The Evil Dead is a 1981 American independent supernatural horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi (in his feature directorial debut) and the first installment in the Evil Dead franchise. The film stars Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly as college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in the woods, where they find an audio tape that, when played, releases a legion of demonic entities. Most of the group suffer from demonic possession, forcing its sole survivor, Ash Williams (Campbell), to survive an onslaught of increasingly gory mayhem.
Raimi, Campbell, producer Robert G. Tapert and their friends produced the 1979 short film Within the Woods as a proof of concept to build the interest of potential investors, which secured US$90,000 to begin work on The Evil Dead. Principal photography took place on location in a remote cabin in Morristown, Tennessee, in a filming process that proved extremely uncomfortable for the cast and crew. The film's extensive prosthetic makeup and stop-motion effects were created by artist Tom Sullivan. The completed film had its first, albeit private screening for friends and family at the Redford Theatre in Detroit on October 15, 1981, which attracted the interest of producer Irvin Shapiro, who helped screen the film at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Horror author Stephen King gave a rave review of the film, which resulted in New Line Cinema acquiring its distribution rights and giving it a wide theatrical release on April 15, 1983.
The Evil Dead grossed $2.4 million in the United States and $27 million overseas, for a worldwide gross of $29.4 million. Both early and later critical receptions were universally positive; in the years since its release, the film has developed a reputation as one of the most significant cult classics, having been cited among the greatest horror films of all time, and one of the most successful independent films. It launched the careers of Raimi, Tapert, and Campbell, who have continued to collaborate on several films together, such as Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.
The Evil Dead spawned a media franchise, beginning with two successors written and directed by Raimi, Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992), a fourth film, Evil Dead (2013), which serves as a standalone sequel, a fifth film, Evil Dead Rise (2023), and a sixth film, Evil Dead Burn (2026), and a follow-up television series, Ash vs Evil Dead, which aired from 2015 to 2018; the franchise also includes video games and comic books. The film's protagonist Ash Williams is considered to be a cultural icon.
Plot
A quintet of Michigan State University students – Ash Williams, his girlfriend Linda, his sister Cheryl and their friend Scott, and his girlfriend Shelly – vacation at a remote cabin in the rural hills of Tennessee. As the group approaches the cabin, they notice the porch swing move on its own, but it stops when Scott grabs the door key. While Cheryl is drawing a picture of an old clock, it stops and she hears a faint voice instructing her to "join us." Her hand becomes possessed, turns pale, and draws a picture of a book with a face on its cover. Although shaken, she does not mention the incident.
When the cellar trapdoor flies open during dinner, Shelly, Linda, and Cheryl stay upstairs as Ash and Scott investigate the cellar. They find the Naturom Demonto, a Sumerian version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, along with an archaeologist's tape recorder. Scott later plays a tape of incantations that resurrect a demonic entity (The Kandarian Demon). Cheryl yells for Scott to turn off the tape recorder, and a tree branch breaks one of the cabin's windows. Later that evening, an agitated Cheryl heads into the woods to investigate strange noises, and she is attacked and raped by demonically possessed trees. When she escapes and returns to the cabin bruised and anguished, Ash agrees to take her back into town, only to discover that the bridge has been destroyed. They return to the cabin, where Ash learns from the tape that the only way to kill the entity is to dismember the possessed host. As Linda and Shelly play Spades, Cheryl correctly calls out the cards without looking at them, turns into a white-eyed monster, and begins levitating. In a raspy voice, she threatens to kill everyone, stabs Linda in the ankle with a pencil, and throws Ash into a shelf. Scott knocks Cheryl into the cellar and detains her inside.
Everyone fights about what to do. Paranoid, Shelly goes to her room but is drawn to look out of her window, where the Kandarian Demon crashes through and attacks her, turning her into a monster too. She attacks Scott before he pushes her into the fireplace and then stabs her in the back with a Sumerian dagger, apparently killing her. When she reanimates, Scott dismembers her with an axe and buries her remains. Shaken, Scott leaves to find a way back to town. He returns shortly after, mortally wounded by the possessed trees, and dies while warning Ash that the trees will not allow their escape. Ash checks on Linda and realizes that she has become possessed. She attacks Ash, who stabs her with the Sumerian dagger. Unwilling to dismember her, he buries her instead. She revives and attacks him, forcing him to decapitate her with a shovel. Her headless body bleeds on his face as it attempts to rape him. He escapes back to the cabin as Linda dies.
Back inside, Ash discovers that Cheryl has escaped the cellar. Scott's dead body also reanimates into a monster. Scott attacks Ash and inadvertently knocks the book close to the fireplace. As Scott and Cheryl attack Ash, he grabs the book and throws it into the fireplace. While the book burns, the zombies freeze and decompose rapidly. Large appendages burst from both corpses, covering Ash in blood. As dawn breaks, he stumbles outside. As he walks away from the cabin, the Kandarian Demon races through the forest and attacks him as he screams in terror.
Cast Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams, a young man who goes away with his friends to an old cabin in the woods, where they stumble upon the Naturom Demonto, the Sumerian Book of the Dead Ellen Sandweiss as Cheryl Williams, Ash's younger sister Richard DeManincor as Scott, a friend of Ash (credited as Hal Delrich) Betsy Baker as Linda, Ash's girlfriend Theresa Tilly as Shelly, Scotty's girlfriend (credited as Sarah York)
Sam Raimi as a local fisherman and the voice of the Evil Dead (uncredited) Robert G. Tapert as another local fisherman (uncredited) Bob Dorian as the voice of Professor Knowby (uncredited)
Production
Background and writing Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell grew up together and have been friends from an early age. The duo made several low-budget Super 8 mm film projects together. Several were comedies, including Clockwork and It's Murder!. Shooting a suspense scene in It's Murder! inspired them to approach careers in the horror genre; after researching horror cinema at drive-in theaters, Raimi was set on directing a horror film, opting to shoot a proof of concept short film – described by the director as a "prototype" – that would attract the interest of financiers, and use the funds raised to shoot a full-length project. The short film that Raimi created was called Within the Woods, which was produced for $1,600. For The Evil Dead, Raimi required over $100,000.
To generate funds to produce the film, Raimi approached Phil Gillis, a lawyer to one of his friends. Raimi showed him Within the Woods, and although Gillis was not impressed by the short film, he offered Raimi legal advice on how to produce The Evil Dead. With his advice in mind, Raimi asked a variety of people for donations, and even eventually "begged" some. Campbell had to ask several of his own family members, and Raimi asked every individual he thought might be interested. He eventually raised enough money to produce a full-length film, though not the full amount he originally wanted. Raimi said the film cost $375,000.
With enough money to produce the film, Raimi and Campbell set out to make what was then titled Book of the Dead, a name inspired by Raimi's interest in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. The film was supposed to be a remake of Within the Woods, with higher production values and a full-length running time. Raimi turned 20 just before shooting began, and he considered the project his "rite of passage".
Pre-production and casting
Raimi asked for help and assistance from several of his friends and past collaborators to make The Evil Dead. Campbell offered to produce the film alongside Tapert, and was subsequently cast as Ash Williams, the main character, since his producing responsibilities made him the only actor willing to stay during the production's entirety. To acquire more actors for the project, Raimi put an ad in The Detroit News. Betsy Baker was one of the actresses who responded, and Ellen Sandweiss, who appeared in Within the Woods, was also cast. The crew consisted almost entirely of Raimi and Campbell's friends and family. The special make-up effects artist for Within the Woods, Tom Sullivan, was brought on to compose the effects after expressing a positive reaction to working with Raimi. He helped create many of the film's foam latex and fake blood effects, and added coffee as an extra ingredient to the traditional fake blood formula of corn syrup and food coloring.
Without any formal assistance from location scouts, the cast had to find filming locations on their own. The crew initially attempted to shoot the film in Raimi's hometown of Royal Oak, Michigan, but instead chose Morristown, Tennessee, as it was the only state that expressed enthusiasm for the project. The crew quickly found a remote cabin located several miles away from any other buildings. During pre-production, the 13 crew members had to stay at the cabin, leading to several people sleeping in the same room. The living conditions were notoriously difficult, with several arguments breaking out between crew members.
Steve Frankel was the only carpenter on set, which made him the art direction's sole contributor. For exterior shots, Frankel had to produce several elaborate props with a circular saw. Otherwise, the cabin mostly remained the way it was found during production. The cabin had no plumbing, but phone lines were connected to it.
Principal photography The film was made on Kodak 16mm film stock with a rented camera. The inexperienced crew made filming a "comedy of errors". The first day of filming led to them getting lost in the woods during a scene shot on a bridge. Several crew members were injured during the shoot, and because of the cabin's remoteness, securing medical assistance was difficult. One notably gruesome moment on set involved ripping off Baker's eyelashes during removal of her face-mask. Because of the low budget, thick glass contact lenses had to be applied to the actors to achieve the "demonic eyes" effect. The lenses took ten minutes to apply, and could only be left on for about 15 minutes because eyes could not "breathe" with them applied. Campbell later commented that to get the effect of wearing these lenses, they had to put "Tupperware" over their eyes.
Raimi developed a sense of mise en scène, coming up with ideas for scenes at a fast rate. He had drawn several crude illustrations to help him break down the flow of scenes. The crew was surprised when Raimi began using Dutch angles during shots to build atmosphere during scenes. To accommodate Raimi's style of direction, several elaborate, low-budget rigs had to be built, since the crew could not afford a camera dolly. One involved the "vas-o-cam", which relied on a mounted camera that was slid down long wooden platforms to create a more fluid sense of motion.