Grab your striped sweater and hockey mask! Prepare for a trip down memory lane! Here are NerdiPop’s top three horror movies from the 1980s!

The Evil Dead (1981)

The Evil Dead (1987)

Pumkinhead (1988)

First up, the film that popularized the Book of the Dead (also known as the Necronomicon) and introduced us to the Deadites. This is none other than The Evil Dead (1981), the horror movie classic that launched the careers of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi.

Synopsis:

Five college students take some time off to relax in a remote cabin. When the incantations are read aloud, the evil found in the book and audio tape is revealed to be powerful. The friends are powerless to stop the evil as it takes them one by one, leaving only one survivor with the evil dead who desperately tries to fight until morning.

9 Fun facts about The Evil Dead (1987)

(1) Director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell were high school friends who collaborated on many super-8 films. They frequently worked with Sam’s brother, Ted Raimi. Campbell became the group’s “actor” because “he was the one that girls wanted to look at.

(2) Morristown, Tennessee, was the location of the cabin. According to Bruce Campbell’s biography, it was later burned down. Nobody knows for certain what occurred (Sam Raimi says that he burnt it down himself after filming). Furthermore, no one will give out complete directions to the cabin because the only remaining part of the structure is the brick chimney, and the property has already been vandalized.

(3) Karo syrup, nondairy creamer, and red food coloring are used to make the blood. At one point in the film, Bruce Campbell’s shirt was so saturated with fake blood that after drying it by the fire, it solidified and broke when he tried to put it on.

(4) “Fellas, no matter what you do, keep the blood running down the screen,” said Andy Grainger, a friend of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi. As a tribute to him, they included the scene in the finished film where the blood runs down the projector screen.

(5) Bruce Campbell would return home in the back of a pickup truck at the end of a ‘normal’ day of shooting because he was covered in fake blood from head to toe.

(6) The opening sequence of the evil moving over the pond is actually Bruce Campbell pushing Sam Raimi in a dingy whilst he films the shot.

(7) There was no cellar in the cabin. The majority of the cellar scenes were shot in the stone cellar of producer Rob Tapert’s family’s farmhouse in Marshall, Michigan. The cellar’s final room was actually Sam Raimi’s garage. The hanging gourds and bones pay homage to the Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). A hole was cut into the floor, a shallow pit was dug, and a ladder was placed into the pit for the scene where the students descend into the cellar.

(8) Due to the low budget, the actors had to wear contact lenses as thick as glass to achieve the “demonic eyes” effect. The lenses took ten minutes to apply and could only be worn for about fifteen minutes because they did not allow the eyes to “breathe.” Bruce Campbell later stated that they had to put “Tupperware” over their eyes to get the effect of wearing these lenses.

(9) Sam Raimi had to run through the woods with the makeshift rig, jumping over logs and stones, during scenes involving the unseen force in the woods watching the characters. Due to the mist in the swamp, this was frequently difficult.