The “horrible, depressing” movie Sam Raimi loathed every second of making
Once the world got a glimpse of The Evil Dead for the first time, there was no going back for Sam Raimi, such that Ash Williams’ bloody run-in with the Deadites was a major success by every conceivable metric.
It made back its budget several times over, received rave reviews from critics, and even got a shoutout from the legendary Stephen King, and Raimi, who was in his early 20s at the time, was hot property, where everybody wanted to know what he was going to do next; however, when they saw it, they probably wished they hadn’t bothered.
The young filmmaker’s sophomore project was called Crimewave, which followed a convoluted and often ridiculous storyline about two hitmen, a man pursuing a love interest, and the many strange ways in which their lives overlap. Unlike The Evil Dead, it was a complete flop, making just over $5,000 at the box office, and no, I haven’t misplaced a zero. The returns really were that low, and the movie didn’t even have the honour of being banned in some countries like its predecessor was, with viewers in awe that this was the product of the same guy who’d made a modern horror masterpiece just a few years earlier.
The film nearly killed Raimi’s career on the spot, but it wasn’t all his fault. A core part of both of his first two features, as well as his whole career, was Bruce Campbell, the impossibly chiselled actor who played the villainous Renaldo in Crimewave, and wrote about the movie in his book, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. It also features an interview with Raimi, and the director did not mince words when it came to describing this part of his career.
“It was the worst time of my life,” Raimi explained, “I realise now that they were a bunch of idiots, because if you’re making a three-million-dollar movie, you should let the director have a preview, you know. Let him cut his movie. Let him put sound with it and watch it once. Don’t look at half a rough cut… It was really wrong. It was such a horrible, horrible, horrible, depressing scene.”
The behind-the-scenes environment on Crimewave goes a long way in explaining its failure. Embassy Films Associates, the production company behind the movie, routinely obstructed Raimi and refused to let Campbell play the primary role, insisting that an established actor take it instead.
They also denied him access to the editing room, meaning that he was shooting material without knowing how it was being used. It’s an absolutely classic case of a studio pushing a young, up-and-coming filmmaker around, only this one refused to roll over and take it. Raimi wasn’t entirely innocent, though, as he massively underestimated how much the film would cost, causing Crimewave to run way over budget.
It wasn’t all bad news, though, as the movie’s script was written with the Coen brothers, marking a major advancement in Raimi’s relationship with the siblings. Once Crimewave sank like a lead balloon full of pus, it inspired the director to go back to his roots, and two years later, Evil Dead II came out, which put him right back on track.
Campbell reckons that his friend’s first run-in with the studio system left him scarred for life. He posits that the much-maligned dance sequence in Spider-Man 3 was actually Raimi getting revenge for being spurned all those years ago, and honestly, I can see it.
