If you ever get sick of movies where a group of college students go to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of partying, only to be picked off one by one by an inescapable evil of some sort, you can blame Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead. The then-Michigan-based filmmaker and his friends didn’t originate the concept. (How could they, with something so elemental?) But the success of Raimi’s 1981 directorial debut was so striking —and so unexpected — that it’s served as an inspiration for generations of horror filmmakers.
The making of the movie isn’t the inspirational part: Shot by a small crew on a tiny budget under grueling circumstances, everyone who was there agrees that principal photography on The Evil Dead was a miserable experience, in part because of their director’s personal belief that, if you want someone to act angry or frightened, it’s best to annoy them and/or scare them a little bit.
