2. The Evil Dead (1981)
Take a group of simple middle-income kids from the suburbs of Michigan with a dream. Have them go through high school making Super 8 movies and watching the Three Stooges for acting and directing tips. Have them decide to make a film in true independent style, begging for money from everyone, then going off to Tennessee to shoot it. Lacking resources, innovate never-before-seen camera moves and effects that only filmmakers on very limited budgets can come up with. Beg and scrape for more money to get it through post-production and then pitch to various distributors. Keep believing despite years of setbacks and refusals. Eventually have Dino Di Laurentis buy it and watch as that $375,000 movie makes nearly $2.4 Million at the box office when it is eventually released. Receive word that Stephen King literally nearly shit his pants upon viewing. Cinema-goers were suitably shocked by the movie and in particular a flora-based rape scene and the unseen 'demon' force that word-of-mouth spread. The buzz got Hollywood's attention and brought it to the pack of skinny little nerds from Michigan with Hollywood dreams. The rest is Raimi history. Evil Dead involved the classic 'let's go out to the spooky cabin for a weekend and then accidentally invoke evil forces', the story line is mimicked by the recently acclaimed Joss Whedon co-screenplay Cabin in The Woods. Finding something called The Book of the Dead, they make the classic horror mistake of reading it aloud and then from then on, the actors (especially Bruce, last man standing) are submitted to all sorts of on-screen torture that has been well-documented over the years and in his
previously mentioned book. Classic.