12 Things You Didn't Know About The Evil Dead Movies
3. The Flying Demon Effect Was Done With A Plank
One of the most famous and much-imitated innovations of the Evil Dead franchise is the Deadite cam. Saving money on the special effects and also building up the suspense until the film's monsters appear on screen, the film often shifts to the point-of-view of the demonic spirits as they race through their cursed forest looking for victims.
You'll have no doubt seen it since in about a billion different bad B-movies, but they're probably flush enough to have bought a steadicam to film their floaty spirit scenes. Sam Raimi and co weren't quite as well-funded when making the first Evil Dead film, so they invented their own: a big plank of wood with the camera stuck to the front.
Their makeshift steadicam had the added effect of giving everything a floaty, etheral quality, and even when the budget got upped during later films they kept reusing the original Deadite shooting style. Expect to see a lot of it again in the Ash Vs Evil Dead series – in fact, the very effect is all over the trailer released at Comic-Con.