At a glance
| Born | October 23, 1959, Royal Oak, Michigan |
| Known for | The Evil Dead trilogy, Spider-Man |
| Active | 1977–present |
| Role | Director, producer, screenwriter |
Overview
Sam Raimi made The Evil Dead (1981) with friends, a cabin, and a camera that would not sit still. The film was sold as a gore picture and played like a cartoon. Evil Dead II (1987) remade the first one as slapstick, and Army of Darkness (1992) sent Ash Williams to the Middle Ages. Those three films are the horror career. Everything else — Darkman, the Spider-Man trilogy, Drag Me to Hell, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — is what a director does after a cabin movie becomes a cult object.
He did not direct the 2013 Evil Dead remake or Evil Dead Rise (2023). He produced them. The series on television, Ash vs Evil Dead, brought Bruce Campbell back under Raimi’s producing banner. On this site he is the director attached to Ash, the Necronomicon, and the demon-cam.
Career
Raimi, Campbell, and producer Robert Tapert met in Michigan. Their Super 8 shorts, including Within the Woods, were the demo for Evil Dead. Investors were local dentists and doctors. The shoot in Morristown, Tennessee, ran long, injured people, and produced a film the MPAA rated X. Stephen King saw it at Cannes and praised it in public, which is the review that got it released.
Evil Dead II is not a sequel in the ordinary sense. It retells the first night with a bigger budget and then continues past it. The laughing furniture, the severed hand, and the chainsaw are the film’s actual plot. Army of Darkness cost more, played broader, and disappointed Universal. Fans kept it alive. Raimi has two endings in circulation: the theatrical one, and the S-Mart ending that most people now treat as the real close.
Darkman (1990) was his first studio superhero film, made because he could not get the rights to The Shadow. Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), and Spider-Man 3 (2007) made him a blockbuster director. Drag Me to Hell (2009) was the return to horror proper: a loan officer, a curse, and the same camera moves as the cabin films. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) hired him to make a Marvel film that moved like Evil Dead. It does, in places.
Notable horror credits
- The Evil Dead (1981) — director, co-writer
- Evil Dead II (1987) — director, co-writer
- Army of Darkness (1992) — director, co-writer
- Drag Me to Hell (2009) — director, co-writer
- Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise (2023) — producer
- Ash vs Evil Dead (2015–2018) — executive producer
Trivia
- The 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88 appears in his films so often it is practically a cast member. It is in Army of Darkness and the Spider-Man movies.
- His brother Ted Raimi is the possessed woman in the fruit cellar in Evil Dead II, among many other bit parts.
- Bruce Campbell was not the first choice’s first choice. He was the friend who could take the hits.
- The Evil Dead was a video nasty in the UK and spent years on the banned list.
- Raimi has a cameo in several of his own films, usually as a face in a crowd or a hitchhiker.
- He did not direct the 2013 remake. Fede Álvarez did. Raimi produced it.