Sam Raimi didn’t want to make Evil Dead II. Along with his cohorts Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, the director had made an indelible mark on the filmmaking world with the 1982/1983 release of The Evil Dead, and he had aspirations to make a lot of different kinds of movies (which he would subsequently do). Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned career-wise for the trio, and a hand was forced.
Teaming up with screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen, Raimi, Campbell and Tapert made 1985’s Crimewave as their follow-up to The Evil Dead, and it was a disaster. While the movie has found an audience in the decades since, the production was filled with conflict as the filmmakers clashed with studio executives (a rough follow-up to the arduous experience making their feature debut) and it ended up being a box office bomb. As recounted in the documentary Swallowed Souls: The Making Of Evil Dead II, the Michigan-born friends needed to restore their Hollywood reputations in the aftermath, and the clear path to doing so was making an Evil Dead II.
