“It’s shocking, even to this day”: Sam Raimi names the most audacious scene in horror movie history
It’s tough to know why we movie fans enjoy sitting through absolutely terrifying films, especially enjoying the most shocking scenes in them the most, and when they’re done right (I’m talking the fire extinguisher death in Irreversible, pretty much all of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List), they stay with you for good. And one man who has plenty of moments like that in his locker is Sam Raimi.
Mainly that’s because Raimi is responsible for the Evil Dead franchise, a collection of films that has been getting more and more ‘Jesus Christ why did they do that!’ for years now, especially since the brilliant reboot in 2013 which upped the gore ante considerably, and definitely after the frankly insane Evil Dead Rise ten years later, which didn’t just push the envelope where mainstream horror was concerned, it sharpened the corners of the envelope and cut someone’s eye open with it.
And it’s all Raimi’s fault essentially. After all, he was the twisted mind that all the way back in 1979, aged just 20, made a short film called Within the Woods starring his friend Bruce Campbell that was produced on an incredibly small budget and centred around the idea of demonic possession. It did well enough that Raimi was able to leverage it into borrowing enough money to make an extended version, which turned out to be 1981’s The Evil Dead, the story of a group of students being tormented by spirits that was made for $375k and brought in $29.4million at the box office.
The success of that movie changed everything for him, and for his friend Campbell, who would go on to play Ash, the main chainsaw-wielding protagonist, in four more Evil Dead movies plus a TV series in 2015, Ash Vs The Evil Dead. Away from horror, the pair also teamed up for Raimi’s acclaimed Spider-Man trilogy between 2001 and 2007.
While Raimi has cited John Carpenter’s seminal slasher Halloween as a big influence on his early work, in addition to George A Romero’s black and white classic Night of the Living Dead from 1968, it was a master of film working even earlier than that who made a horror movie that quite probably stands as the most influential in the genre in history, Alfred Hitchcock.
Raimi told Den of Geek, “I love Psycho…I love that Hitchcock recognised the greatness of making the audience identify with the hero and then ending her life and introducing the real horror of the story, completely blowing our minds. It’s shocking even to this day that he had the audacity to do that. When that happens, you realise you’re in the hands of a filmmaker who’s capable of doing anything.
He furthered on the limitlessness of the film, and why that is significant, adding, “The whole grasp of the experience is quite terrifying: anything can happen, nothing is sacred, the hero can and does die. So nothing is off-limits. But his choice of shots, his composition, and the brilliant performances that he gets from all the actors are stunning.”
Psycho is certainly considered one of Hitchcock’s true masterpieces, alongside Vertigo and Rear Window. Featuring scenes that were genuinely jaw-dropping at the time, especially the vicious shower stabbing of leading lady Janet Leigh that Raimi references and the climactic twist, it was a commercial and critical triumph, bringing in $50m at the box office on a budget of less than a million dollars and picking up four Oscar nominations.
Raimi, meanwhile, has recently released one of 2026’s best movies in the form of Rachel McAdams’ desert island gorefest Send Help, and, god help us, Evil Dead Burn will be hitting cinemas in July this year. Arm yourself with a sick bag and some anti-anxiety medication for that one.
