty enough you were like i said pod me of darkness like you already mangled it like show some respect

no no i'm saying you didn't even get it right well it takes a couple times sure i'm sorry that's the process uh-huh uh you did throw out pod me of dark cast right ben threw out one that was really good do you want to repeat it ben do you remember oh yeah absolutely it was uh potter man three casts uh yeah really really good uh i remember it being Spider Pod 3 cast. I remember it being that. Spider Pod Man 3. I don't even know. Spider Pod 3 cast. The thing I remember distinctively is that...

The thing I remember is that you put cast after 3, which there's nothing after 3 in the regular title. I mean, you're changing the whole sort of like... Right. The calculus of how we come up

with these titles. I think I threw out a simple podcast. threw it for love of the podcast for part of the for for part of the love part of the cast um yeah you know drag me to hell is just such a hall of fame title it truly is i think like just as a title yeah of a film yeah right so more than anything else i kind of want to salute that title uh we talk about evil dead being a good title and it is and it is and obviously evil dead to dead by dawn dead by dawn's an incredible subtitle it is but drag me to hell was just like seeing that on a fucking poster hearing the announcement sam ramey's going back to horror his movie's called drag me to hell uh so excited podcast me to hell i'm sorry i already podcast me to hell great that's what it's called it's decided put in uh yeah like right some kind of a sound effects ben i'm

taking a stamp i'm putting it on the ink pad sure anyway i've been looking for ages about whatever this movie was you've been searching in the kandarian ruins yeah exactly well you know uh guys uh i mean we shouldn't spend too much time on this but i i did find this old tape player in the woods recently ben was going through uh the boneyard also known as the hazzaleum. Or no, this is your childhood home in Jersey where the jeans were buried. Well, yeah, I mean, I happened upon some woods and I found an old tape player

and I thought maybe we could just quickly, I don't know, play it on the pod. Is that a wild idea? I don't love sidebars on this podcast. I like to stay focused on the movie at hand, and I don't see how this has anything to do with the film we're talking about today. But yes, I will allow it briefly if you want to play this tape. Okay, here I am.

Okay, I've got the tape. Oh, Jesus. Okay, wait. So it's not even a file on your computer. This is a reel-to-reel. Yeah, yeah. I'll just get the tape queued up here on the player and play. Okay, that doesn't sound like English.

No, it doesn't. I'm hearing some buzzing right now, sort of a head-crushing feeling, like a truck is driving through the room. A little bit. A little bit of that. Okay. Good vibes. I'm sort of wondering if that wasn't a good idea, actually.

I don't know. I feel great. You guys always have eyes that are bleeding black mud, right? Yeah, so that's it. We're just, we're done with that sidebar and we can move on with the rest of our episode, right? I mean, I think there's no reason we need to acknowledge this ever again.

I don't think it will come back to haunt us. But this is one of those incredibly famous debut film stories in so many ways right absolutely it's it's this is the the kind of legend so like you say some people hear the spielberg legend of like that kid just kind of conned his way onto a back lot right and sat in an empty office and started taking meetings so like you know uh with with raymond it's like yeah him and his friends went in the woods and they made like one of the most iconic movies horror movies ever like i think that's so much of the the i can do that the legendary status of the movie yes is that is the like they just did it yeah they just said let's

make a movie who do i have what do we have at our disposal and then one of the special features i was watching that was i think from 2006 that was like a lot of people involved the movie but also edgar wright and eli roth and a lot of the sort of children of the evil dead right that class of filmmakers talk about this movie um uh joe bob briggs horror film sort of historian was was sort of saying like i think he was the one who said this, that, like, you see so many of these types of movies where it's like a bunch of film loving kids got together in the woods with a shoestring budget and they figured something out. And he was like, this was the first time I'd seen one of these movies that didn't feel like it was written to the limitations. Right, right. movies that didn't feel like it was written to the limitations right right because even to this day yeah i'll see a really good horror movie yes but you definitely you have that thing in the back your head saying like this person wrote a one million dollar script right and they wrote it

in this genre because they knew it's a genre you can raise a million dollars you know like horror you know like i don't think that's cynical no no i don't have a problem but like you do sort of right you're like right this is set in a house or right this is right it's something like that and like you know uh rob tapper uh ramey's regular partner producing partner especially for these early films uh renaissance films renaissance pictures um was sort of saying that it was like, Raimi was, you know, when he was starting out,

I mean, he's obviously from this sort of Super 8 generation, right? And then as he's growing up, he's more seriously making films with his friends and everybody. But that like, horror was not the thing that he was developing, that he was more into comedy and drama,

and that they had made the short film within the woods that got some traction, and they immediately realized this thing that many, if not most, young filmmakers realize. You can always sort of get a horror movie financed within a certain budget. It's one of those things that is just endlessly sellable. Look, we got a lot of context that I want to give you um then i'm sure you have some for me as well but all of that to say it is incredible when they sit down and there's the strategically minded like we're writing a movie that we know can get made and we know we can make within a limited budget it's our friends they're in a cabin in the woods it's contained all this sort of shit that then this film is loaded with so many fucking ideas. Sure, that's true. Yeah, almost too many.

Yeah, absolutely. Right, not that I mind. The weird contradictory nature to this movie is like, he just went off and did it, but also what he did is insane and feels like is not desperado, you know? No, right. Or El Mariachi, I'm sorry. El Mariachi.

I'm trying to, that's another one like that. It's not Blair Witch Project. It's not. Blair Witch Project. But forget the Blair Witch Project'm trying to, that's another one. It's not Blair Witch Project. It's not. Blair Witch Project. But forget the Blair Witch Project, of course, because they don't. It's not Slacker. Slacker. Clerks.

I mean, all these obvious. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Me and my friends just made this. Right. With El Mariachi, you have the, he like, you know, sold his blood.

Yes. Or, you know, like they'll get the lore of like, oh, you know, his dentist gave him 10 grand, you know, whatever. We're going to talk about it with this man. Yes. All right. Well, the evil dead. The evil dead. Sam Raimi, podcast me to hell.

We're doing it. Look, the man is, as Griffin said, an obvious candidate for our miniseries. Always has been. He's got a new film coming out. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I don't know what that's about. His first in nine years? Eight years? His first film in nine years. Sucks. I suppose it was

originally going to be eight. But then there was a pandemic. But let's wind it back because Sam Raimi, I mean this is the guarantor sure i mean like you said multiple guarantor like this is it it's the rare first film guarantor i just want to wind it back one more second because i don't think we properly introduced the person who took out the real-world tape recorder because this is a guestless episode love when my when my co-host

holds his phone up yep yeah no i agree it's a guest episode episode. Love when my co-host holds his phone up. Yeah, no, I agree. It's a guestless episode, which means we have the time. His name is Producer Ben. Hey, what's up? But he also goes by some other names. Perdue or Ben,

the Ben Ducer, the Poet Laureate, the Meat Lover, the Tiebreaker, the Fart Detective, our finest film critic, the Peeper, Birthday Benny,

Hello Fennel, not Professor Crispy, the Fuckmaster, Dirt Bike Benny, White Hot Benny, Soak and Wet Benny, The Haas, Mr. Positive, Mr. Haasev, Close Personal Friend of Dan Lewis, The Voice of Reason, Santa Haas, The Commish, Wishful Ben, Haasleywood. He's

also graduated to a series of different titles over the course of several miniseries, such as Producer Ben Kenobi, Kylo Ben, Ben Knight Shyamalan, Ben Sait, Say Bennything, dot dot dot, Ailey Benz with a dollar sign, War Haas, Purdue Urbane, Ben 19, The Fennel Maker, Robo Haas, Benglish, Mr. Ben Credible. Eat Drink Ben Haas.

Beetle Vape Juice. The Haas of the Day. Public Benemies. Haasico of the Ditch of the Jersey. Stop Making Benz with a Z. Haas Pig in the City. Ben Haasly Met Sally. Dot, dot, dot.

The Secret Life of Benz with a Z. Slow down. The Great Mouse Fart Detect. The Haas Break Kid. Benz in the Haas with two Zs. Ben Skate from New Haas. And Bronco Benny. I just wanted you to slow down for the last because I don't know them as well.

But no, no, it's okay. No, we don't need to. I got it. Hossica. No. Of the Ditch of the Jersey. So wait, so wait. So Carpenter is...

Benscape from New Haas. Yeah. Singleton is Ben's in the Haas. Look, all these are up for revision. Yeah, I want another swing at the Carpenter. We can do a lot better than that. We've maybe been getting a little lazy with the... But Bronco Benny?

That's what Lawson said, which I think was good. I know, I just want to give it a little moment in the sun. Bronco Benny just feels like the best one. Ben is mythical in a Bronco Henry type way. Wow. Wow. Bronco Benny. I agree.

He's here with us today.'m here i'm i'm mythical yeah i'm excited to talk about this movie a lot of chains in this movie and so you're saying that that that real real tape recorder would include chanting in a language i didn't understand you're saying that that was announcing a new miniseries it was just asserting what we already know that this is a new miniseries? Yep. Okay, so that's normal. Seems totally normal and whatever. Nothing else will happen. Nothing else will happen.

No, I don't think so. Nothing will be awoken. No, nothing will be awoken. I agree that this is not the only instance of this, but this is a rare instance within our show where the first film is absolutely unequivocally a guarantor because yeah yeah uh and it it has a bit of an odd journey to getting there because this movie has a very slow burn in terms of release nonetheless nonetheless it's the calling

card but it's also the you know and again again he has other you know like movies that sort of leap him further up the ladder or whatever i guess he graduates in a way um i mean i think there is an escalation with the three ash movies i think simple plan takes him to a different level by his own admission of just sort of like you've graduated to showing you're not a bag of tricks filmmaker yeah and then spider-man obviously takes him to another level with a level that's sort of i guess my in my head i'm like why does he get spider-man but you know what we'll get to that we'll get to it but but here's the thing like just before we dig into the context of him that is another reason he's fascinating is he is one of these guys we were just sort of talking about

this right before we recorded who really became like a cult filmmaker in a modern way not just in that his films had this big sort of cult following behind them but that he was viewed as this like folk hero that everyone who worked on his movies people memorize the names of like who the model makers are you know there's a little bit of that in carpenter's career certainly there is and we were saying like uh kevin smith someone who will never appear on this podcast has that as well you know where there's like the stories about the film getting made all of the collaborators everyone involved in them becomes a comic-con sort of like perennial figure all of that and i also think ramey is someone who benefits from the early days of uh the internet and comic book store culture

where people were just like it's like the record store like you know who's really fucking cool is sam ramey um agree with all that but even before the internet you know the vangorias and yes you know all that like that's the horror cult circuit yes the 80s and 90s people feel kind of personally invested yeah they're rooting for him in a way oh i know his brothers and how they collaborate and the bruce relationship and bruce is like the original king of the comic con bruce the you know and then like the car his car is always in it the fake shim the car a little like all that it the fake shim it's all a little like that feels like he's at the beginning of a thing if not the first right he's in the early days of

a thing that's now become much more of a thing which is like you watch an edgar wright movie looking out for the cornetto rapper or whatever you know right you understand who his old friends are that he's bringing back and like uh ramey that that builds around him in the early days yeah and and has persisted all right let's do i have things to say about this okay and by the way um jj and nick usually send us a dossier as like a google drive link but this time it is a hard copy bound in human flesh of course and it's talking to me yeah and i'm gonna draw it for you uh i'm acting like i'm possessed it's very funny it's a good performance sam ramey born in royal oaks michigan we all know it yep we love it we've all been royal sorry royal oak michigan oh yes we all know it we all like a detroit suburb he's from detroit um he's jewish

love got a stan love it uh his parents are i think his mom owned a lingerie store like they're like local shop owners is he jewish and italian jews man just straight up jews jews from russia and hungary conservative jews conservative meaning the sort of you know the kind of judaism they practice not their politics um and like like you said you know like these movie brats he's a little eight millimeter kid he's watching movies like his dad's taking him to the cinema he says fantastic voyage i think was one of the first ones for him like his older brother ivan becomes a doctor writes a lot of the stuff with him and then uh you have ted ramey his

younger brother who's an actor who's in yes there's a brother who i will talk about as well fourth brother you mean right well oh oh third brother of sam fourth boy uh yes um likes movies loves television also crucial i think to all these guys because you're watching the reruns of old movies on tv which is a new thing in the 50s but also like the big saturday movie and all these but also he loves the three stooges which he's obsessed with and it's sort of a big influence on him i think everyone on the evil dead in all these books talks about how he would like reference evil three stooges sketches right like about visual stuff like that yeah where are you on the Three Stooges, by the way?

I feel like we've united on this where we're both kind of like only seen in little bits. I feel like there are... No beef with them. I don't want them beating me up. I feel like there are... Don't make me go over there and whack you upside your head and poke you in your eyes, David.

Right, make my eyes cross or whatever and go like... I feel like there's certainly a type of person who thumbs their nose at the three stooges and goes like they're not intellectual they're not they're no laurel and hardy they're no more brothers right yeah right there's that sort of like divide i have never really been into them but i also have no judgment of it whatsoever and i will say i like i've watched a lot more marks brothers than i have three stooges three stooges would be in circulation we were kids i guess so it is weird to think that we were like of the last generation where there just wasn't that much children's television where sometimes it'd be like beyond there's an hour of three stooges on some deep channel i guess so i i never watched a lot of it but i was like

familiar with them i i've certainly seen some of it. Well, I have news for you both. I love the Three Stooges. I've watched them the most out of all of the other groups you've referenced. Who's your guy? Okay. It's Curly. Okay.

Because Curly is kind of lovable. He's the least mean one. That's why I always liked him. And he's just of like goofy and he's the one who's like yeah and he does a great move sometimes where he he spins around on the floor i know about that obviously yeah i'm a victim of psychom stance wait he's like that he talks like a brooklyn guy yeah uh all right anyway uh another thing that the ramies all love magic big influence again you can kind of see it in shoestring filmmaking, right? Absolutely. This movie is using every technique in the book.

So that, in fact, is what makes him friends with his high school classmate, Bruce Campbell. Yes. Hunk. Yeah. Big Chin. Star of the Evil Dead. And just one of these things you love when two people just find each other that early on in life

and are like, you care about this shit as much as I do and their careers are able to completely develop in tandem, you know? Yeah. You just think of like, how fucking lucky is it those two guys end up in the same high school? That they find each other. It's beautiful and

makes me happy. I will note, it's it's beautiful and makes me happy yeah i i will note it's not that i mean it doesn't i don't think it's like something that comes up a lot but he has an older brother called sander who died who drowned when he was 15 years old which i think cast a crazy paul over the family especially when he was reaming i think was nine at the time uh that's in here uh what are some other i'm trying to sort of think of you know ellen sandweiss who's in this film josh becker scott's movie they're all they're called the michigan mafia they're all in this little sort of like michigan kid movie drama sort of circle i guess well let's also mention they're all doing

plays they're all making little super eight movies. Who else is Sam Raimi and his crew hanging out with all the time these days? These days? No, in this time period. Because I don't know who Sam Raimi's hanging out these days. He and Jon Favreau seem very close. Who? The Coen Brothers. Well, the Coen Brothers, I don't know about

that. When do they hang out? Like, not in high school, right? The Coen Brothers, of course, are from Minnesota. But, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Not in high school right the coen brothers of course are from minnesota but i'm sorry i'm sorry right not not in high school i i know you're you were just invoking the actresses but um they're in high school they're in high school with them okay gotcha gotcha gotcha no i just know the fact i'm sorry if i'm jumping over in time here but like the coen brothers always cite the exact thing we were saying where it was like sam raimi was the first person we knew who made a movie who suddenly made that leap where you're like oh you can go from being the guy on the couch talking about what

you would do to just fucking doing it yes uh yeah no we'll talk about joel sorry sorry sorry i was jumping ahead so overeager so you know they're also they're all making their little super eight movies they all go to michigan state i think or some of them do. Raimi goes to Michigan State, and Bruce Campbell goes to Western Michigan. Jesus. But at Michigan State, he meets Robert Tapert. Is that how you say his name? I think it's

Tapert, but I might be wrong. The guy who produced this movie, right? Another one of his chief collaborators. Right, because then he I mean, they do another just weird facet of rami's career that i do think factors into him getting the spider-man job is that the two of them become the kings of like daytime syndicated adventure shows right that tappert and ramey have their xena hercules yeah jack of all trades briscoe county it was a moneymaker back then right you

know those syndicated shows yeah uh tappert of course now married to lucy lawless has been for the last 30 years they have kids they're happy um and then he and tappert uh also have ghost house pictures which has been very big for them for the last 25 years doing yeah here's the thing that i think is interesting horror films next generation yes you know they start making their shitty little movies one of them is called the happy valley kid they make it for like a thousand dollars yeah and they would start showing them at like on campus yeah and they would make like like say they spend a thousand dollars they'd make five thousand right like so they actually had a little bit of a

pipeline in their brains of like okay you can like turn money around that's where tapper in this thing i was watching said he took notice of them was oh, it's not even like that they're good filmmakers. It's that they have some weird, like show busy, like money making instinct here. They figured out a model. There was some weird thing they figured out in terms of like, they'll pay you to put on an event at the college. And that's greater than the amount of cost to rent the equipment to do that. So they could get paid by the school as if they were like bringing in outside entertainment almost it was something like that i'm getting it wrong but yes they were making money off of screening their short films uh they were uh this is ramey's quote uh we would rent an auditorium space run on newspaper ads we'd sell tickets we acted as our own projectionists yes and it was a great learning experience we would sit among the audience as they screamed this sucks after a while out of self-defense we would make better films right uh but the thing that uh tim philo who i think is the dp i think that's how you say his name uh on evil dead says is when you project the movie out of a super eight um projector you have to keep he this is how he puts it you

have your hand on the control trying to keep the sound in sync, you're doing a mix on the spot. So, like, basically, like, every time, you basically have to manually project the movie. And so, Raimi would take reels out if people got bored. Like, he would self-edit on the fly and stuff like that, which is, like, one reason I think, you know, The Evil Dead's really short.

Like, I think the initial cut of it was two hours around ramey was just like no no no you know like he just wanted the most like compact entertaining i just like that idea i love like yeah like them having the live feeling of the audience there's this thing about ramey having this sort of like old school showman yeah yeah the kind kind of William Castle-y Right. Is that, that's what, that's what, yeah,

you know, entertainer. There's the thing that like develops with Remy later, obviously, where he like famously always dresses like a gentleman on set.

Right. And not in like a Paul Feig No, but he's always in a suit, right? Right. I mean, at least often. And I think especially

in the 90s, people were like, that's a little bit odd. And he would always very modestly be like you know i have a lot of respect for um movies and uh the job of it and i wear a suit so everyone on set understands that i uh take this very seriously like not in a self-serious way but in a like i want to pay respect to the art form and the audience that we're making the movies for i'm realizing i don't really know what he sounds like he sounds like. He sounds like that. Yeah, he's just kind of nerdy and quiet.

I mean, I think I've said this on the podcast before, but he did one of those Directors Guild podcasts where the directors interview each other after screening of a movie. Great, great podcast. Recently, Joel Cohn and Guillermo del Toro, by the way, was a really good one. Yes.

They have great episodes all the time. So he and Favreau are weirdly close. Sure. I think Favreau's kind of gone to him as a guru a number of times in his career as he's sort of scaled up to bigger movies yeah and he did one after lion king and ramey was moderating the q a and ramey like makes jokes like he has bits that are clearly prepped but he's so low-key in how he delivers them and he goes like uh um john i i remember uh when the first iron man came out um i took my daughter to see it and she uh turned to me at the end movie and she said uh dad uh they

did it um they uh finally made a good superhero picture right and everyone's sort of like oh he's not talking oh that was a joke like that's the energy his daughter's shitting on spider yeah yeah yeah no i mean i get it i get it yeah uh okay yeah i guess like because like someone like zemeckis or whatever i'm like oh i know what his you know i've seen enough talking heads and i know his energy but i'm realizing rainy is literally quiet okay and then for him right and i think it's very focused and then all the shit i was watching western it sounds like yes but not in the garrulous sort of chicago you know but also not mysterious not self-serious you know it like very respectful and topper had a thing he said where he was like 98 of the time bramy is like the sweetest gentlest kindest funniest most sort of like uh vuncular guy to everyone on set and two percent of the time he can get very like brisk and sort of like focused and stern and when he's doing that it's because he feels like there's not enough

respect being shown not to him but to the amount of work other people are putting towards the hard right that's the sort of whole thing with him and the suit thing as well of just like we need to pay respect to the seriousness of this art form and also the audience we're making this for eventually that's where like the weird editing on the fly thing comes into play for me in my mind is that like he's like our primary responsibilities to entertain the audience he has his own identity he has his own fingerprints he's trying to make individualistic films but it's like if the audience doesn't like it i failed i don't think he's one of these like they didn't get it no he's right he's not chip on his shoulder about that right okay trying to see what else uh bruce campbell works as a gopher for verno sorry yeah works as a gopher for vernobles who was a famous gopher for george

stevens and teaches him like the lore of the gopher you know like you know always have a rag always have a book like run everywhere you go like all that stuff campbell is is it's the same as the fucking um uh why jesus christ bill paxton where i'm like these guys loved movies so much that even though they clearly wanted to be movie stars and had leading man looks and got there when they started out they're like yeah i'll fucking paint the models i'll like scrub this down i'll lift the equipment like they actually spent time in cruise not just because they were trying to get their foot in the door but but also like they love everything about movies. They're not just guys who like love movie stars and the idea of being the dude.

And they talk about in this like Campbell was like such a key player in this movie, not just obviously in its development and being the main actor on screen most of the time. But they're like he was producing. He was the guy who had to put the contact lenses in for all the deadites. Like he was moving equipment. He to put the contact lenses in for all the deadites like he was moving equipment he was like doing everything you know and then to also maintain this incredibly high wire performance the whole time i have to imagine there's going to be lots of bruce campbell stories yes over these episodes because the man writes books and tells stories and is a you know a thing a great relator of anecdotes.

A thing I'd completely forgotten until he reminded me. John Hodgman. John Hodgman was Bruce Campbell's editor. That was kind of Hodgman's big entry point into the literary world, was Bruce Campbell's books, which sold disproportionately well. And it was this moment. Especially if Chins could kill. That would be the first one, yeah.

In the 90s, when online, Especially if Chins could kill. That would be the first one, yeah. In the 90s, when online, the internet was starting to make these fandoms that had existed in real life all congregate together, so they were louder and more visible. That book sold so much better

than celebrity memoirs from much bigger stars, where Hollywood started being like, oh, is a cult following, that's still a following? If it has that many people behind it he's actually famous and well liked you know uh i knew about him looking i'll talk about my relationship yeah sure and like yeah like i'm trying to think like i feel like i kind of knew of bruce campbell before i knew of the evil dead in a weird same yeah and sam ramey and then like

was like what is this who are these guys that everyone's obsessed with them what's the movie that made everyone obsessed with them is how i went into renting this movie and watching it for the first time anyway all right so the ramey and campbell they want to make a feature film what kind of feature films are getting made on the cheap poor texas chainsaw massacre halloween the hills have eyes last house on the left right these movies where it's like scary movies sell you can make them for low budgets yeah um but still need money yes so uh they make a little short film called clockwork have you ever seen this i never have i have not um but apparently whatever gives them it's a seven play, it gives them a little bit of juice.

And then what's within the woods, right? Well, so then they have this screenplay called Book of the Dead. Within the woods is something they make. That's sort of a proof of concept almost, right? Absolutely. So they go to a lawyer friend of, I think like Tappert's dad called Philip Gillis.

Who, they get introduced and i think taper tappert's dad is trying to get this guy to talk them out of this like be like can you talk to my kid and his friends about how like the movie business is a crap shoot you're never gonna make any money and instead they come in and they show clockwork to him on like a little super a projector yeah and it's got like a jump scare and some shadows on the wall and all that and this is the this quote from this guy gillis is great he's like that type of movie is not my favorite but i was taken by the quality of it i told them what had to be done to raise money that they would need to you know do blah blah blah blah right and uh he said that he i'll

do the legal work for you but it's gonna be you know x it's gonna be thousands of dollars sure and they said we don't have that kind of money he said okay fine i'll take a piece of the action you give me two shares yeah how much is a share in your movie and they said ten thousand dollars so he says i'll take two shares for doing the legal work. And afterward, I was so impressed with their industry and talent, I bought another share and a half myself. Now, here's the great quote. Here's the killer. I was satisfied with their integrity.

My judgment has been vindicated by the way they've treated all of us investors ever since. Let me tell you something about those kids. I got a check last year from them. And it's the second one. It's a six-figure check with hollywood accounting i could have just gotten my money back but that would have been it but those kids are honorable i like that so they keep paying out the original evil dead investor yeah fucking rules fucking makes money yeah forever yes yes because like you're saying

i feel like every few years they're like we have a new dvd it looks like the book of the dead and the fans are like you got me we have 40 bucks this is it's like legendary for like if you're a fucking raimi stan you've been you've just been like they've cucked you so many times of like i'm buying it for the 10th time uh absolutely so we love it so then they make within the woods which is like yeah it's like a sort of a 30 minute version of evil dead i've never seen have you seen it no there's a crappy copy of it on youtube is all i could find i was hoping it was on one of the the discs i think they are not proud of it so like they don't really try to spotlight it anymore biggest thing is that the dynamic... It's a proof of concept. But the dynamic is flipped. What's the actress's name?

Hedelweiss? Ellen Sandweiss. Sorry. Who I didn't realize is Jesse Hodges' mother. Who's that? She plays the agent on Barry. She's a very, very good actor. Who I like a lot. Cool. Right. Love her. But she essentially occupied... And married

to Beck Bennett. Yes. Jesse Hodges. Yeah, not Ellen Sandweiss. Cool family. Cool extended family tree there. She essentially occupied the ash roll in Within the Woods. Right.

It was the more standard sort of final girl thing. She has to survive. Right. And Sandweiss says, you asked if it was a good script. No, it sucked. We were all hitting each other over the head with axes but sam was good at you know being imaginative yes right

um it's it's a thing uh uh joe bob's joe bob briggs said in this featurette which was like a if you outline the events of evil dead to, it just sounds like a series of cliches. There's nothing in how you describe it to people that makes it sound any different from a thousand other movies you've watched. Right? There's no sort of like twist. And then on top of that, the things that could be construed as twists are things that never work. Like, the guy survives. Sure.

There's shit like that where they're like, the protagonist is never a guy that never works. Yeah, that's true. true that's right point and then edgar wright had this line where he was like most horror movies follow the format of them getting picked off one by one of course right and in evil dead essentially inventive kills for every you know all that yeah evil dead essentially halfway through he's the only one left and instead of it being people getting picked off, it's him getting picked on, is what Wright said, which I thought was a really good way of expressing what's so unique in this movie. The second half of the movie is just everyone

fucking with him. It's true. Everyone's kind of, yeah, pranking him. Kind of being rude. Within the Woods, by all accounts, sounds like a slightly more conventional version of the Cabin in the Woods movie. Yes. Done just to show them the sort of tone and vibe of what they wanted to.

Apparently there's this moment where Bruce Campbell who's possessed, chews his arm and it looks weird and gooey. You know, they have weird latex coming out of it. And that looked so cool and gross that that was sort of a moment that popped and obviously encouraged them

to do cool visual effects. And I think also that that was sort of a moment that popped and obviously encouraged them to like go bigger, more visceral. Right, yeah. And I think also that like, oh, Campbell's really good at this physical shit. Yeah, he is. That his weird, like, the three stooges You know what else he's good at? Turning me on.

Yes, Chan. You know, it's funny because I feel like by the time you get to Evil Dead 2, he's sort of owned his position of like, I'm a parody of a handsome guy yeah you definitely sure he's obviously handsome guy but like by the time he gets evil dead 2 he understands what role he's gonna occupy in hollywood which is like i'm a little too slick i'm a little too cocky i'm not gonna be bruce willis i'm like the fake bruce willis you dispatch early on right this is the one movie where you're like he's just kind of hot in this kind of like the hot guy you know in college or whatever exactly

yeah he doesn't have the arched eyebrow he's not sort of doing the winkiness but he's just like so fucking committed there's even just like he's not plucking that unibrow yeah no no yeah for sure and they talk about the the women uh because they they now all like tour conventions together and so then they produced like a documentary together about the three of them and their relationship all the sandbys betsy baker theresa tilly they were like he was so fucking shy at the time like he was such a sweet shy guy but he was just like so collaborative so caring so attentive especially to the other actors looking after them but it was like raimi was the same way and then and then they would get big when they did three stooges routines like they would literally

talk to each other through and then they would write yeah boys you know right right not to be and they were like hilarious but i think what you wouldn't expect which is another thing that raimi sort of like lands on miraculously in the same way that like oh fuck the practical the blood the stickiness that's popping is the like bruce campbell's sort of vernacular of three stooges translates really well into physical suffering you can place it in a less comedic context but he's able to crank up the energy of reacting to a bite or the thing he has to do to himself or whatever and it just becomes so cinematic um i love it uh whereas this movie maybe at the beginning positions him more as just like this is our friend who's like a handsome guy uh he's well that has to be the thing that switches him from within the woods to this of like no he's the guy

who's gonna suffer i assume so i don't well okay well let me let me let me keep going within the woods they show it in front of rocky horror okay one time someone writes it up in the detroit free press this guy tom filo who's gonna be the dp yeah reads that article goes to the next showing of in front it was in front of saturday night fever he goes up to sam ramey and sam ramey's like are you here to see saturday night fever and he's like no i'm here to see within the woods cool i heard about you yeah uh and he was just obviously impressed by the movie but figured like they need a lot of help and it was basically like whatever you guys are doing i'm in like just please involve me they raise 150 grand no they're hopeful to raise 150 grand

but they decide when they raise 90 grand they can go okay philo by the way raise more dp on this yeah and then is dp second unit for evil dead 2 right and then pretty much retires from the film industry well pretty good resume yeah absolutely yeah. So they get their funding together. They have Sandvice. They have Campbell. Betsy Baker is, you know, had just graduated from Michigan State. They talk about, I mean,

they're all obviously friends now, but they were three very different personalities. But Sandvice was kind of this intellectual, serious-minded Jewish girl, and that Baker was kind of this intellectual serious-minded jewish girl and that uh baker was more of like a type a sort of sorority girl cheerleader energy right she's saying i think right i don't know that at first they were like she's too peppy and then the third one who i get her name confused but she does this under a fake name yes which is sarah york is the fake name her name is teresa tilly so she she does this under a fake name. Yes, which is Sarah York is the fake name.

Her name is Teresa Tilly. So she had just booked a SAG commercial and she thought that this movie, because movies like this did not help people's careers at this point in time. No. They were like things you had to get past in order to become a serious actor.

One level above doing like a softcore movie or whatever. Exactly. And not only that, but there was no later revenue stream of like you get to spend the next 40 years going to conventions for this that's true right so she made a fake name to distance herself from this movie and sag found out about it and she was uh suspended from working for six months after this movie because of the fake name silly yeah um but then she was the more serious minded trained had the most on camera and theater

experience of the three of them. And then Hal Denrick plays the other guy, Scotty. They did the auditions. Henrik, uh, Denrick, sorry. Denrick, yeah. He was the horror fan. He was the one of the cast, even more so than Bruce Campbell, who was like, I love these types of movies.

I'm so excited. I'm in one of these movies. I understand exactly how this needs to be played, which I think that infectiousness extended to the women in terms of them suddenly getting the joy of the thing more rather than being a little bit embarrassed by being in it. You know? Right. They decide to film in Tennessee instead of Michigan

because they thought it would be cold in Michigan. Yes. Actually, apparently was the coldest winter in Tennessee history. And Michigan was beautiful that time. And Michigan was very nice. So they blew that. Yet so many of the stories are just about what a nightmare it was to make it. There was no running water in the cabin.

They're all living in this shithole. They all lived in the cabin. The entire crew and cast of this movie is spending all of their time in this cabin sleeping in the cabin the guy who's the cook for all of them couldn't really cook but they had hired him for two other jobs both of which he was bad at so he sort of ended up as the cook yeah uh right and people you know it drags on so long that a lot of people drop have to leave yes and so by the end there's like barely any crew there's really just like one guy holding a microphone there's sam and ted or you know what i mean like there's uh the stat i heard once again who knows how much of this is sort of like

mythology but that the entire crew and cast was essentially on for six weeks seven i think but yes yeah six or seven and then essentially the second half of production was down to five people including bruce campbell which is pretty much everything with just him he's basically on screen the whole time all the special effects and one of the other guys is the chef right so he's not really right like you know uh on set but but it's right it's like dp tapper ramey chef campbell um model maker yes there's apparently a moment where ramey fell into a deep sleep in the middle of a scene because he had not slept for three days uh and he just like fell asleep like laid down on a couch and could not be woken up

um so that sounds pretty weird but he was just obsessive about doing things over and over and over again until they got right using whatever techniques he needed. And right was about a feeling rather than this is obviously not a movie that is like, uh, you know, uh, realistic. It's not about, uh, it has employs so many different visual styles that it's like he just knew the feeling of what every moment needed to be. What's the vibe of this effect, you know,

or this performance moment or whatever it is. And then, yeah, they did pick-up shoots at Detroit later. So, yeah, the whole thing dragged on forever. That was a year later. It takes about three years for this movie to get released properly. Basically. It was premiered in 81 and came out in 83, I think.

But, like, as you mentioned, of course, the post-production happened in New York, get released properly basically it was premiered in 81 and came out in 83 i think uh but like a thing as you mentioned of course the post-production hadn't happened in new york edna paul did the editing and her assistant was one young joel cone who sees this movie and is like well i want to do something like this and that's where blood simple comes from he's like we should make a small genre movie you know same same basic thinking and obviously they continue to collaborate we'll talk about crime wave and all that mcdormand and hunter living together the coens ramey all these people are friends at this time which is cool it's fucking the coolest shit the composer i love the music for this movie so much yeah it's so weird uh as a it doesn't really match with the movie entirely

but i love that joseph uh sorry Loduca, not DeLuca. Yeah. Loduca is some pal of theirs. They met through like the Michigan Department of Transportation. He just does some music for them, like weird, and they're like, sounds great. They hold this big premiere at the fanciest theater in Detroit, the Redford Theater. Is it still Book of the Dead at that point? I know when they started screening this movie,

it was Book of the Dead. It wasn't until it got proper distribution, I think, that the title was changed. Right, right, right. Yeah. And Irwin Shapiro sees it, and is like, I'm going to take this to Cannes,

to the marketplace, not to the festival. And that's where the ball starts rolling and i think stephen king was in the audience at can yeah one of the can screenings and was like i love this right and was and like was an early champion he gives them the quote that they put on the poster which they all credit with making their career it was like once you had that sign off but also like joe bob briggs is talking about like he's hearing about this movie from circles like he's seeing it written up in like horror newsletters and stuff so before it has distribution when it's like here's this movie they shot a year ago it's getting shown around a

little bit he got into like i think the second screening ever so then once he does that he becomes another guy sort of blowing the trumpet for this movie new line distributes it eventually like early new line but i mean so much one this movie is a video hit more than they all talk about it was like it made a little bit of impact in theaters made like a few million dollars there's been a couple years i think it was almost like paranormal activity where it's like why is this thing on a shelf horror fans want to see this but then when it came out there's yeah it made a few million dollars and then like exploded on video almost immediately yes and so it's one of those early video hits and i look video nasty i have to acknowledge that i grew up in britain yes

thank you and uh i'm sorry what this film which was i think an x in america and later in nc 17 never got proper ratings which i think it think no it's got an x rating but i feel like it was unrated at first and then got nc-17 and x later maybe i'm wrong it was given an x rating and then when we released that became an nc-17 which is still the official rating of this film which is why but now the releases go unrated i guess because sure okay so i had the order wrong but uh i apologize i'm an idiot it's fine in the u in the uk the film had to be edited to even get an x rating and then it was indeed one of the early video nasties we've mentioned this before on the podcast ben liked the phrase i did

like the phrase and was banned and i when i was a kid this movie was similar to like clockwork orange or exorcist for me where i was like that movie must be unwatchably violent because it's banned well the thing that Edgar Wright said on this the retrospective thing I was watching was that you know there was a lot finally released in 2000 to be clear that's how long it took

the ratings board was very tight and in place for theatrical and there was not really any oversight of videos right so when it played in cinemas in the uk it was heavily edited and then when they put it out on video as was often the case with a lot of these horror movies at the time there was no oversight there so they put out the american cut right so then the cut on video was the exact cut that had been banned and it becomes this thing of like

your kids can just go to the store and get this filth and watch it without you even knowing about it you know all that stuff right because some of the stuff they ban is like cannibal holocaust but then other stuff you're like wait this movie is barely like it just like took on some weird legend of its own because of a scene maybe or like like uh there's nazism or you know there's some like theme that freaked people out yeah uh it's so weird well child play two i mean child play three because i don't think that was ever a video nasty that was just considered to be the inspiration for the bulger murders which wasn't bananas they hadn't seen it like but that that that was one of those kind of like col Columbine, where there's this weird legend that builds around,

like, well, there's a scene that's like that. Like, they must have... Right, that was late. And then they found that one of them had a poster that they had walked by one day. It's supposed to look like that. It's supposed to look like that, right. And when you read about it in Britain,

and you can if you want, it's all led by these little old lady types who haven't watched a movie in 50 years. Think of the children. Think of the children. Sex cauldron. My thing, David, is... Thought they closed that place down.

Oh, boy. It's one of my favorite Simpsons lines ever. I was such a comic book store kid, right? Little forbidden planet boy. Yeah, and there was a place called Village Comics that was also close to me that was on the other side washington square park that i really liked mr downtown downtown griffin hills baby um but that became like once i found those stores and i was just like not just like oh my god it's a store with only things i'm interested in there isn't just a section in the back right right but also i was just like i like the vibe of these people as much as it's

the parody of the complex store guy they kind of scared me i was kind of afraid of them david i was intimidated by them but i do think and i i'm unlocking this is so much of my entire identity now was i was like god they know all of this shit right and they have opinions on it right like i was like i want to know the shit they're talking about. Like that was my high fidelity. Like, could I gain these guys respect sort of thing? It's not like eventually I mean, I eventually worked for Implanted, but I started to know the people who worked there a little bit as I grew up and whatever. But it was that thing of just like, what's the secret shit they know that I'm not going to read about in Entertainment Weekly?

You know, that I'm not going to read about in entertainment weekly right you know that i'm not going to see on entertainment tonight or whatever yeah uh where where suddenly bruce campbell is treated as being as big as arnold schwarzenegger in this store and i need to know what the fucking deal is here so i knew that i think by this point in reading wizard magazine toy fair all these things right wizard yeah i think i knew that like the evil dead movies get goofier as they go along they become more action they become more adventure there's more comedy like evil dead 2 is every genre right and i knew i think that evil dead one had the sort of video nasty reputation of like that one's intense that's the one that's

just like that was how i felt like that that was the humorless one or right and then i knew i had a tree rape essentially right so i may be 11 or 12 i desperately want to watch these movies i feel like i'm behind the eight ball even though no one i know has seen them but these adults at stores i go to clearly have seen them and uh my mom and i go to local videos or tla video and sometimes i'd want to rent a movie and i would downplay what I knew about the content of it because my mother was still very protective about what I watched. Right. So then she would ask the guys who worked at TLA video, like, is this appropriate? And those guys were sort of heroic for me because they were all like film school dudes. Right.

Who would be like, this kid should see this movie you know like he clearly if he wants to see it he's clearly coming to this from some academic mind you're not gonna fucking talk him out of watching this right but i just remember the guy there my mom brought it to the counter and she was like evil dead how bad is this and he was like you know i mean it's like a horror movie and there's blood but the blood is kind of cartoonish it's all really untrue it's all over cranked and then i just remember i'm going you know i mean like the most extreme thing that happens in it is a tree rapes a woman and there was that moment where i was like it's blown it's blown i'm not renting this movie and

my mom i think was so perplexed right she's like how could that work what are you talking about that's ludicrous okay and just rented it yeah yeah but but so at that point did you watch it alone yes wow i had so when when romley was my my brother and i shared a room right wow and then when romley and i was when romley and i my brother and i jamesy shared a room when romley was born we got a bigger apartment because now there were three kids. And I had my own bedroom for the first time. And I had like a six inch TV with a built in VCR. Of course, classic. So that was like a lot of my shit was like from 10 on, I'm watching movies alone in my bedroom late at night.

And more and more like I can get away with, if I could talk my mom into thinking things not too extreme at the video store i can now be watching alien or predator evil dead and this is like a lot of these things and then you developed a really healthy habit absolutely and i sleep very normal hours but yes i just i felt like i'd gotten away with murder but also at that point i didn't know about the tree rape thing and i was just like that concept is disturbing me i'm watching the movie going like i'm unsettled yeah it's very unsettling going into it and and waiting for it now this is a scene that obviously has like a lot of debate around it and i think ramey talks about feeling like he went too far with it and that's like not a thing he would do today sure and i feel like a lot of its reputation is colored by

like shitty screenings where guys are like hooting and hollering at it jesus in the audience which like obviously that's fucked up yeah right but whatever when you watch this scene i do still think especially not having seen it while i'm like it is really designed with complete horror in mind and not a sort of like bloodlust but like this is like an upsetting thing like i think that we presents it as like we are aware that this is a turning point in the movie where you're just like this is like fucking malicious and awful and traumatizing this is a movie that first time i saw it that was sort of my feeling on it right i was quite unsettled by it like and i then i saw evil dead 2 quickly thereafter and was like i probably saw this is so much fun right this is so goofy and like if the tree was in evil dead 2 you'd be like there is no way kind of right not

the energy of the films to flipping around it there's no way but like right but then evil dead one was kind of like terminator 1 over where you're like yeah that's the one you don't watch as much because it's darker and it's less fun that scene is genuinely fucking upsetting it is it puts you in a very weird headspace but but i re-watched evil dead just now yes and i was like damn i should watch this movie all the time same fucking rules same that's that was the realization i had yeah this movie is so like cool and yeah the right kind of freak is slick it's it's just i love the vibe i mean oh i'm gonna say something embarrassing say it yeah yeah i definitely i don't think i had no because the movie came out in britain commercially basically available to rent when i was 14 so i saw and your point is how would that

affect you yeah i saw donnie darko yeah when i was like 15 yeah and in donnie darko they go see the evil dead at one point they're in a theater right and you just see it's like a shot of the car that shot with the scores like doom yeah doing like the the thing is rocking on the porch or whatever like you don't really see much and i remember watching it being like that movie looks crazy what is that movie immediately realizing it was the evil dead you read in like sure empire magazine like oh that's a little yeah and i was like i gotta see that movie like it looked so atmospheric and weird yes and then it just becomes the movie in my head of like yeah that's the movie with the zombies and the gore and the cool like that right but then i rewind i'm like yeah i love

that start i love the weird creepy beginning yeah before anything's happening you know what's the thing i i don't know if i fully landed on i think donnie darko is my entree to the evil dead leave me alone that embarrassing in the grand scheme of things it's not that embarrassing. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that embarrassing. But this movie is like such an archetypal setup, right? Even by the time this movie has made its old hat and then it's been imitated. The cabin in the woods. moment this movie starts there is a different energy than you so often have in these types of setups and i think there's something to the fact that like they're all just a little bit older than the characters usually are in these movies like it's the difference between them being like 22 or 18 you know i do and there's just a little bit of weariness to them. There's a little bit of cynicism to them. So it's not that same thing

where it's like they're driving to their death these fucking glib kids. These dumb, horny teens who need to be punished because they want to drink and screw. Right. And like, without it going full screen. They look like they just want to have dinner or something. Absolutely. They're just going to kind of vibe at the cabin.

They all seem a little bit tired, and it's such a weird grouping where it's like this guy his girlfriend his sister her boyfriend and the fifth friend right right yeah yeah it's like an odd collection of people and yes it just feels like we've just been so stressed out we should like just go around a cabin in the woods for a weekend and just sort of like get away i gotta rather than that energy of like we'll go here we could drink and no one will catch no one's gonna be watching uh pretty creepy that cabin in my opinion absolutely why it's a little creepy right off the bat you're like i don't like it's fine oh my god i would love to live in that cabin but it also looks like especially in a pre fucking airbnb era this is the exact thing they could afford 100 but i mean like they're driving

on a road quote-unquote but it really just looks like the rest of the grass around it right like you barely can discern a path so this is my final point about like the vibe set up from the group immediately they're not full scream but they do have that vague self-awareness of like this is like a creepy setup right i guess so just the right amount listen i 100 buy this i am that kind of guy where i'd be like well yeah the bridge fell apart it's rustic we're in the country okay look at this amazing house movie yeah this is an amazing experience i just think when have. I just think when this starts out, I'm not like, I'm buying their Hangout vibe, and I'm not thinking they're stupid for going along with this. Yeah. Which I think goes a long way, because as you said, there's 14 pages of dialogue here.

There's not a lot of talking. Right. It's going to be such a vibe that carries these characters. The first person to get anything going on is Cheryl, is Ellen ellen sandweiss for who who draws the picture and then starts drawing the weird picture as you said the first moment is the opening opening of this film after the port swing but the opening opening is the ramey cam going through so good which is just such a like statement of intent i think it's and i should look it was something to do with like obviously they couldn't afford a Steadicam. Yeah.

But, like, they would do something with, like, they would put it on wood beams, I think. Yeah. And just kind of run it. Yes. They call it the shaky cam. Right. Yeah. They would just have a long board and, yeah, anyway, it's really cool. It's not that he's the first to do this, but it's that thing of just like the camera has a personality.

And in this movie, that personality is giving you the sense of ominousness where you're constantly trying to figure out, am I watching what's happening from the perspective of the characters? Because so much of horror movies is something weird happens. Someone reacts to it. Right. And you're seeing their POV. Or when has it shifted back to now the camera is the force right right because this movie doesn't have like a big bad there isn't a final boss no there's like there's just an evil force in the woods it's making everything around him bad there's just and sometimes the camera is playing that force and sometimes it's

not but yeah i know and of course i'm forgetting you see like the weird swamp right sort of bubbling gases and fog or mist or whatever but you've also just set up this thing of like this camera has bad vibes behind it and then the music is kind of weird when we get into the car everything feels neutral again but you're just like you know there's this looming presence and then yes the the porch swing is the first thing which is just it's so fucking like clearly there is someone swinging the porch and then grabbing it and holding it still right it's the most analog basic fucking shit in the world but it works so well and it's so innocuous that you're like that's creepy but what are we gonna do fucking lose our minds over this right it's not blood coming out of the outlets yet

you know um and then the picture thing is pretty early that's the escalation that's the first yes uh because it kind of almost comes out of nowhere yeah she hears the join us right before she does it sure yeah or maybe she hears it after no no it's before i think and then she draws the uh book essentially right i think that's cool i just always think that's cool what's that george c scott movie is it the uninvited yeah uh where you have the is it the other it's not the other george c scott um you know the seance scene where the woman is like drawing like uh as if because she's possessed and her performance here is so good i think she plays that moment really well the tension in her body

sorry that's the change sorry uh it's it's like genuinely upsetting and the fact that she's drawing so ferociously that's ripping through the paper right and it is that thing where you're like that looks like how a drawing would look if you're possessed it's not unnaturally good it feels like it's chaos but then it just forms an image enough to be able to see what's going on right and then david how would you describe like the next kind of tangible scary visual thing that happens in the movie. They go into the living room and there's like another thing that starts to tell them that things are off. Maybe. I'm trying to think how

What are you queuing up here? Crash! A bridge goes through a window! Well that is true. Yes. Alright. Very well. I hadn't seen this in 15 years. You forgot about that. I got so fucking excited. And I was like, Griffin, you better remember to fucking do this tomorrow. Right.

That is what. It's like the exact fucking thing. Right? I would leave right away. Just FYI. I know that's the most cliched thing to say about any horror movie. But this place sucks anyway. It's a bad cabin.

I wouldn't go in the first place i mean we know me well that's true but like you show up and you're like what is this cabin where one whole room just has saws hanging on the wall like that's early yeah goodbye ben obviously would no i'd like be like can i negotiate full purchase right i live here i take a look at that basement and i would be like i think i've found home yeah yeah it is funny that it feels like this movie has a slow burn when in reality the slow burn is like 15 minutes yeah well yeah i mean the movie's 85 minutes a good with credits exactly like a good 40 yeah it's just bruce campbell at the end there yeah great conzo yeah um they find the

book yes bound in human flesh and they find the find a tape recorder right so i love the book so much the book is so good obviously i mean what can we say i mean look it's it's the partially i knew this was coming and i ordered it but i lost my wallet and i was looking for a new wallet to get and this i think is the evil dead 2 virgin but my wallet is now a fucking the book of the dead my wallet looks like it's the necronomicon uh uh it's so uh good and i i love the illustrations inside okay uh me too i just love the whole vibe of the thing i just love this idea i think it's really really effective and scary to happen upon some experiment gone wrong yeah and the tape initiating like like the tape having the reading of the seance that originally killed the creator and it's being then replayed and repeated.

When I saw this as a kid, that idea blew my mind and it still to this day resonates. It's such a creepy thing about analog electronics or you know electronics or just like something about the tape too but i think also the weird voyeuristic quality of being in the house of someone you don't know yes when you start looking at their objects and trying to figure out who they are there's always that weird vibe and it's like a little bit creepy and a little bit thrilling let alone if you discover something that's a little incendiary like that yeah um i i just

think it's one of these things about just how focused this movie is and brammy knowing what he wants to do that like we do not dig into the backstory of this guy it does not need to be explained that much like that scene tells you everything you need to know which is like oh this guy had this type of voice he's this kind of academic something clearly went wrong here we don't need to fucking dig into like he's ivo shandor and he had a cold but he like he just took it to a cabin i guess like sort of fuck around with it and that was the end of him yeah yeah right it's like and then you just fill in the blanks you don't need to fucking know because the other thing this movie gets at is just like there's no way to stop this it's not like

they're going to be able to go further into his research and find the thing that he didn't get to in time. This movie is about like, there's just evil that exists out there. And once you fucking open the door and let it in, you're done. You're done. And as much as like the sequels take Ash and the TV show and everything into different directions. Right. It's so much the idea of like this guy's gonna just be forever haunted by this shit forever and as time goes

on he becomes more and more glib and sort of like jokey about everything because it's a coping mechanism but his life is forever dominated by the fact that he's the guy these fucking things chase after because i looked it up on the evil dead wiki, obviously, right? Of course. And I love Evil Dead 2, and I have primarily respect for the rest of the Evil Dead universe. Sure. But it is kind of annoying to have to sift through comic books or whatever. I'm like, I don't care. I don't care whatever backstory people came up with. I love the simplicity of this movie.

Right. It's an evil book. It's got a creepy face on it if you read it aloud everyone's going to turn into creepy things yes and try and eat you well look i haven't seen and i i will watch during this i've seen the first season i've never seen the second two seasons i got the set with everything now so i'm going to watch the other two seasons but a thing i liked at least from my memory of the first season as well, is just like, I can't speak for the comics, of which I maybe read a couple in the early 2000s. There's been so many.

And they've done so many fucking crossovers with shit. But I like that it's a series that always moves forward and doesn't spend too much time going back into the mythology and the deepness where it is just about like Ash as this guy continuing to live. Right. You know? Which is what I care about. I don't care about the gods. Yeah. I mean, I do think there is.

Right. There's some comic that explains it more. And you do see the guy in Evil Dead 2, right? You see Nobi, I think his name is, or whatever. You know, the academic. But I do... The tape is such a simple bit of scare work. And as you said, Ben, not only is it like, here's the exposition, but the tape itself is the curse yeah you've accidentally played something that not only

causes the trouble but is like a document of the moment this guy fucked himself okay and here's the other thing too that i love about it's like listening to a suicide note almost or something it is but also you would listen that's what i was gonna say it's like a horror movie where you're like well of course you're gonna play this fucking thing how could you not like anyone would i love that idea fucking look through their medicine cabinet you're not you're not being like oh this fucking idiot he's of course he's gonna get fucking murdered in the shower so much more than the book like if they open the book and read every page of it aloud that would be like more unbelievable i don't think they do that playing the tape you don't what's the tape is playing you don't fucking turn that off that's definitely not and the noise you know

the this when he speaks in sumerian yeah it's it's creepy sounding but you're not like oh this is bad news because you don't know what he's saying or anything like that it was surprising that there was a blue apron ad though in the middle of it. Well, it's dynamic advertising. He didn't record it at the time they added it. And it changes every 30 minutes. Yeah, there is... Arr, a blue apron. What I find weird is that the blue apron voice is done by a sort of disembodied dead guy. That's the thing I found surprising.

Is that they had them do the pre-recorded ads. And losing his damn mind over here so they play the tape recorder and i believe that's when the tree branch comes through the window sorry i was just so over i know you were uh and all the kids leaning in waiting for bart to make the joke sheryl yes sh. Cheryl leaves that night and that's when she's attacked by the tree. Like that's pretty much the sort of first night like series of events. Yeah. And the tree sequence, yes. Like incredibly harrowing.

It is. It's just where you can tell this is a real filmmaker. Yes. I guess is the best way to put it. Right. And it's the same with a Halloween or Hill House Highways or Texas Chainsaw Massaw massacre whatever where you're like oh yeah this is like

i like watching some goofy schlocky horror movies in the 70s that never really but like this is you're just like oh there's so many clever editing choices being made here this is so involving this is so difficult it also just feels like this is actual evil i'm seeing representation of evil like pure maliciousness and i do think despite you know if you get the wrong audience they might react incorrectly to this sequence i think like so many sequences like this and similar horror movies of the time are trying to have their cake and eat it too where they're just like sexual assault is bad but also look at these boobs and i don't think there's anything there's no titillation yeah i i don't i don't think in

the way that he is presenting this as a director there is anything titillating about it obviously there are reasons to not want to watch this and to be intrinsically made uncomfortable by seeing this depicted on screen in any form right but i i don't think he is doing it flippantly which is usually my barometer for like sexual assault and film which is just like are you presenting this as an actual traumatic thing versus a plot mechanic you know salaciousness what have you um but but it does also like shift the energy when she comes back into the house she's just sort of like i can't even explain what happened to me this isn't like creepy shit happening this was like such an invasion you know

right that the energy is shifted so hugely from that point on so the next big thing is he's supposed to drive her away right he's supposed to drive her the car doesn't work or whatever the bridge is out yeah uh she starts to panic she's like it's not gonna let us leave he's like i don't know what you're talking about. Again, this is where I just walk away. But absolutely. Yes. And then, like, I mean, the cards, they're playing spades, and she starts reading out the cards, and then she floats and fucking, right? She floats right then, right?

Yeah. Yeah. She levitates, and then we're off to the races. I mean, then it's like, why have you disturbed me? I'm going to eat you, whatever. I'm being flippant about the evil dead. But I just feel like it's very simple. There's not a lot to this.

You woke them up, shouldn't have, they're bad, and now they're going to possess all of you, and the only way to kill them is chop them up. Right. That's another big statement of intent from Raimi, where it's like, how do you stop these things? You dismember them. There aren't zombie rules.

It's not like there's a headshot you can do. There's not a stake to the heart. There's not a silver bullet. You have to fucking take them apart is the only shot you got. So he's like throwing down the gauntlet of like, here's how much gore is implicit in the premise of this movie. You have

to take it to that extreme. Yeah. Their transformation to the design i love yeah it like all of them turning into these white like kind of clowny yeah clowny and classic but obviously it's like very bloody and gross disgusting these weird uh contact lenses they have to wear that like. They're like glass contact lenses that cover the entire. To blind you. They're blind. And like you have to take off right away basically.

They're blind when they're in them. And they all, all the people worked on this movie talked about the phenomenon of prosthetic madness. Right. Which is like maybe like five hours in you start losing your mind. And like some of that they would capture on camera right when it just feels like they're like wild and out of control and then call cut and go like it's time to get them out right but so much of their performances is just physical right it's just moving your body in weird ways right when you're possessed right like she's cheryl uh does the you know where she kind of like

you know like rival it's rolling head around you know, like, ravelling her head around. Yes. Her head around. I'm trying to think of others. Well, the thing I thought was really funny, Linda was talking about the whole singing thing, right? Okay. And that she was in, like, the makeup all dolled up and then was sort of doing bits on set.

You know, like, they were trying to figure out the first day of filming, like, how should I move this and that? And then she was doing as you do this always happens instead of someone's wearing a funny thing you all sort of do bits about it right and they do bits about it because you're trying to like get comfortable and take the you know the weirdness out of the room whatever so she started like singing in like a shirley temple sort of voice doing qp doll shit as a bit right and all the crew guys were like that makes me uncomfortable stop doing like that's not funny and her and ramey look at each other and they're like that's interesting that they're like

that got such a visceral response we had been rehearsing this where you were playing more menacing and that scared them less than you playing cute in that makeup so then they were like that's the thing you're fucking doing that right everything is like weird little child star uh which is creepy can't deny it weird sing-songy voice creepy um what else so she goes crazy she stabs linda right with a pencil she throws ash and they knock her into the cellar and lock her inside and she keeps popping up being like the pencil's such a simple gag but just so upsetting and visceral yeah nasty um especially because like it could happen to you i don't know yeah yeah but so like right it's just the movie escalates so quickly

where they're not going to get picked off one by one this is like an out of control situation that's getting worse by the second right you're playing on this thing that obviously most zombie movies play on where it's like i don't want to say goodbye to somebody right his his sort of idealistic if we can just hold this in place until the morning we'll be fine right which immediately just like dooms him yes that's what i would no i would just leave i would have left already right but he's like i don't want to leave people which kind of as much as it's maybe not smart you respect you know he that's that's what defines him he's he doesn't want to chop people up but at that point david when you're saying like i would leave i would leave i don't think that you can i think

the the rules of it i'm aware that like the magic of the deadites or whatever would prevent me from leaving well that would definitely that's the end of the movie right yeah'm aware that the magic of the Deadites or whatever would prevent me from leaving. I would definitely try. That's the end of the movie. Right, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what's also such a scary aspect of it is that the evil... You don't really know what form it takes necessarily,

how it's transferring. But that's what I like about Evil Dead as a franchise. Griffin likes the lack of rules. You're kind of like... Me too. But not only that, but that's just like... Two paces out of out of the tube this is gonna haunt ash for the rest of his life he can travel in time yeah he can move yeah decades can pass it's it's just like as you said there's no leaving this but don't you also think like something that's good and interesting yeah or not it's sort of like it's not like oh

he touched her and that's why she's changing that you know like there's not some sort of like flow chart of the possession i i think the elasticity of the rules is to this movie's advantage and i also think the elasticity of the aesthetic, you know? And two obviously takes us to a whole different level. But like, how does this manifest? What does it look like? What are the powers of it? Because it is.

It's just this thing in the air, right? Right. That then takes hold of you. And it can sort of do whatever the fuck it needs to do to flip you out at that moment but so why doesn't ash get possessed well two obviously deals with this more right but forget to right there's no real reason right it's just rules boy asking a question yeah i think it's just that ash is the most resourceful and self-defensive i mean he's obviously getting bitten by the end of it right and then the movie ends before i guess he has a chance to turn yeah well then obviously the movie has the the final shot of like the thing creeping up on him and right who knows what'll

happen right next or whatever right um yeah uh yeah i mean i look ash takes more damage in this movie than i remembered as much obviously this movie's about him being beaten up but watching it now for the first time in however many years i was like huh it's a little surprising he doesn't get turned right i thought he got bloodied up but wasn't as directly sort of attacked by them but he basically does like yeah so whatever i don't care to be clear there's that thing i'm just wondering there's that thing too that I think lends the spirit of this movie is like, Campbell, they are such close friends that there's this added layer of fucking with the guy at the center of the movie. Sure.

Not just that the movie, the world is doing that, but that Raimi is getting joy out of like, how much blood can we dump on him? How much can we poke these bruises? Like all that sort of shit that feels jackassy and that there's a camaraderie to it it's good natured and it doesn't feel like they're picking on someone which is why i think this movie does need to star a male character as much as that is the flip of how this genre always works right yeah because if it's a woman i think it feels

vindictive right it feels cruel yeah but especially if it's a bunch of you know boy zombies trying to eat her as well yes yes well and also there has to be there's that sort of dilemma moment that's pretty powerful like i don't want to drop my girlfriend right yeah yeah um that is just i feel like in here it's crucial to any good zombie movies. You need that kind of like, I don't want to shoot X in the head, or I don't want to leave someone behind, or something like that.

Okay, night digging. Okay. That's something I would do. Well, yeah, I have to agree with that. It's a scary thing. Yes, it is. Well, you're only doing it for bad reasons there's never a good reason to night dig why would you go out in the middle of the night and dig a hole

right right it's a wrong time to bury jeans it is a wrong time to bury jeans you're absolutely right if someone heard you digging a hole in your backyard they would assume you had done something wrong now I know when you buried your jeans in the daytime people were assuming your neighbors assumed you were doing something wrong. Now, I know when you buried your jeans in the daytime, people were assuming,

your neighbors assumed you were doing something wrong. And of course, the listeners know you were doing something very right. Yes. But yes, you've talked about that before, that they thought you were burying a body. So, okay, I'm trying to remember the sequence of events here. Obviously, Cheryl's down in the cellar demon comes through the window and attacks Shelley turns her

into a zombie a deadite right he says Scott the other boy stabs her in the back and then she reanimates so he chops her up right and buries them yeah like buries the bits and then he tries to leave and he comes back possessed the trees get him right sorry is shelly or linda in the basement uh cheryl is in the basement sorry shelly is the first one turned right linda is the later one right ash goes to check on her and then she's like you know like this is it's the basement dynamic is just so good because it's like okay we've we've contained this one this one's fine we'll wait for a way to help solve it yeah but then she just becomes this like taunting force of like for a little bit she

is no longer an immediate threat but she's this constant reminder of like you're just fucked you're fucked dude there's no way around this and then right because with linda he doesn't want to chop her up so he buries her right she comes back he has to chop her head off with a shovel right and then and then he's got like a friend to talk to who he realizes is quickly turning and there's that like desperation to those scenes of just like how much time does he have left still being able to speak to another person right who is not trying to fuck with him yeah yeah good it's good it's good it's really good it's a really good movie uh and yeah like the the effect of like the blood like spreading on her

like the weird like sort of spider webs spider webs is really cool. That's literally like they're doing stop motion animation. They're just drawing more and more. It's frame by frame painting on a person's flesh. But it's super good. Raimi, his original plan was, I think he was sort of anti

stop motion. Maybe because it was a little overused at that point and seen as corny. Yeah, he was worried right it looks like you know obviously it kind of looks like uh what jason and the argonauts right you know like uh so he had this whole plan they were saying about like we make dummy heads and but they're really thin and then we put a balloon inside and we fill the balloon with smoke and we release the balloon so it's like their head or their body parts will just deflate and smoke will come out right and that looks shitty and what's

his name the guy who was the main special effects guy model maker on this uh bart pierce i think was one of them yeah it was like please let me show you what i could do with stop motion right and it becomes like even in the sequels that have less of this that have more like animatronics and whatever it does just give a language to the movement of these things because so much of this movie is like the the manic nature of the camera work of campbell's performance you know where stop motion you can get those eerie rhythms and things moving too fast exactly or just moving in an unsettling speed right right which they need to do and then i feel like in the sequels you have like them using other techniques now trying to replicate

that energy which are also which is good yeah but it's it's yeah it all looks so fucking good and i like i like by the way i mean talking about the elasticity of it that like the deadites can look different yeah it can They can manifest in different ways. They kind of seem to, I mean, again, obviously, it's a budget thing or whatever, but they kind of go with the face. They match the person they're on in a weird way. There are commonalities,

but there's not this one-size-fits-all effect for all of it. And then two is going to go in much further directions. But yeah, obviously, there's the whole scene with linda where she's she undeadites right while he's pointing the gun in her head right uh to sort of you know lull him into a false insecurity once again it's this thing of like they're just fucking with him it's so they're trying to make so simple suffer yeah it's so effective and then obviously anytime he goes near the fucking you know like there's the bit where her hands come out of the floorboards like and grab him

like she's always there right it's just poor bruce yeah poor guy poor guy um so eventually he gouges scott's eyes out he shoots cheryl he uh we mentioned you know he chops linda's head off with a shovel uh and there's i guess cheryl starts to attack him and that's when the necronomicon is near the fireplace like yeah i'm trying to remember what i'm forgetting here and all like it's hard to right string he has to use the necklace god that's such an interesting scene too where he's sleeping on the couch as she finds the necklace and they do that beat with the eyes yeah where it's like an entirely cute scene that they shoot like a horror movie uh those weird eye close-ups where she's trying to check the box without him waking up um but but yes he ultimately he has to

use this fucking necklace he bought to fish the book out yeah and they're like chowing down on him it's getting worse by the second the book is just out of reach can you get it into the fire um will that end everything would you just burn the book right away it's such a cool looking book though i know it'd be a shame i'm such a collector i'm like yeah because it could have occurred to them earlier like oh shit the book is the problem throw it in the fire right yeah i mean obviously one of the great moments in hereditary where she's like that'll do it and it just sets him on fire which is what such a good reversal of that yeah yeah uh but go on spoiler no i i mean i'm with you david i keep'd keep the book, too. Yeah. I would at least...

Good book. It's just that craftsmanship and the weird eye and all that. Yeah. David, Merchandise Spotlight, did you ever have the book editions of this? No. Okay. I have a fairly boring-looking 4K edition of it. Like, no steel, no fancy.

Yeah, no. I now have the third 4K edition of this, which is the Groovy collection, which is this and two and all of Ash vs. Evil Dead. Not Army of Darkness because Universal has that one only. But then that's the first collection that has all the special features from the DVDs of Evil Dead 1 specifically, which were never upscaled for high def. So there's the extra DVD thatscaled for high def. Right. So there's the extra DVD that that set has. Sure. Whatever.

No, no, I mean, it's fine. It's just, it is, it's not insulting, but it is funny how they just know they can ring more money out of the fans. They just know they can. It was an Anchor Bay thing forever, and then Lionsgate has had them now.

But Anchor Bay in, in i guess the early 2000s did like we're releasing the movie in the book of the day i remember that you can buy the book of the dead replica uh and then did a same the same thing for evil dead 2 with the new book for that yeah i think that one added a sound chip so you could could push the eye of the book and it would scream. And it was the coolest DVD packaging ever that was notorious for just decomposing. Oh, really? That's funny. Because it was like they almost made it out of the same things that you would have made the prop out of. Sure.

It was like rubber with padding and foam inside of it it yeah um this dvd is now 181 on amazon if you want it look it's very expensive because there are very few of them that are still like intact it was like the second you took it out of the package and it hit air i i mean it's we've sometimes joked about these things before but when you look up like old film props and they look terrifying because they've just decomposed the, the DVDs decomposed in that way. Right. And it was such a shame because they like fully replicated the pages inside

the book. It was so cool to have and leave through. Yeah. And then you get to a point where you're just like, I got this like smelling rotty thing on my shelf. Huh? This movie has such a good poster, obviously everything about it the hand grabbing

her but then the sort of secondary image that becomes the kind of iconic image of ash with the chainsaw covered in blood oh sure sort of lunging yeah uh which is also good obviously it has the stephen king the most ferociously original horror film of the year the thing that makes him yeah the thing about evil dead 2 is that poster is so good but it's kind of us well i guess we'll talk about it later but like that's more one of those posters that's just like what's the thing that would get people to rent this such an arresting image it's not in the movie it's not representative of the movie right just this but it looks like a heavy metal you know band cover you know it's just cool that was one of those things where like once i was

getting into oh i need to see these evil dead movies the realization of like wait evil dead 2 is that poster right because i just remember seeing that at video stores probably an age where i couldn't read and being like that's the scariest image i've ever seen that and dead alive were like those are the two skull boxes that make me upset to walk past a hundred percent uh anyway he burns the book they all decompose it's the coolest effect in the movie things are safe they play like serene sort of like snow whitey birds are twerping the sun rises ash goes outside and there's one last shot of the camera we forgot the fucking camera from the opening of the movie it's like it's now right it's also just perfectly bookended that way you know yeah um but right it's that thing of this

is going to chase him forever i don't know if you felt this way watching the movie for the first time but i was like that's good how the fuck does he become some guy saying groovy i know because i definitely knew again that sort of empire magazine thing like the whole legend around him with the chainsaw badass movie here like he's like snake plissken like what is this and you're like he's right he definitely has little of that here not that he's not no and charismatic no but right no catchphrasey stuff that he is so much more of like a final guy in this movie and that too makes him this sort of like avenging angel that thing of being a young movie fan in the 90s the late 90s we're right you know the references before you see the movie yeah so you see the chainsaw and you're like oh okay right

i know he has a chainsaw like or whatever right yeah yeah yeah right you're watching this like a checklist and much like watching terminator for the first time i'm like okay and now i get to watch the one that i know everything is from wait is he gonna say hustle of easter baby right but then you re-watch these first movies in here like oh they rule i just i told emma stefanski friend of the show i was like i'm watching evil then she's like i should watch that i feel that way like once a week you know she's like i always feel like i should be watching that you know why emma stefanski likes evil dead though why because it's about books it's about books uh it's got bugs on it it's got it's got some bugs it's a very emma movie yes uh yeah um i might throw it on again yeah i truly i can't watch it with forky around though this is a series where it's like the boss baby can't even this is i don't know what the boss

baby would think but forky would not tolerate it if i had a child boss baby age almost almost one she's almost one that's right days away from her birthday right now yep um i this would be a movie where i'd be like i don't know if i want this in the background while the kids in the room like most things they're a kid they don't understand i'm just like the imagery in this is so bizarre yeah uh yeah i get and and and the noise yeah the weird kind of cacophony of it all yeah i mean bad vibes you talking about one and watch it again immediately yeah i ended up focusing on just watching as many of the special features as i could this morning instead right but i had

half a mind to like the blu-ray is the classic like four by three but then they also did a cropped release that was wider and that's on the second disc. Sure. And I was like do I rewatch this again in a different aspect ratio with the commentary on just because I want another bite at it you know? You might just have I might do it tonight. I might do it before Evil Dead 2

I'm just like I'm in it. I'm in I'm enjoying this franchise again and rediscovering how much I fucking love it I'm in I'm I'm enjoying this franchise again and and rediscovering how much I fucking love it immediately upon starting this I was like oh this movie's better than I remember it being and I forgot that I love these you have to finish China Girl that thing's a fucking slog

David I know I know we look we put a lot into this week and I also agreed to do two other podcasts this week and there's a TV show I don't want to say what the spoilers will tell you. But yes, no, I'm getting I'm one into China girl. I'm going to I'm going to bite him off. Can you say Matt Puss?

Look, I mean, we've already talked about it. Jesus, what a guy. Have you met Puss? Yeah, he fucking sucks. Anyway, weird show. Yes. No, he fucking sucks. Anyway. Weird show. Yes. No, I appreciate that you're into the evil. Maybe I'll watch Ass vs. Evil. I'm definitely with you in terms of like, I do love the vibe.

I do just kind of want to be in this vibe. Yeah. I'm so looking forward to seeing Evil Dead 2 again, which is obviously a huge favorite. But no, I watched the first season i didn't keep up with it largely because it was one of those things where it's like it's only streamable on stars or whatever you know i feel like it took a while to be watchable anywhere else and i'm just so bad at keeping up with tv but it was one of those things where when it premiered i was like this feels like one of those things we think we want until we watch it right and then when i watched

it i was like no this is pretty good it's kind of a cool continuation of it there's obviously just and we will talk about this more in future episodes but like post army of darkness there was such a thing for so long of like do they come back and do a fourth one does ash get put into something else like freddy versus jason versus ash or do they remake it and it was always this like ping pong going back and forth of like evil dead can't stay dead forever but what is it now so i've never seen the remake i have is it a remake or a sequel or like what's the vibe of it again weird i mean we're debating whether or not to do a bonus on it right is it one of those sort of like reboot slash continuation deals where it can kind of function as both?

Like it's sort of not official. I thought it was just totally disconnected. I saw it too. I'd say it's sort of the latter. Look, it feels like it's very much its own thing. And then they put like an egregious Bruce Campbell end credits thing in there. That feels like they do it just for the sake of saying this movie doesn't negate the other thing. And he goes like groovy. Literally.

He like picks up a book, the camera tilts up he says groovy and it feels disconnected and their whole thing was like we don't want the existence of this movie to preclude the possibility of bringing ash back and maybe we're working towards like these forces terrorizing this new group of people are the same forces that ash has been fighting it's not just a remake and he could team up with jane levy at some point right um well there's look i remember liking that movie less than most people i think everyone had their knives up being like why the fuck would they remake this and then when it came out people were kind of pleasantly surprised people liked how gross it was right it's got really insane uh it is it is soaking wet right and like like fede alras is pretty solid uh jane levy's good like um there's a there's a good hook to it there's like one really good plot hook to it where you're like oh that's enough of a reason to remake it they're

now doing another one which is going to be on hbo max this year yeah they're doing evil dead rise okay that's like a high rise it sounds sort of like they're doing the raid but with evil dead so rather than it being a cabin in the woods it now happens in a building i don't know but it's it's a weird like they do that they thought they were building towards a sequel where they connect that movie to the universe of Ash. Then they do the Ash TV show. Sure. It has three seasons. Then some more years pass, and they're like,

we're going to make another movie that's sort of more in the remake vein where it's new people without Ash. Right. It's a weird franchise. It is. The thing with a Bruce Campbell, and I love the man.

Yeah. You know, this is going to sound mean. He will show up and say groovy for you if you want him to absolutely the man is not a hard sell on that stuff so like there's not that sort of sanctity around this franchise no yeah no no and i also think like the idea of looping ash into a new generation thing is like i think what they liked about the remake is like we can go back to this just being nasty and visceral again at this point bruce campbell has to have it's gonna be light-hearted if he's involved right right but what if there was like a movie where like he's kind of older he's a little grizzled he's got kind of a distant look

in his eye but then people find him in the middle of the movie or maybe in last act and they're like were you were you there in the cabin the season and they go back to the cabin or no what no the thing i like about the first season of ash versus evil is that is i remember it sort of parodying those tropes that's good in a good way yeah okay right yeah i also just i've never seen it but i remember being told it's also super gory yeah like you know has a lot of fun with yeah but but is it more in line with this where it's like goofy gory yes exactly all right do you want to play i have a few box office games because this movie's got such a weird release david i trust your judgment well let's do you've never given me a bad box of you haven't given me that one such thing uh that is true the first one is for it i guess the first time i'm forgetting the premiere that doesn't count sure so it's like release in new york so

this is like the fourth of february 1983 wow almost exactly okay 39 years ago yes that's true okay so let's do this one obviously evil that is not on the it's it's making like a hundred grand i think you know but uh number one is a comedy it's my mother's birthday 1982 uh that has been out wait is it 82 or 83 oh sorry the mood this comedy came out december 82 gotcha gotcha it's an Oscar player uh huh it's a huge hit uh huh or a Tootsie huh

Tootsie it sure is it sure is it's Tootsie it's Tootsie huge in its 8th week it's made

a hundred million dollars domestically in 1982 it it was number 2 I think I think it was at the time one of the 10 highest grossing movies

in history domestic you always throw that at me and I don't know I know box office mojo used to make this so fucking easy i know i know i know anyway being in my existence uh but it was i think the number two movie of 82 i don't know what uh let's find out um behind of course oh right of course yes it was yes it was second only to et right uh yeah tootsie it's a huge movie we've've joked about its sort of strange premise. You know, I've seen it once.

Look, I've seen it a couple times. I feel like I rewatched it in the last couple of years. Because whenever I talked about it on the show, being like the premise is funny. I feel like I always heard people being like, no, Tootsie is the the diamond you can't come for tootsie it's the modern lube bitch and whatever and i watch it i'm like i still think this is executed very well i think it's a little over praised there are things i think are phenomenal namely uh uh charleston's performance is incredible the whole supporting cast is incredible yeah obviously terry garlandland and all of that. And Hoffman is like crazy good in it. I mean, his performance is the thing that sort of

transforms it. There's some great scenes in it. Great use of Murray. But it's like not one of the greatest comedies of all time for me, which I think for some people is seen as a sacrilegious state. Agree with that. I prefer Ishtar to Tootsie you prefer what ishtar to tootsie

sure i know tootsie's a better movie sure tootsie functions maybe more regularly as a film or whatever you know at the end of the day telling the truth can be dangerous business yeah it's true i'm popular don't go hand in hand number two of the box office also hoffman makes zero movies between tootsie and ishtar. Good for him. I know we said this in that episode, but it is wild to consider. The man just ate box offices for lunch until he didn't. I don't know what I'm trying to say. The next movie is, it's a new movie.

It is new this week. It is a, or maybe it's not new this week, but it's reentering the box office this week. It's your classic supernatural horror film starring Barbara Hershey. Classic. And Ron Silver. Well, I feel like we just talked about this in our Portrait of a Lady episode, maybe. Hit me. I can't remember what this is.

It's called The Entity. Okay. I don't think you were going to get that. Nope, I wasn't. About a woman who claims she was assaulted by an invisible entity. It's based on a true story. Nope. That was about a woman who claims she was assaulted by an invisible entity. It's based on a true story. Okay. This woman claimed this sort of paranormal thing happened to

her. I've never seen it. It's directed by Sidney J. Fury who famously made the Ick Press File, which is a great movie. Oh, sure. Yeah. But I don't know much more about it. Number three at the box office. It's Cop Buddy Comedy. Cop Buddy Comedy. Cop Buddy Comedy, 1982. Yeah, yeah.

It came out in 82, December. Huge hit. It is 48 hours? It sure is. Yeah. You've seen 48 hours? Hell yeah. Walter Hill.

I'm sure you saw this, David. You're Mark when we're recording this podcast, but the last couple of days, it's been circling around Twitter, the Dan Chamberlain prompt about, like, what's your white whale of like... Right, the unreleased or unrealized project you wanted to see happen.

I think a lot of people were turning it into unrealized. And what he was sort of prompting is like, things that have been unreleased, that were made and have never been... There's also that, things that are in some vault somewhere. Right. Such as that Star Wars show that Connor is so obsessed with, the parody show. made have never been there's also that things that are in some vault somewhere right such as

that that star wars show that connor is so obsessed with the parody show i don't know what you're talking about star wars detours yeah i think it's been on shelf um uh erin uh sangurai who's a friend of the podcast as well tweeted that his pick i did not know about this uh another 48 hours was originally like two and a half hours long sure and then paramount was like walter hill fucking get over cut it down to two no 95 the working cut david okay david it went from two and a half to two yeah sure and then the week before the movie came out some other thing was a big ass hit and paramount got really scared yeah they cut 30 minutes right they cut it down to 95 then right in a week and apparently

that's why the movie makes no sense it's because of total recall yes correct total recall had like the biggest opening weekend of all time and they were so stressed out by that that they were like this thing we have to get in multiple showings a day right just to make money so there's 30 minutes cut wantonly in like what you have to imagine is 48 hours truly if there was time to get new prints made. It's not like they could just upload a new cat's cut. Yeah, but the boys were back in town. You can't deny that.

It's just what the supporting cast of that movie is like I have zero lines in the film and I was the third lead. It says 48 hours in the final cut. They never established the clock. Which was written into the movie. Like all these things. I'm established the clock. Which was written into the movie. Like all these things. I'm fascinated by that.

But the original 48 hours, fucks. It is. It's a movie that you couldn't make now like when you watch it but it is so good. It's a classic

Walter Hill. But it makes me wonder did they make it a second time and we've just never seen it? Possibly. Walter Hill's a good director. He directed both.

Number four at the box office this week was the best picture winner of 1982. BTT. Gandhi. Gandhi. B.T.T. Gandhi. Gandhi. Crushing it.

Yeah. And number five is a fucking phenomenal fucking movie that I love so much from one of your favorite directors. It's my favorite performance from this actor. It's just the kind of movie I can eat all day. Is it a Lumet?id's nodding solidly

uh it's not uh it's a showcase for an actor one of the greats it's jesus christ why am i blanking on it it's it's the paul newman movie is. And it is called The... Verdict. Thank you. You're welcome. I kept on... My mind was going to Accused.

Yeah, well... And The Client. Yes, The Verdict. It's one of those lawyer movies. It's a fucking great movie. Incredible movie, incredible performance, The Verdict. But let's move along as well. Just to the wider weekend.

Just because this is a weird one. Sure. So this is the 15th of April, 1983. The people on the fucking Blank Check subreddit are going to be doing the Vince McMahon meme with no guest, two box office games. Well, one thing I want to note about this box office

game. Ben does bit pretending like thing from movie is actually happening during record. Sorry, go on is that Tootsie and Gandhi are still in the top five top five now in their 18th and 19th weeks so they're hanging around

Best Picture used to be a king maker absolutely if you were already a hit you became a mega hit if you weren't a hit you became a blockbuster you get to play for six more months and people will get six more months but number one okay it's a western and it stars an action star a junkie action star of the 80s i don't think you'll know this movie is it a chuck norris it is okay is it called too hot to handle it's called Lone Wolf McQuaid.

I do know that title. I'm actually embarrassed I didn't get it. David Carradine. Yeah. I mean, I know it as a reference. Right. Yeah. Same.

Yeah. You've also got Robert Beltran. You've got William Sanderson. I don't know. Kane Hodder apparently plays a goon in this movie. Anyway, Lone Wolf McQuaid, baby. Lone Wolf McQuaid, baby. William Sanderson. I don't know. Kane Hodder apparently plays a goon in this movie. Anyway, Lone Wolf McQuaid, baby. Lone Wolf McQuaid, baby. J.J. McQuaid is a former Marine and Texan rager who prefers to work alone and carries a.44 Magnum revolver.

Wow. Okay. He lives in an old rundown house in the middle of nowhere with a pet wolf. Get the fuck out of here. This movie sounds stupid. I'm reading this cold no i think a lot of good ideas here there's some interesting stuff interesting elements of play yeah pet wolf yeah no it just feels like norris is like i should have pet wolf in the next one they're like

wolves aren't really okay you know what fine we'll get a wolf sure well i got chuck norris back for you some people have dogs for pets. Chuck Norris has a wolf for them. Exactly. Isn't that funny? Isn't that random? Number two at this wider release is a surprise smash hit, I would say. Okay. From a director who I would argue for, but's kind of one of those directors with a mixed

reputation he's actually got a movie coming out this year really he does um is it an adrian line it's an adrian line film is a flash dance it's flash dance which i think is sort of the like when this you know like comes out critics are like this is trash right obviously jennifer beals is not a star. And it burns up. It's a sensation. The soundtrack sells a billion copies. Everyone's got to see it, right? I think critics had this thing of

this is what people are paying to go see. And then he weirdly kind of becomes a critic's favorite director. I guess it takes a while. But people were sort of like, he's the best at this sort of elevated junk. Absolutely. And then number five.

So Tootsie, Gandhi, number five of the box office, teen drama. Teen drama. Is it Talk to Me? No. Is the movie called Listen to Me? No. That's like Roy Scheider andomas howell and like five teen actors i don't know i was just trying to know this serious movie starring teens i think

it's called listen to me this is from one of the greatest directors in the history oh it's outsiders it's the outsider okay uh matt dylan tom cruise patrick swayze rob low Lowe Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez C. Thomas Howell I'm a Rumblefish guy myself I mean Ben yes I love I loved all those books when I was a kid I don't know about you I read all those S.E. Hinton books I didn't I just saw them They were great I read them as well David

Don't know why they literally couldn't have been Less about my experience as a teen kid I was like well I'm not some youth With like a grease you know like a comb in my pocket who's always getting in rumbles or whatever but but isn't that the story i mean that was like the first of the movies that coppola was like recutting or i guess after american uh apocalypse redux right right but uh that his granddaughter was in school and she was being assigned outsiders like decades later it was

still the perennial and she was like grandpa why aren't all these things from the book in the movie like all my friends are trying to watch the movie so they don't have to read the book and it's missing things and so then he recut it was like i put everything back in it's the whole novel stay cool soda pop outsider is the complete novel um stay golden pony boy stay golden pony boy all that yeah so that's those are two top fives for you that's that's what the industry looks like back sure is a time yeah yep um yeah that's uh wait a second that's the news what's up i'm saying something weird in the blank check reddit here people are reacting to the announcement of our next miniseries, Late Rob Reiner.

Only the 2010s. Ben, is there any chance that tape you played didn't just announce a miniseries, it announced a cursed miniseries? Oh, shit. What have I unleashed upon us? You have to chop it up. Apparently, we've already released the episode on Story of Us. It's out there with guest Alex Jones? No, come on now.

Delete it. We have to delete this from the feed. All right. All right. I'm going to chop up this tape machine. Yeah. Okay, great. Good job, guys.

Great sound effects. I just felt like I had to bring it back. No, it's very good. Narrative closure. All right. Chekhov's gone. We're done. Take us out, Griffin.

Next week, Crime Wave. Next week, Crime Wave. Next week, Crime Wave. Next week, Crime Wave. A movie I've never seen. Me neither. Never had any reason to see it. Excited to watch. A movie I've never seen. Me neither. Never had any reason to see it. Excited to watch.

Look, here's the thing. It was a blessing in disguise that Doctor Strange got pushed back and that the Campion fever was high and it felt like a good time to flip that order. Because I think people were worried about the sameness of like if we go from Carpenter to Raimi. But man, Ray's career has a career ramey's career has some weird uh zags to it uh sure does uh it's an interesting trajectory and that's why i was kind of asking the spider-man guarantor question because it's sort of like i feel like he's almost on a downswing when he gets spider-man and like you know anyway we'll talk about it yeah i agree we'll talk we'll but it's but he's also the guy who did the evil dead movies forever which is why people are always going to roll

the dice with him it's an interesting situation and we'll get to it in this episode but he has said he found out that he had been hired to direct spider-man by reading it in variety and no one had called him to tell him and he was surprised okay well that's interesting he felt like i'm the guy they're interviewing to make the nerds happy. Sure. And then they will hire Rennie Harlan or whoever.

Right, right. And then he opened up one day and he was like, I am? Well, he was a good hire. He was great. Even though that movie is what it is,

but it's special and it's important. We're excited to talk about them. And we're excited to swing in to Raimi. Yeah. Podcast me to hell, baby. Thank you all for listening.

Yep. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and many other things, including recently constructing our website, a thing that we should have had a long time ago. But Marie took on the lion's share of the work and brought that to the finish line and at the time you're listening this march madness is raging so you can only go to that website for links to episodes that's true uh spatulas hopefully be in stock by now i'm sorry

there's been a slight delay on them but also every single day on blank checkpod.com. That's www.blankcheckpod.com. There's a new poll for March Madness because that shit ain't happening on Twitter anymore. Thank you to JJ Birch and Nick Lariano for our research and especially for abounding today's research in human flesh. Thank you to Lynn Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song, which today was provided on a reel-to-reel recorder. Thank you to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds, who did our artwork scribbled on a pen ripping through paper while possessed. I can't believe I came up with one that applied to all of them. Alex Barron for our editing that was also done on the reel-to-reel recorder. I'm sorry, I had to reuse one. Tune in next week

for Crime Wave. Go to patreon.com slash blankcheck for blankcheck special features where we go through commentaries, and right now we're going back to the Matrix. Yes. The website was supposed to make this shorter. It did. I know you don't think it did, but it did.

Okay. I really. It did. I know you don't think it did, but it did. Okay. I really think it did. Good. And as always, I just want to stumble one last time for Podmeat Podcast. David's making a stinky poo-p poo fit.

Great.