10 Horror Movie Scenes Filmmakers Regret
8. The Angry Molesting Tree - The Evil Dead
One of the most iconic and memorable scenes in The Evil Dead involves the presence of the so-called "Angry Molesting Tree" - a possessed tree which goes on to sexually assault protagonist Ash's (Bruce Campbell) sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss).
It's a shocking scene which many fans consider jarring, and even filmmaker Sam Raimi himself has expressed regret over the sequence. He told The San Diego Reader in 2012:
"I do [regret it.]... I think it was unnecessarily gratuitous and a little too brutal. And finally because people were offended in a way that I didn't... my goal is not to offend people. It is to entertain, thrill, scare... make them laugh but not to offend them. But, you know, I know that a lot of nineteen year olds that are stealing cars and murdering people. Not to make that comparison but I think my judgement was a little wrong at that time."
Yet despite Raimi's comments, the "tree rape" scene still reappeared in the Raimi-produced 2013 remake, with director Fede Álvarez claiming that an unnamed producer forced him to include it in the script.