Like most children of the 1960s, Sam Raimi grew up acting out his fantasies with the benefit of an 8 mm movie camera. The film gauge "grew to 35" when Raimi, with the aid of friends and relatives, raised 500,000 dollars to film a horror feature, The Evil Dead (1983). Not your average sliced-up-teenager epic, Evil Dead was a marvelously wicked assault on the senses, belying its tiny budget with several extremely clever (if nausea-inducing) set pieces. Raimi switched to slapstick comedy with Crimewave (1985), a wild Detroit-based crime caper co-scripted by Raimi's friends and fellow devotees of the bizarre, Joel and Ethan Coen. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987) giddily expanded the scope and splat-stick humor of the initial installment, and quickly became a cult classic with it s over-the-top gore and imaginative direction. Evil Dead 2 was the mark of a director truly at the top of his creative game, and with that film a foundation was cemented between Raimi and Bruce Campbell that would reach almost mythical status among the hardcore fans of the series. Raimi next came out guns-blazing for Darkman…  » Read more