Earlier this year, while at SXSW, Larry sat down with the cast and crew of the 2013 reboot of Evil Dead. Here’s the chat we had with one of Larry’s personal heroes, Bruce Campbell (producer and star of the original film) and fellow producer Rob Tapert. Here’s what went down as we talk about CGI, “torture porn horror” and much more…
The film goes back to the basics in many ways…
Bruce: Yeah, I love the fact that you made a point that there’s not a lot of CGI in the film…
Rob: Well theoretically, there’s almost none, Fede (Director) made the point that there’s almost none. Just visual effects, so you’re still compositing and old school stuff, you’re painting stuff out and hiding it, no generating no toasty creatures or stuff like that, so as a result everything looks real…
Bruce: You would think something like splitting your tongue apart or things like that, would just, let’s just CGI that, but that was an actual process where they got a prosthetic…
Rob: Yeah, you know what, that was an argument that Fede cause I said it’s gonna take like and entire afternoon with the prosthetics to build and stuff like that, and we can do it really simply, I shot a television show shooting in New Zealand – Spartacus – where we chopped things off, every single day 50 times, but it was great that he convinced me to go down that path.
Bruce: It makes for a different look, it’s undeniable.
What was the hardest of those effects?
Rob: Well the tongue…
Bruce: Probably the cutting her arm off, you can’t just, it’s not one set up, and Fede he explained, there’s one shot and you just hold onto it, you see her bring it up, you bring it over and you just see her slice right into it, real time.
Rob: And you had multiple arms, because there was another arms that falls off the body.
Bruce: It was complicated.
Rob: None of that was CG and that’s all the kind of stuff you can do CG, generated arm to fall… so no, that was all old school stuff.
I mean it’s kind of macabre, the blood rain, it was just beautiful, it was so red. There’s this high-angle shot and you see the one demon crawling around the car and she’s trapped on the other side of the car and it’s like oh my god, this should be just a nightmare, but you know what, that is kind of beautiful, it literally is art.
Rob: People said they had fun last night, and how many times do you hear that? How many times is a horror movie fun?
Bruce: It’s pretty rare.
But aren’t they supposed to be?
Bruce: I think they should be I don’t know what this whole torture porn is all about, that’s just lazy filmmaking to me, and it’s also disingenuous filmmaking. When this movie was over, people are jibber-jabbering, when torture porn movies are people are like, I just wanna go hang myself, and I don’t get it, that to me is not entertaining, but that’s fine there’s room for all kinds of horror.
I remember last October when you showed the trailer in Dallas and there seemed to be a fair amount of people who were against the idea of what this was, but then seeing the reaction to the screening last night, it not only worked, but it worked very well, so that must be an extremely gratifying thing to see people shut the hell up and enjoy it.
Bruce: The bloggers here calms down a little bit, and all the Evil Dead fans, once they’re in, they’re in. We just had to get the tip, I think we needed that tipping point and I think we were getting there because now the reviews are gonna come out, the bloggers are gonna come out ‘shut up, I was there I was there!’ They can tell the real story, which is good.
Rob: …and for the fans of the original movie, when they see this, they’re gonna start to see little things that they had never picked up on before, and that are an homage to the first one that no one will ever notice. Fede mentioned on to me today, and I remember at the the time it just made me laugh, which was in the first Evil Dead, she calls out a bunch of cards and in this one those cards that the woman called out, are laid out directly on the table.
Bruce: There’s a lot of cool stuff, that I think even Rob and I would be surprised by. And like we were saying a second ago, the tone of the movie is a very straightforward horror film that you can enjoy
Rob: It’s over the top horror.
Bruce: And it’s nice to see us getting back to the roots of the good ol’ days of what horror films started out to be instead of the same old torture porn.
Rob: This is a monster movie at the end of the day.
Bruce: Kind of like the 1950’s sci-fi.
Rob: Pretty Much.
Both with this new film and the original sequels, was it always being able to say: this is what we can do now that we have more of a budget?
Rob: We never intended to do three of them, so when people say trilogy, I laugh, there was no over-arching design of what it was supposed to be, it fell off the truck that way, so there’s nothing to comment on. We made a second one because our second movie bombed.
Do you think the original would’ve been a success if it did have a budget?
Bruce: Yeah, it would’ve had more success because it would’ve had more success because it would’ve played to more mainstream audiences, and had more than 60 prints.
Rob: I don’t think it would’ve ever gotten rated, I think that would’ve been the problem, still would’ve had ratings problems. I think we were fortunate that this movie got an R rating.
Bruce: That’s kind of amazing when you think about it, there’s no sex in the movie, per say, there’s just a lot of violence and was there any point where they said, okay we’ve got to cut a few frames out of this scene.
Rob: That’s their job, but in the world of dealing with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), they were very reasonable and I think they understood the spirit of the movie and didn’t want to put their stamp; they felt like they could defend their position that they need to take, which is for parents thinking, is this appropriate for my kids to go see, and at what level, and they felt an R rating was appropriate.
Bruce: And the funny thing is you know, their notes were similar to our notes as producers, cut this down, yeah, you don’t need to cut an arm off for like 4 minutes. You don’t need to. The length that it’s in there in the movie is perfect because she goes and keeps going, and you’re like, Jesus Christ she keeps going, and it snaps open and she finally got it. It’s hanging by a thread, and that’s all you need.
Rob: There’s kind of the precedent of 127 Hours, which wasn’t a horror movie, but the main crux of that film is that the guy cuts his arm off. The interesting thing about the original Evil Dead was it was Tongue In Cheek humor along with the horror in a-
Bruce: Not the first one, the first one’s a melodrama, it’s only when we did the second one that we were more sophisticated filmmakers and were more self-aware and more able to manipulate the audience. We did the first film balls out because we were really concerned to get our investors money back, we didn’t want to dick around with a generic horror film, so we did an in-your-face, over-the-top, gory-as-shit, horror movie and I mean, why do anything less. For the second one, there was less pressure to make a traditional horror film, so Evil Dead 2 is a truer version of the movie, we wanted to make anyway gags and slapstick, Splatstick is what we call it.
Was there ever a moment on this particular remake where you thought, maybe we should go funny with this or…?
Bruce: Fede’s not that kind of guy, he’s not full of old three stooges jokes, and we are.
Rob: I remember you said Fede was the one who came to you with the tape and that was what made you say, yeah this could work…
Bruce: And part of it was the fact that it was straight, I thought that was kind of cool.
Rob: Just from a sales point of view, I love Evil Dead 2 and Army Of Darkness.
Bruce: It’s harder to sell, cause what is it? Horror comedy? Where’s that category in the video aisle? Where does it go?
I have to ask you this because Sam (Raimi) a week ago, made this statement in an interview that he was going to write a script for Evil Dead 4… I know this question is so beat into the ground…
Rob: I would never call Sam a liar, but I just want him to stop.
Bruce:/ When I see a script I’ll believe it.
Rob: I believe the following: he needs a break. Oz (the Great and Powerful) was a beast…
Bruce: A big project…
Rob: And he needs a break, he’s going back to Michigan for the summer, his brother lives there and I think that they enjoy working on movies together.
Bruce: With no studio involvement. The Evil Dead movies to Sam represent a fairly limited involvement. First Evil Dead, no studio involvement, the second one very limited, and the third one we actually did have a lot of studio interference and re-editing, so I think if Sam does another one, he’s gonna want to get back to being left alone,
Rob: That’s why, when they did Drag Me To Hell, he had total control, and that was great.
So if he pops a script in front of you, are you ready to go?
Bruce: No, but let’s see what happens you know.
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This interview was originally a part of our SXSW podcast earlier in the year. Evil Dead is available in Australia on DVD now.
Transcription assistance by Leo Silvestrini.
