In 1982 Fangoria published issue #23
of its "Fantastic Horror Movie Magazine".
In it Bob Martin wrote:
"Sullivan's artistic talent was immediately put to use
designing the ads for the film group's showings,
but it was his hands-on experience in makeup effects and stop motion
that made him invaluable when the project began."
It also lets you know what you can take too,
and what's strange about those situations is,
some of this rubbed off into the movie.
Because there has to be a reason
the movies are still popular 30 years later.
Hi! We're here with Tom Sullivan,
the famous filmmaker...
special effects...
Let's start that again!
We're here with Tom Sullivan, the old...
okay, let's start that again.
What's your name again?
Hi! I'm Tom Sullivan, the famous special effects creator
for "The Evil Dead" and "The Evil Dead 2".
And I did some stuff on "The Army of Darkness".
I mean look...
we should shut down.
If you want to have an interesting documentary
you have to go into Tom's life.
Tom was like an island.
We were the current that flowed around him.
He was the rock.
So we're gonna go over all the stories?
. Yes! ' Okay!
It's your sister Cheryl!
I mean I did know that I took off my top,
which I did not want to do,
but they made me do it!
Loose ankles... gross!
All the luminaries are here tonight.
Unbelievable!
How do you like that? Can I take a picture?
Which means? Which means?
Party down, yeah!
Tom Sullivan is an absolute genius.
Michelangelo's got nothing on the man!
Can I take some pictures? I'm just a fan.
His visuals still are extremely memorable and part of that whole franchise.
I'm just a fan. Let me take your picture.
I was really impressed by Tom's work because,
he really created something super cool.
Probably helped a lot that I was completely in awe of you and your work.
Things worked out well for all of us.
I was blown away by his artwork.
His enthusiasm was wonderful.
You seemed like a really artistic version of a makeup artist,
so it seemed logical to use you for "The Evil Dead".
But it was a new field for us too.
So you were leading the way.
Tell us where it all started. What year you were born?
I was born in 1954.
Which is the same year "Godzilla" was born.
And the giant ants in "Them".
And so on and so forth... I like that.
I was born in Oaklawn hospital in Marshall.
This is the house my parents owned.
I lived there for three month. Then we moved to Farmington, Michigan.
I was just a baby.
I lived in the little town of Farmington for the first five years.
Then we moved to Franklin which was really great.
That was out in the boonies.
We had a big valley in the backyard.
It had a big tree in the bottom of it.
We could go roam around down there. It had a tire swing that went across the river.
Very cool.
One Saturday morning,
my brother Mike and I,
and I'm about four or five years old,
we're watching "King Kong" at 10am.
- Franklin, Michigan? - Right.
We had a big old farmhouse with a swimming pool.
It was permanently cold.
And on the big old black and white TV came "King Kong".
It inspired me, changed my genetic programming:
"That's what I want to do when I grow up:
I want to make movies and dinosaurs and stuff."
You can do anything you want.
"Famous Monsters" came to my attention.
Like in the third grade or so.
That's Forey Ackerman's amazing tribute to horror films
and special effects and all that stuff.
And the people behind them most importantly.
He had articles on Willis O'Brien and "King Kong".
And Ray Harryhausen.
It was just fun to hook into that.
All the stuff that was coming and all the things to look forward to.
Later on, I got some jobs mowing lawns and things.
I saved up 20 bucks.
I bought an 8mm camera that had a single frame thing on it.
You wind it up, you push a button and it will take one single frame.
Suddenly I could make stop motion animation.
So I started doing clay things.
I had a Major Matt Mason and I filmed him running around.
In these towns, for the most part, I was like the
only guy really wanting to do the film making part.
When I was in the 8th grade
Tom was going to start a stop motion animation class.
A community extension course.
- Pat, his little friend... - Little Friend?
Yeah, he was like 15 or 16 at the time.
He came into my 8th grade social studies class.
He showed 8mm animated dinosaurs.
Tom provided all the 8mm cameras.
We had more fun then we should have been allowed.
He was a very good teacher.
That was our first adventure in film making together.
It was awesome!
Later in high school years,
I took drawing really seriously.
Thanks to a kid I met named Kurt Lux.
I noticed that during cafeteria hour,
during lunch, he'd be drawing and have a crowd of people standing behind him.
And half of them were girls.
That was great. You could be popular without talking to anybody.
I was a painfully shy guy.
And still am.
I can hide it on conventions.
So I said: "Could you show me how to do that?"
And immediately I'm buying books on anatomy,
tons of things... books on drawing and art.
Suddenly I am hooked into books.
That's absolutely essential.
I got stacks of them now.
That's me, when I had hair.
I had a fairly large room.
That was good studio space.
What I considered at the time to be his studio,
in one corner he had a little back screen set up,
stop motion armature puppets all over the place.
Sculptures and paintings.
It was one of those rooms you could walk into and...
almost nothing in the room was store bought.
Space ships built out of detergent bottles
and old tubes from TV sets that he'd taken.
He broke the glass off the outside of the tubes
so all that funky structure inside those old tubes was for his detailing.
It was awesome!
I started just to keep drawing.
And doodling.
I just kept drawing. I loved to draw.
I'd go home and draw, and go to the library and draw.
There I'd absorb every book on art, cartooning, painting,
movies, television...
I'd go through the old Time Magazines and read movie reviews.
That was fascinating to me.
How to tell stories and how people react to them.
All that.
I was spending more time trying to come up with interesting ways to make armatures.
I did't have the means to make steel ones.
So I made an armature out of Popsicle sticks,
and wooden beads.
I was trying to figure out how much you should move things.
Finally I had something that wasn't wire or clay.
That went on.
I was just out of high school, 18 or 19 years old.
During my senior year of high school
I started working at Schulers,
which is a high end restaurant here in Marshall.
I noticed this cute hat check girl coming in every once and while.
It turned out that was Penny Lawrence.
We'd hang and go to the movies.
We started dating.
We got married on May 17th, 1975 in Marshall.
At my parents' home.
My grandparents sold us a house that they'd inherited.
It was just around the corner on Madison Street.
So we took up residence there.
She wanted an education.
She had a great interest in journalism.
So she went to Michigan State.
Of course I went along too.
We lived in Cherry Lane Apartments.
I also took some classes in painting and figure drawing
at the local community college.
The instruction there was pretty good.
I worked at the Hobee Sandwich Shop.
It was right across on Trowbridge Road.
There was a little mall there.
And she went to school.
I went to Jackson, Michigan,
to attend a J. Allen Hynek talk
at the Michigan Space Center.
This was in 1977,
right before "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" came out.
There I met one of the organizers of the event, Bill Bates.
I let him know that I was interested in movies and special effects
and could do artwork and stuff, so we hit it off right away.
He had a film idea of a Lovecraftian story called "Cry of Cthulhu".
The story he was telling me was the "cosmic" Lovecraft.
It was unknown Kadath and journals and portals opening up.
It wasn't a family in a weird house down the road.
It was like the earth opening up and Yagoth Sagoth
coming from the bowels of the earth. Lots of monsters.
I illustrated the scenes Bill would tell me about.
These were the pre-digital days.
It was going to be an epic stop motion animation film.
Live action with animation ala Ray Harryhausen.
Lovecraft meets Harryhausen.
I think that's still a cool idea.
With that material they were able to get some publicity.
In "Cinefantastique" and I think in "Starlog".
Some nice little bits.
I was like: "Hey! My name's out there!
The people can see my work. "
I was very encouraged by that.
Even if the film doesn't happen, my name is out there.
A major studio from LA got interested.
The CEO said: "Looks interesting but I'm not sure if it's for us right now. "
He sent them home.
Six month later they got a tax bill for half a million dollars.
The executive had given green lights for the project.
He collected three million dollars in starting founds.
And he made it look like these guys got it.
This executive must be getting out of jail about now.
Welcome to Hollywood!
What else do you say?
It's still one of the coolest movies never made.
I was still doing some things for the "Cry of Cthulhu" artwork.
I was looking through the MSU school paper
and read about the MSU creative film making society.
It was an interview with Ivan Raimi.
Ivan and his brother Sam had found out
that you could rent a school auditorium
at a discount rate if you're a student living on campus.
This should encourage student led activities.
Sam had all these Super 8 movies and a projector.
So he just figured we'll show up,
show a couple of hours of my Super 8 movies.
And Bruce would show up every once in a while.
He wasn't going to MSU.
He was going to Wayne State or something like that.
But he'd show up.
He was a shy guy back then.
But I got to meet all these guys.
Ivan, Sam and Rob.
And Ted.
By the time I met Sam, he would go back weekends
to film bits of "it's Murder".
He went back to Franklin during the weekend.
He's also from Franklin.
Our houses were only a couple of blocks from each other.
After a couple of weekends, he was in post-production.
He'd ask you: "What skills do you have?"
I wanted to jump in: "Hey? Can I help?"
"Yeah! We're putting on a show... what can you do?"
I said: "I'll come up with a poster. "
I remember you drew a cool poster for "it's Murder".
That was in 1978.
It was before "The Evil Dead".
I think I met you 1977.
"Happy Valley Kid" was 1977.
I knew that Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi had met you through school.
And I had heard about it.
We used to come up on weekends all the time to work on "Happy Valley Kid".
To help Sam.
His big epic was "it's Murder".
But that time, I think, you guys knew each other more.
And then you did a really great poster.
For this little Super 8 movie.
It made it look like a huge action adventure.
Like a spectacle.
Really inventive and it served to movie well.
It was an amateur movie.
It was an early test of poster advertising.
Sam learned a lot from doing that.
These are my earliest recollections of "it's Murder".
So... 1978, 1988, 1998, 2008.
So that's... 34 years ago.
- And then... - And counting of course.
I'm sure I didn't meet him during "Happy Valley Kid".
I didn't meet him until Sam's next film "it's Murder".
When we screened it at MSU Tom was there.
It was a snowy night, a bad night for a premiere.
I guess Darryl Hall and John Oats were playing that night.
There was a MSU basketball game. With Magic Johnson on the team.
And it was very snowy.
That's his first connection into the thing.
And Tom was there.
And Bruce and Scott Spiegel,
Sam, me and Tom.
The movie was on a big reel.
An 85 minute Super 8 movie.
Like the biggest Super 8 movie of them all.
It was supposed to start at 8pm.
8:05... 8:10... 8:15...
Finally one guy shows up. For one buck admission.
Torn was working the box, selling the tickets... the ticket.
He sold 'the' ticket!
I don't remember selling tickets. I would have been happy to.
That guy comes in and sits down.
One person in a 100 seat theatre.
Sam goes: "Fuck it!
I made the movie so I'm showing it."
So he turns it on.
After like ten minutes the guy stands up:
"You got my money... " and he left.
Sam let it run for another minute and turned it off.
That was the first screening.
And then the second screening...
we got one person for the first screening and nobody for the second.
I'm pretty sure nobody showed up.
That was kind of sad.
But we'd go to their place afterwards
and showed my movies and just talked films.
And we'd do what college kids do.
Then we went back to Sam's dorm room.
We got loaded.
I remember that Tom was in good spirits.
He seemed very amiable to have around
considering Tom was in the worst depression of his life.
This was my bud's.
And I was making movies at the same time with these guys.
And Sam was coming in.
My camera was more in desire then I was.
I am sorry. Did I wake you?
It's a war wound. A piece of shrapnel hit me in the neck.
And now it goes limp anytime it wants to.
Would massaging it help?
I've known Ellen forever. I discovered her.
I put her in her very first movie in 1976.
Your mouth wash smells heavenly. Might I give it a try?
We all had a crush on her at one point or another.
I remember having a crush on her
and walking in the Raimis' house.
I was walking down the corridor passing the kitchen.
Her and Sam were kissing.
I was destroyed.
Please give me the pearl!
You wouldn't shoot me, Fritz. You loved me once.
Be thankful. Now I will only kill you once.
What about you, Mr. Temple?
She's been my friend forever.
I think she, with all respect to Bruce and everybody else,
I think she steals the show in "The Evil Dead".
She's kind of the only one who knows how to act.
Thanks, Josh.
What got me making movies was going to high school
with Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Josh Becker and John Cameron.
We ware all in plays together.
Whenever they needed a female they'd ask me, and I said sure.
The first time I met Tom Sullivan
was on the set of "The Evil Dead".
Or maybe "Within the Woods". Did he work on that? Yeah...
We took money that we had ourselves,
working as bus boys and cab drivers.
We shot a 30 minute short which we ran out at the Punch and Judy theatre.
I was over at Sam and Rob's apartment north of the campus.
They were talking about making a short film to raise money for "The Evil Dead".
I think it was in May 1978,
we were ready to start shooting "Within the Woods",
at the Tapert farm in Marshall, Michigan.
Unfortunately not enough people have seen "Within the Woods".
This is a location where some of the more graphic things happened.
Bruce, who's been possessed by an Indian spirit,
is now killing his good friends.
Here he stabbed Mary Valenti in the throat with an Indian dagger.
She pukes out some guts made out of marshmallows and food coloring.
Then he throws her body onto the ground
and stabs her with an Indian cross.
Yes, I met him at Michigan State University.
I think Rob and Sam hooked up with them
around the time we were showing "it's Murder".
In fact Tom Sullivan did a little flyer for "it's Murder".
To advertise the screening.
And then, somehow, we saw his effects.
We loved his effects, short films, dragons...
Next thing you know, he's doing "The Evil Dead".
We did "Within the Woods".
He was just incredibly talented.
We loved his work on "Within the Woods".
That began "The Evil Dead".
And Torn did some work on "The Evil Dead 2".
For the opening sequence and everything.
He had an incredible talent. Sam was great to hire him.
And the same with Robert and Bruce.
His visuals still are very memorable.
They are part of that whole franchise.
I just have great memories.
I had Tom... and a little cameo in "Hostel 3".
I love Tom and his work. He's really awesome!
My biggest disappointment about "Within the Woods"
is that the fans have never really seen a real quality image of Bruce's makeup.
When he was made up as a zombie.
The dangling eye and the whole thing.
To think that they pretty much improvised that...
That was my first nasty makeup experience.
Even a month after we filmed... my skin had different patterns in it.
For easily a month.
I am sure that through all these early experiments we'll have long term...
Filming in Sam's garage with these oil based fog machines.
Breathing that crap.
When you're whipping up the lens of your camera, you're breathing it.
Those were the good old days.
I remember my old Pontiac.
I'd run into Tom's brother Mike.
"You should go down there where those guys are making a movie."
I said: "What movie?"
He said: "I don't know. Just go down to... "
So I went down.
I recognized a couple of cars in the driveway, so I pulled in.
Tom was in the driveway.
Bruce was sitting in a chair in the driveway.
And Tom was touching up his makeup.
I just got out of the car and was standing around.
After like 15 or 20 minutes
Sam yelled at me that I had to do something.
"Hold this, do that..."
Okay...
I hung out and watched history being made.
Even though I thought I was just watching a bunch of goofy guys making a silly movie.
I think for you it was a first indicator of what to expect.
Of making a longer - because I think this was like 30 minutes -
yeah. 28 minutes of raw dynamite.
Because it takes... the concept of making doubles of things.
You have to have something ready by a certain time.
When do you need this?
Or do you come in with everything ready.
You had to learn the whole process
just like we had to learn about film making.
I had seen the piece in the daily news one day.
About Sam, Rob and Bruce having made "Within the Woods"
and shown it out at the Punch and Judy in Grosse Point.
It was a midnight show.
After "Saturday Night Fever".
I remember them walking through the lobby of the Punch and Judy.
They were carrying film reels, speakers and a projector.
I was just sitting in the lobby and Sam walked right over to me.
He said: "Are you here to see "Saturday Night Fever"?"
I said: "No! I am here to see your movie."
He said: "Ah! That's good."
I went to them after the show, I loved the show.
They had a little office at the Punch and Judy.
I said: "What ever you guys are doing...
I want to help. I want to work with you."
They said". "We're thinking of making a feature."
I said: "Great! I want to shoot it."
They said: "We're thinking of doing it in Super 8. "
I said: "Great. Come back to me when you're doing it in 16mm.
Because it won't work in Super 8. "
Rob and Sam got kicked out of their apartment for doing sound effects at 4am.
They made too much noise.
That was a pivotal moment for Rob.
Because he decided he wanted to get rid of...
He was in "Fishery and Wildlife" or something.
He wanted to get out off that and work on his movies.
That was a pivotal point for him.
When we were tossed out we decided,
it's time to take the big leap forward.
We talked to Bruce about the three of us becoming partners,
and trying to raise some money on it.
It was logical,
because you had talked about special effects makeup on top of the art,
it was an interesting combo to work with you.
Because you seemed like an artistic version of an makeup artist.
They are all very creative but...
not all of them do those crazy drawings.
Some are craftsmen. They just kick it out.
So it seemed logical to use you for "The Evil Dead".
Not that we didn't know anyone else.
We heard of some other random people.
But it was a new field for us too.
So you were leading the way.
Do you have enough budget to do what you want to do?
During the summer of 1979,
I got to meet the cast and make face molds,
face castings of them, at the basement of Sam Raimi's parents' home in Franklin.
I remember the ladies were there and Hal was there.
I was working as a diving coach at a high school.
I was a truck driver for a delivery company.
And I was trying to do acting.
I was spinning my wheels not getting anywhere.
It's kind of fading out a little bit.
And I got an invite to a audition for "The Evil Dead".
For a movie, in this guy's basement.
The contact was my room mate Del Howison.
This kind of looks like your old girlfriend.
He contacted him: "We're doing a movie. You got any actors?"
He said: "Why don't you go over?"
I was like: "No! I'm out. I'm not doing that."
One month later he said: "They got auditions one more night,
a buddy of ours, Greg, is in it."
Greg Tatum.
"He's got a part... " Okay, cool.
"I'll go and try out."
So I went to the audition.
Back in a minute.
I got the part.
I bumped Greg out of the movie.
But we're still friends.
I met Tom the first time at "The Evil Dead".
He was kind of a thin little madman.
That's what I remember.
Tom was full of ideas.
And he loved movies.
Sol knew that when I saw him starting to create these things,
they were going to be something special. Pretty cool!
I remember once Tom drove me back to Detroit.
We we're shooting in a small town in Michigan.
He kept talking about this movie he really wanted to make.
I mean, I listed to my parents and other grown-ups,
but most of the time I don't know what they're talking about.
I mean, so it must be important.
He's kind of a power horse.
For the lack of a better word.
He loves to work.
He's just super talented.
Then you guys went down to Tennessee together, right?
Well, we ended up there.
I drove down with David Goodman.
Fucking A! Ain't this the life, man?
At the very beginning, we all lived in one house.
And Tom got the whole living room as his effects room.
Right from the beginning he was unloading his stuff.
He had as much stuff as the camera department.
Like what, pinhead?
All these molds and this great stuff.
He'd put all his stuff in there and you're just like: "Cool!"
He'd really been thinking and working on it.
And Sam rejected everything!
Have you heard that story?
He had a whole series of designs and sketches.
All the creatures were based on woodland creatures.
There was a wolf-like creature,
an owl-like creature,
for what the makeup effects were going to be.
I thought it was really cool.
Very organic. But Sam went:
"No... no... no... no...
none of that."
It destroyed Tom right from the beginning.
I understand why he rejected it. It was not his vision.
We're supposed to start shooting and he didn't have any designs.
Unfortunately Sam can't draw.
He had a vision but how do you get it across?
From there on Tom was trying to intuit
what it was that Sam wanted.
Without him being able to say or draw anything.
We we're all like: "That's kind of cool...
this all makes perfect sense to me.
What is it you have got in mind, Sam?"
"Don't know. I'll let you know."
It's like: "I'll make it. If you don't like it I'll make it again. "
So I designed it and designed it again and again.
Until I'd come up with something he'd accept.
But now we're under great pressure because we're starting to shoot.
So nothing like starting off right in a panic.
So Tom was on the firing line from the second we got there.
It set Tom off right from the first minute.
He was the first guy that got severely picked on.
Then Tom went right to work.
He went into overdrive right away.
It was jumping in with both feet.
We're all living in the same house in Morristown.
We arrived one night, we all drove down,
and one of the first things I was hit with was your work room.
When you came in, the second room you walked through
was Tom's magic lab.
With all sorts of pieces and chemicals.
All sorts of things I was completely unfamiliar with.
Part of the deal was: He got his own pound of weed.
They never paid me anything with weed.
A pound of weed would have been great
because that would have been more money than I earned on the film.
I went down with a few ounces of my personal weed.
That was back when you could get an ounce for 25 dollars.
These were the 70s.
Everybody was experimenting.
Let me explain something, Sir...
the illegal substance known as "Marijuana" was somehow,
forced upon us in Tennessee.
And I shared.
We all were like: "Hey, Tom! Can I have a joint?"
He was the man!
I was probably the only one there that didn't smoke.
I started off as a PA and worked my way up to doing lighting and sound.
You know where the trap door is? I dug that hole!
It took me days.
Afterwards my hands were blistered and I hated it.
I went: "Let me help Tom!
He's got the pound of weed!"
I tried to be his assistant as often as I could.
I got to help you a little bit in the first week.
When we were doing driving stuff.
I remember we were doing some plaster casts and it was heating up.
That was something I wasn't familiar with
and didn't know as a part of film making at that point.
Somebody who visited the set of "Book of the Dead"
took a bunch of photos and recently gave me the negatives.
Can I see the little manila folder?
- What does it say? - It says "Book of the Dead".
5/24/80.
Here's a sneak peek of some of the photos.
Steve Frankel, Sam Raimi, Tim Philo,
Betsy Baker,
a friend of hers and the production assistant.
That's me with the book of the dead and the Kandarian dagger.
A fake arm, Shelley's arm.
Shelley's face and another fake arm there.
A head stump.
A younger, thinner, hairier me.
Nice to document that part of it.
Where are we going, Tom?
To the Tapert family farm.
South of Marshall, Michigan. It's where we filmed "Within the Woods".
And parts of "The Evil Dead".
Most notably the basement and some of the graveyard stuff.
Somewhere here we shot Linda's decapitation.
The head falls in the foreground and her body falls on top of Ash,
spewing blood into his face.
Those shots were made right in this area.
Of course, it was all cut back then.
It changed quite a bit in the last 35 years.
But it's still a great location.
It's hot down here.
This is where we shot the movie.
Two of them:
"Within the Woods" and "The Evil Dead".
I haven't been down here since spring of 1980.
When we were finishing up "The Evil Dead".
We shot the basement scenes down here.
Sam did his 180-shot in this room.
I mean his 360-shot.
Right through that door,
was where the ripped poster of "The Hills have Eyes" was.
I'm forever grateful for that.
Being in the cabin in "The Evil Dead".
'Cause when Wes did this movie we had a "Jaws" poster.
In the trailer.
The directors were respecting one another
putting their posters in one another's films.
A cool bit of trivia.
We're here at the "Little Dutch Restaurant".
I've never eaten here. But I'm about to for the first time.
This is were Bruce and Ellen ate when we made "The Evil Dead".
They had their picture taken and we're going to take a look at it.
Right now... come on!
Gary Holt.
When was that?
The Tennessee premiere was held at the Capri theatre 1983.
That's what this was...
pretty cool.
Fancy pants.
Holy Jesus!
This is "Evil Dead" country.
I don't know.
- I think we passed it. - I think we did.
I think we passed it.
That's okay.
Keep going on this.
This was dirt back in the day. As I recall.
Tom, we are on an adventure, man!
I've never driven roads like this in Tennessee before.
I tell you that.
Let's hope nobody else is coming down this trail.
You know the "car on fire" story, right?
Where your car caught on fire?
No, somebody else's.
That might be it.
We're here in Morristown.
This is where we all stayed during the shoot of "Book of the Dead".
Later called "The Evil Dead".
- This is the house you slept at. - It is.
I slept in the front room. I had a sleeping bag and an air mattress.
Like everybody else.
I think the ladies had a room.
Somebody else had a room with a bed.
Later I slept in the laundry room.
Because all the guys snored.
I do too.
The original cabin is burned down.
It's on private property in Morristown, Tennessee.
To not try and find the cabin.
You will be shot in the ass with buck shot.
This is rural Tennessee... get off my...
fucking properly!
I have to tell the "Evil Dead" fans: if you respect the film, respect the property.
This is somebodies property and we have permission to be here.
If you don't you shouldn't be walking on their land.
- Why? Because they'll...? - Because...
they'll fill you full of buck shot.
I can't believe we're here.
The roof?
We are now where the cabin would be.
Here is...
what's left of the chimney.
Looks like bits of the tin roof are still here.
I'd like that to stop!
And over here...
somebody's figured out, I don't know how close they are,
but this would be were the pit was.
This is deeper than we made it.
Josh Becker cut it.
But it went down a bit
and people would have to do this when they were going down the steps.
You'd have to scrunch down to actually get there.
I remember Ellen fell backwards into it once.
And I don't know how she missed creaming the back of her head
on the corner of the wood.
That was frightening because she was blind.
She had those contact lenses in.
I was nervous about that.
What do you think after being here after how many years?
32 years?
It's amazing!
Like everything else... it feels smaller.
Tim Philo had drug a bunch of flood lights out there
hooked up to a generator.
How about that?
I'm Tom Sullivan, here at a secret special location.
This is where we shot the finale of "The Evil Dead"
it was in 1980.
Bart Pierce and I spent three months doing that shot,
that sequence, one frame at a time.
Right here, we shot the "head falling" scene.
It went something like this...
Back in August of 1980,
we started filming the finale sequence for "The Evil Dead".
We shot a bunch of it out here in the garage.
And also in the basement of this house.
Right over here, they had a cot.
For about a month and a half I slept on a cot right here.
Really uncomfortable.
I slept here.
After a while it became...
it was detrimental to my good being.
Bruce's family stepped forward
and I got a spare room at their house in Birmingham.
So I got to stay with Chuck and Don.
It was a great time. They were terrific hosts.
Anyway... thank you!
When was the last time you were down here?
The day before Thanksgiving 1980.
That was my last day shooting.
Did you ever think you'd come back here?
Never.
Everything's smaller than you remember it. That's odd.
Very cool.
I'm here at the Raimi house
where we shot some things for "The Evil Dead"
including bullet hits, hands and legs being chopped up,
and things like that.
I am very familiar with this house.
I came here a number of times.
I saw "The Evil Dead" here with Sam.
He showed it to his mom for the first time.
That was quite an experience.
This is where it happened.
Sam shot a bunch of his early Super 8 films here.
His parents are just so great.
Boy! If everybody could have parents like Sam did.
We'd all be super successful.
They were so supportive and wonderful and still are.
Well, it's been 30 years.
But I think it was in Morristown, Tennessee.
That's where I met Tom.
I didn't drive down with him. He was on the set when I arrived.
He was like our mom. He took care of us.
He was the only one to care what happened to us.
He was just amazing.
Trough all those years he really kept those stories of "The Evil Dead" going.
He seems to remember all the details.
And all his drawings and artworks that were so important.
In "The Evil Dead".
His eye and his taste had a lot to do with the look of the film.
"Onward, Tom!" ...is what I say.
No horror stories about Tom!
He was our protector on the set.
He really was.
He was always apologetic
because he was admittedly not a makeup artist,
he was an artist-artist.
He was doing things on our faces he was always apologizing for.
We loved Tom. He was always there to see if we are okay.
He was our protector.
I'm Betsy Baker and I was lucky enough to work with Tom Sullivan
in the original, the one and only, and the best "The Evil Dead".
We met early on, I think during rehearsals.
He was making or helping us make plaster masks and molds of our faces.
And we spent a lot of time intimately together
while I laid there quietly and probably fell asleep
while he painted the spider web effects on my leg.
I think Tom's one of the sweetest guys around.
He's tremendously talented and creative.
He's wonderful to all the fans.
He's just a great guy.
You're a great guy, Tom. What can I say?
So? That's the original shotgun?
The original one from "The Evil Dead".
That's a big deal!
I think they used this one in "Striker's World" also.
- You want to do any Bruce-lines? - No!
It's not my boom stick.
Tell me your name, Sir!
This is Don Campbell.
Live from his house.
Tom is a funny guy.
A great makeup artist.
And he's pretty much unflappable.
We went trough all kinds of craziness down in Morristown, Tennessee.
But he never got worked up.
He looked like he lived in that house for years.
He was like an island, we were the current that flowed around him.
He was the rock.
Tom Sullivan you are responsible for a very large part of the physical horror.
And on the table here are heaped dreadful stumps, legs,
distorted hands
and there's an eyeball here with an optic nerve dangling from it.
We have here a leg.
And even knowing that it's made of foam rubber, it's very offensive, very unpleasant.
And this looks like a piece of flesh lifted off someone's face. What is this?
It's a latex rubber mask.
And before we move away from this revolting heap,
this I think is the piéce de résistance. What is this?
It's another foam rubber piece of an eyeball.
With an optic nerve.
- It's... - Dangling out the back.
This would be for someone with a terrible eye accident.
How does a pleasant young man like yourself
come to be a master of macabre?
I happen to have a background in art.
My two creative passions in life are art and film.
I've been ping ponging back and forth through my life.
I'd work on a film like "The Evil Dead" and then go into illustration.
Then work on "The Evil Dead 2".
Then back to illustration.
It's been kind like that.
Let me share with you some of my artworks.
Most people know my "The Evil Dead" work.
I illustrated the book of the dead for "The Evil Dead 1+2"
And for "The Army of Darkness",
and as well as the lost pages in "The Evil Dead 2".
Apart from my "The Evil Dead" stuff, I worked for Chaosium Incorporated.
They did the "Call of Cthulhu" RPG books.
I illustrated these books for 18 years.
It's kind of neat.
Because fans of "The Evil Dead" come to see my on conventions.
They are like: "Hey! I got that book! You did that too?"
Yes, I did!
This is my first cover I did for Chaosium.
I was watching "South Park".
They had a great three part episode with
Eric Cartman becoming best buddies with Cthulhu.
In the third episode Eric has Cthulhu sent his buddies Kyle, Stan and the gang
to the Nether Realms.
And there seemed to be a design that looked a lot like this.
It repeats a couple shots later in the Necronomicon illustration.
If I had influenced that I couldn't be more proud.
That's very cool!
Tom did this piece in 1976, for my 11th birthday or so.
That's my dad as Silky Sullivan.
This was done as a request.
For an animal.
Sort of a loan tree... this one's gorgeous.
This is like a nasty storm coming on in the natural scene.
This one hangs up in our bedroom.
Wait! There's a small one.
This one resides in our restroom.
Let me find the one with the squirrel.
This is from 1978.
So he'd be what...?
- 29? - 24?
24.
I am very proud of this one.
S. Petersons "Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters".
I illustrated this.
This is 26 of the most commonly seen Preternatural Entities.
This is one of the game books for the "Call of Cthulhu" RPG... my illustration.
The French version of one of my book covers.
A cover I did for Chaosium.
This the American version of "The Asylum".
This is the French version of the "Masques of Nyarlathotep."
Another thing I did for Chaosium. It's for a game.
Here's "Power Comics" #2.
This would be 1975 or 1976.
1977!
"Figure of Mystery"... T. Casey Brennan's a real person, a writer.
He looks nothing like this... I did my best.
Looking back, it's pretty horrible.
Mike Vosberg helped me out with the girls.
There was an underground comic with some beavers in it
and they made fun of this story.
It's just kind of the dregs.
I can't really disagree with them.
What can I say?
- You could say you did it. - I did it and I stuck with it.
The pinch mark? I showed you already, right?
You see that bruise?
Sam Raimi gave that to me a couple of days ago.
I haven't seen him in years.
And he pinched me as hard as he could.
Which only goes to show he likes me.
Boy! This thing stinks...
doesn't it?
Tom put a lot of work in that.
And then over and over re-applying it.
Does it fit after all these years?
I guess we're trying to find out?
He's like: "You really want me to put this on again... "
Let's find out!
Perfect fit!
Go ahead, gouge my eyes. I'm ready.
Oh shit.
That's my head. It's me.
It fits... if the fu shits.
Here's the big trivia:
These are the original "The Evil Dead" keys
that Ellen dropped by the front door.
And Bruce goes". "You should give him those keys!"
"No, no! Sam could buy those keys."
I'm pretty sure he can afford them.
How long has it been since you have seen that thing?
Well, I've seen it a few times.
But the last time I touched it was like 30 years ago.
And it looks like I need a pedicure.
Here's a leg up to you, buddy!
Feminine though, small dainty feet, loose ankles...
This is gross!
I've kind of blocked it out.
How does it go? Like this?
I don't even know.
- You don't have to put it on. - Yeah, I don't know.
I just wanted to see you with it.
I think it goes right here.
Wow! This is a first draft.
This is different than what finally was there.
Did you write in this? Is this yours?
- Oh, no! - I don't know who wrote in it.
It might be Rob.
You've got something no one's got.
That's very cool.
This was given to me many moons ago
when I first met Sam.
He wanted to know what I thought of the script.
I told him I'd read it.
Before "The Evil Dead"...
that's all I got!
They got the movie, I got this button.
What do you got here, Tom. I just found something.
This is... I didn't know that I had this.
This is the cover and I think the other piece is here somewhere.
This is a casting of the original book of the dead cover.
Something I didn't know I had even done.
Found it... and that's what it is.
Something for the replicas.
We'll get this other piece and extend it out.
This is the original book of the dead.
From "The Evil Dead".
A loving tribute to Sam Raimi.
- That's the original-original? - It is.
And the cover melted off what year?
Years ago. I still got it, but it's just turned to glop.
Where is it?
This is what's left of the original cover.
This is the front cover, here's the back cover.
- Really? It looks different. - Yeah, it turned to glop.
- Latex just breaks down. - I cannot see the face.
Here's the mouth... there's one eye, there's another eye.
There is no ear on the back cover.
I did that for the Anchor Bay thing.
Everybody had to put everything they got into these movies.
Creatively and physically.
I think it shows.
If you add up all the pieces and the effect sequence at the end,
which was pretty unprecedented too.
What you guys did, what you and Bart Pierce did
in the basement over those three month...
you accomplished a lot of crazy stuff.
I remember one story.
We were in a little town...
Wait? Who are you?
I'm Bart Pierce. I'm responsible for Tom.
Let me explain: This is the amazing Bart Pierce.
If you've seen the clay animation stop motion finale in "The Evil Dead",
Bart and I spent three month putting this sucker together.
It was the best creative collaboration I've ever had.
He's a genius!
As Tom has told me, it was one of the more pleasant working relationships.
We had more time, which was really great
when you're trying to create something new.
And we were.
We used techniques that we were in one sense tried and true.
But we were using them in a new way.
It was great that we had no problem working together.
We would laugh.
And I was blown away by his artwork.
His enthusiasm was wonderful.
He was always like: "Let's do it harder! "
I was the dry one:
"Tom? I don't know if we can do this!"
But we always had time.
Time made it possible to do things
that would have been difficult otherwise.
It was a lot of fun and we were young.
We didn't have anything except our passion for what we were doing.
It was a wonderful time.
I had a great time.
We tortured each other terribly.
I think we succeeded.
Thanks, Tom! I appreciate it.
I remember that the agent said,
when they brought it to them for the first time:
"Too literary."
Which was because it had "book" in the title.
- Yeah, there was "book" in the title. - Amazing!
I remember when we found out that it was called "The Evil Dead",
we said". "Sam sold out."
I thought it was just a stupid non-sense word.
It didn't mean anything.
And it's iconic today.
Don't come to me for title suggestions.
You guys accomplished a lot of crazy stuff in that basement.
Which makes for a memorable ending in the movie.
It was a different sort of thing to happen,
it became way more fantastical.
It's no normal horror movie. "The Evil Dead" is weird.
It's a little more mystical.
You also had that great idea
to double expose every frame which kind of softened...
- The half-frame animation. - Yeah, half-frame animation.
It kind of softened the animation.
When I tell people we shot double exposed every frame,
it flips them out.
Most of our shots were three exposures.
Anything that had animation in it
was mostly three exposures.
Tom Philo doubles for Scotty's arm in one shot.
We matted his head out and I did a skull animation for that.
His back was one of the mannequin bodies,
we cut a big section out.
We had garbage bags underneath it with all the guts,
they were tapped around my arms in the gloves.
And if I pushed my hands up, the guts would rise to the top.
I'd had my hands full of them and I'd throw the guts around.
I had the shoe there and my hand went down the pants,
and we had the scored thing and I had my hands full of guts.
I just plopped it out like that.
Sam turns and starts talking casual to Rob:
"You know what I think?"
Then he splashes all of his dog food in Bruce's face.
And Bruce responds just like he didn't know he was getting it.
Great reaction, not even acting.
He's like: "This guy's really important. I'm talking to my buddy. "
Then he splashes him in the face. Such a great moment!
That's great. I didn't know that.
- They clay thing? - Yeah, the clay thing.
Did I tell you that? I was walking out of the premiere of "Maniac"
and those two kids walk up to me, with suits and ties and briefcases.
"We're doing this movie. We're editing it right upstairs."
They took me upstairs,
me and Bill Lustig, the director of "Maniac".
And on the movieola we're watching this clay disintegration thing.
That was pretty cool!
And it was Sam Raimi, I guess, and the other guy was Rob Tapert.
So, that was your stuff.
I thought that was cool.
I'm in Detroit in front of the Redford Theatre.
Here, in 1981, "The Evil Dead" premiered for the first time.
At that time it was called "Book of the Dead".
I was posted on that marquee.
A really exciting time.
I made a poster for it because I thought we needed one.
It was on a big 20x30 board painted out of guash.
It was a lot of fun.
It's called "Book of the Dead" and it had a book on the cover.
You'll see a picture of it.
Let's go inside to see how things have changed.
That's good popcorn.
1981 "The Book of the Dead" premiered here at Redford Theatre.
How do you feel about...
Tom's got great recognition for the "The Evil Dead" movie.
How did you feel about that when it all started?
The movie terrified me. It was scary.
We went to Detroit for the premier.
In the middle of the theatre while the movie was on,
Tom knew I was having a problem with some of the scenes.
My husband touched my shoulder.
It's a wonder I didn't go through the ceiling.
This really freaked me out.
And then we got out front afterwards
and they had the keg lights, 2am in the morning you know.
Showing all this stuff.
Some woman, who's probably close to my age now,
came by and some old man said:
"What's going on here?"
And she said: "You've missed it! The best movie I've seen in my life!"
We got a big kick out of that.
How many times have you seen "The Evil Dead"?
- That's the only time. - The only time!
After the premier, Penny and I moved out to California,
and lived in San Francisco.
We took over my sister's place while she went to Greece for six month.
So it got us a foothold and we could find some jobs and things.
I got a job at the Aviva art department.
I'd say: "I'm an artist! I worked on a movie."
"Really? When is it coming out?"
I had no idea. But it took about three years for the film to come out.
It was exciting when it did.
I could go to Market Street in San Francisco
to those great old theatres there and watch it
and just watch audiences erupt when they saw it.
It's like nothing I've ever seen before.
What did this?
Whatever it is... it's still down there.
Scott? Scotty?
Look what I found!
Turn it off!
Why have you disturbed us?
You will die.
You just don't know when you take it to far!
Hit her! Hit it!
I'm leaving right now.
It won't let us leave!
After "The Evil Dead" was released,
I got called to do some press and things for it.
They sold it to England.
Steven Wooley of Palace Video invited us over.
That was a big cool deal.
A year later Sam, Rob, Ted and I were
invited to a film festival in Belgium.
1985, Penny and I were invited to Japan, to Tokyo.
At the 5th floor of the TOHO building.
There was a big department store.
They took over the whole 5th floor and turned it into a horror museum.
Bob Burns was there.
And the guy who did the special effects for "The Fly", Chris Walas,
was there with his wife.
Bob brought his props.
There's Bob and Cathy Burns.
Here're some of his props.
He's famous for being the owner of the remaining "King Kong" armature.
Chris had worked on "Gremlins" and "Enemy Mine"
and a number of things.
He'd brought his stuff.
I had props, replicas made of my things.
They were all on display there.
Once again, it was a spectacular time.
I gave some seminars and talks. I had an interpreter.
I gave some talks on special effects and things.
They were so popular and had such long lines
that they doubled my number of appearances.
In exchange they gave us a beautiful trip out
to the Hakoni country side on a bullet train.
It was terrific.
They took good care of us. A very memorable time.
Let's drop on and see what happens.
Oh! Great!
Fucking A! "The Evil Dead 2" test footage.
Wait! You're jammed up.
- Really? - Yeah.
Scream that one more time.
It was early in... no! It was late 1984.
"The Evil Dead 2".
Month before, I got a call from Sam that "Evil Dead 2" was going to happen.
He wanted me to come to LA and talk about it.
It needed a budget.
So I went there.
I came up with about 2.000 dollars to do the effects.
Just as a ball park thing and he stuck to that.
But things were going to happen very fast.
It was around March 1986
that I was in Wadesboro, North Carolina.
The set was going to be at the Fasion school.
It was a small abandoned school.
Perfect for a film.
You got a gymnasium which is great for large sets.
With big doors and all that.
You got plenty of class rooms.
So every department had plenty of space.
I was one of the first people there.
I was there early on.
I took a room right off the gymnasium.
It was the coaches room or a locker room or something.
I had a whole bunch of work to do.
Sam had given me the choice
if I wanted to work on the makeup effects or the stop motion.
For the finale there was this great flying deadite battle sequence.
It was coming in, battling knights on horseback,
knock them off and get speared and all that.
Then we see a woman running with a child.
It's flying over her and Ash shows up.
He's got his shotgun and blows its head off.
I thought: "Wow! I can do a whole Harryhausen sequence. "
That was really attractive to me.
So I went with the stop motion animation.
There were a couple of other bits. The opening and all that.
My first drawing of the tentative creature.
Tail of a sea horse, bat wings,
beautiful nubile breasts
and an ugly old haggy face.
The armature was created by Bob Mees.
This is my company Illusion Engineering.
It will be wired.
So it is capable of expressions like laughter or frowning.
The eyes will move around, the eyelids will move.
The ears will be able to do a bit of twitching.
You'll believe a deadite can fly.
Thank you!
The wings broke off a long time ago.
You can see it's an articulated skeleton.
It's made out of ball and socket joints, so you can bend it.
But it'll stay in the position you put it,
it's made of a soft rubber foam.
It doesn't last very long.
It disintegrates in the ozone,
the grease on your fingers,
sunlight... so it's pretty crumbled.
But the jaw works.
There's a wire tongue in there. You can move it one frame at a time.
At the back of the head, if you can zoom in,
you see these screws in there.
There's six of them positioned near little gutters
where we had monofilament line attached to the little screws here.
By tightening the screws they'd be attached to points on the mask of the flying deadite.
We could raise or lower the eyebrows, making it frown and grin.
During the wing flaps you can see it grin.
Glad to get that little bit in.
Sadly these decompose too quickly.
Here's the new improved "The Evil Dead" dagger.
It's a sacrificial dagger made out of bones.
This was cast, the hilt was cast from the very first dagger.
This part was sculpted by Mike Trzic and Brian Rae.
The new blade.
In the beginning, at the opening of "The Evil Dead 2"
it starts out with a black screen and narration:
"Legend has it, that it was written by the dark ones."
The book comes in and stops.
Then it begins to start to ungulate and come to life.
I shot that scene!
I just talked about that stop motion book that I used.
I built it for the beginning of "The Evil Dead 2".
This is the actual one!
You can see bits of the armature in here,
kind of come disconnected.
Each of these are two pages of paper,
in between them is aluminum wire,
so they could be bent frame by frame, very carefully.
As soon as it stopped, I replaced it with this.
This had a skin cover of the book of the dead,
made from the same mold.
These would ungulate underneath the rubber skin,
the book cover skin,
with the appearance that it's coming alive.
Then the mouth opens.
The camera goes into the mouth, into a vortex with a number of ghosts.
This is the stop motion rig that I used
to animate that skin cover.
One of the spider ghosts from the beginning of "The Evil Dead 2".
Made out of Super Sculpey over aluminum wire.
This was influenced by Sam Raimi's love of the Three Stooges.
One film was called "A Hunting we will go".
And there's a parrot that gets stuck in a skull.
It flies around in the room.
Now you just barely see these things.
Because they are stop motion and they come in...
The demon ghost of a horse.
Or a horse demon.
Like pre-Tim Burton, right?
I am sure he was born.
You can see a cover of the book, like this.
Then from underneath, via stop motion, these skull segments.
They'll push out and distort the cover.
Once again a stop motion process.
Very time consuming.
All this was done for one shot.
I started working and I even kept a log of my hours.
This had started back in 1984.
Some of the hours are amazing.
April 23rd: 14 1/2 hours.
April 22nd: 15 1/2 hours.
April 24th: 16 hours.
14 1/2 hours, 13 hours...
14 1/2 again, 13 hours, 14 1/2 hours...
14,12,13 1/2...
and this goes on. It was maddening hours.
I just wasn't a happy camper there.
I missed my wife.
If you're on the other side of the country from someone
it's hard to keep things maintained.
But I was very excited about the whole thing.
This is the vortex for the upcoming "The Evil Dead 2".
"Evil Dead too"? Like in "Evil Dead also"?
No. As in the 2nd of a series of "Evil Dead" films.
Following the success of the original "The Evil Dead".
This is our assistant Brian Rae.
A very talented young man from Detroit.
He had numerous screen credits,
like "Carriers" and "Striker's War"
which has been re-titled to... who knows.
What an interesting title.
I remember that they had had me prepare a room for you.
You showed up and started moving in your stuff
and you hand some "Book of the Dead" props and the original dagger.
As a 18 year old fan of the original film I was blown away and nervous.
Shortly after that I became your assistant.
At least part time at the beginning.
- Okay, Brian... - Okay... and?
What do you think? About your right?
Turn away.
Cigarette buds.
Disgusting!
"The Evil Dead 2".
Dead by dawn.
Coming to haunt you on March 13th.
- But you did some other stuff too. - I did some others films.
After "The Evil Dead" I worked on "The Fly 2".
I had met the Walas's during the Japan trip.
I got a call that they where looking for an artist
to do some development ideas for the creature.
So I went there and worked on the sculptures of the creature.
I was given free reign.
I was there with 7 or 8 other artists
and wound up getting tagged along to do some more work.
Some sculpting and molding.
It was like my college course in film making.
Skilled people, a great international crew,
A lot of them worked between Walas' and ILM.
That was very cool.
We got a tour of ILM a couple of times.
In the warehouse and the studio.
More amazing pluses.
Sam wanted me to do some rotten apple head designs.
He wanted one that resembled you.
Is that an authentic box?
That's the 2nd box I painted.
- They lost the first one. - So you had to redo it.
That's the necklace from "The Evil Dead 2".
And that's the necklace from "The Evil Dead 2".
It was given to me by the prop master Blanch Sindelar.
It's really precious to me.
Penny and I got married May 17th 1975.
We were married for 12 years, 3 month and 3 days.
And a couple of hours.
She was a terrific wife for me, being an artist.
Because this wasn't a topic she was really interested in.
It was fun to impress her with my stuff.
She was very supportive.
And it was also...
fun to show off and have this incremental success with things.
Things were getting a little bit better all the time.
At a certain point I could make a living being an artist.
Everything you did... you could do no wrong with her.
She thought you were the most clever, most creative,
most artistic, funniest, smartest person in the world.
I Remember how you used to find Scramble in the newspaper,
before Penny would come from work,
and you'd figure out what all of the words were.
- Was it Scramble? - No, it was Jumbo.
Jumbo... so you'd figure out what all the words were
which was just a great feat just to figure it out.
But you would never write the answers on the newspaper.
You'd be doing something else when Penny'd come home,
and the first thing she'd do is to turn the newspaper to Jumbo.
She'd say". "Tommy, what do you think this word is?"
And she'd spell it or give you a clue.
And you'd have the answer right away.
She'd be like: "You're just amazing!
I can't believe you'd come up with all of that."
But you already had all the answers.
Could we have a 20 minutes without the camera?
Let's see what time it is.
1:32.
- I'll... - Leave it! I want you to come over here.
Kiss!
Are we all in it?
When we moved to San Francisco...
things started to change.
Marriages and people evolve.
We got married in our early 20's.
Things change.
She came to visit the set of "The Evil Dead 2".
Sam put her in the film in cameo.
She's getting off the airplane
with one of the lawyers also in a cameo.
She came to tell me she wanted a divorce.
I could stay with her a couple of weeks when it was over.
To get my own place and stuff.
During "The Evil Dead 2", I was fairly depressed.
Knowing I had made a commitment to a film,
and yet I made a commitment to a marriage,
I could not reconcile them.
Because I worked one year on "The Evil Dead 2",
Penny didn't have the opportunity to take a vacation,
so she did with a couple of her female friends.
She was sailing on Traverse Bay on July 20th 1987.
I was living with my fiancee Michael at the time,
and my dad called.
My father called.
He told us that they'd been contacted by the police
in Traverse City, Michigan.
They were trying to locate Tom Sullivan.
And that his wife had been lost in lake Michigan,
following severe storms that had occurred up there.
And that she was presumed dead.
And that I needed to get in touch with you.
Dad thought it was important that I tell you in person.
I knew you were in a state of upset
just about not having Penny with you.
Telling you that I needed to talk to you wasn't going to be good enough.
So I came up with this lie that Michael an I had a big fight.
And I needed to talk with you.
Actually Michael came with me.
We came over to your house in San Francisco.
It was probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do.
To tell you about Penny.
So we brought you back to our condo.
Got a flight out that morning.
It had already made the front page of USA Today.
I remember seeing the paper as we were riding in the plane.
We got in...
we spent the night in Marshall.
All you wanted to do is go to Traverse City
and help find Penny.
We went up and spent some time. Other friends were there.
Deb, the one survivor, was up there as well.
All of us were just walking the beach in Traverse City.
We were looking for any signs, out on the water.
For Penny.
A very difficult time.
We were in a hotel room and got the call that she'd been found.
A day later they found the other Debbie.
And... wow.
My brother in law identified her. I didn't have to do that.
I'm thankful for this.
I cried like a baby during the ceremony, during the funeral.
That just wrecked me.
It effected my work.
She was part of the first film too.
She did a lot of work for me and supported me during the production.
Though I'd really swap it all for Penny,
I would.
I think things would have worked out one way or another.
And I know Sam.
If they didn't have me on "The Evil Dead"
it may not have been "The Evil Dead"
that got him his career.
It would have been something else.
Because he's a dynamic talent.
But bartering is part of the grieving process,
I guess I'm still in it!
Anything else?
You tell me, man!
I think it's pretty good.
It felt like the right way to cover the subject.
I can get you more pictures of her.
- See ya! - Bye, Penny
Then I stayed in San Francisco for about a year.
I got more and more depressed.
So I decided to go home to Michigan.
I got an apartment here thanks to the family.
I was still working and doing things for Chaosium.
And I was doing commercials for a local company.
Industrial films, educational films and all sorts of stuff.
1992 I got in a car accident.
I'd been out that summer
and you were very involved with this theatre company.
Out in the country.
You were putting on "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein"
which is such a superb piece.
You were playing the monster.
I remember going out and seeing you that summer.
It was great and felt like you were turning this healing corner
to get back to your passion,
creating.
You did such a great job.
You got all the qualities of being a great actor.
I think it's part of that artistic side of you.
You did such a fantastic job.
I remember reading the news.
They'd found you, upside down, strapped into the car,
crashed into a tree.
And that...
they thought you were fine, even though your face was purple.
I don't remember the accident.
From my point of view, I woke up in the hospital two hours later.
But I just delivered a bunch of puppets for Lawrence Production
for a kids video they were doing.
The engine wound up in the seat next to me.
If somebody'd have been there they'd have been killed instantly.
My face was all modeled,
my head was screwed up.
Nothing broken.
All the scans didn't show anything.
So the ER guys not being that familiar with head injuries...
I was out of the door 20 minutes after I woke up.
As soon as my mom and my girlfriend dropped by
and picked me up,
I didn't know what was going on.
There was very little known at that time about closed head injuries.
There was a lot of denial about it from medical doctors,
from therapists, psychoanalysts, neurosurgeons.
They didn't understand that just because the skull's not crushed
or blood was not found
that there wasn't enormous damage
to people that have gone through a trauma like that.
You did have trauma.
And you had to pay for that.
You paid dearly
for the things that stopped making sense in your life.
I got misdiagnosed.
They said it was my depression.
Which it was, but I'd been working, I was doing "Frankenstein",
I was dating,
I was happy and everything was getting back to normal.
And suddenly I didn't want to be around anybody.
One couldn't talk to me without making me angry.
Talking to you it sounded as if all of your controls had been...
skewed. They were like upside down.
You would have to wear a winter coat when it was 90 degrees out
because you'd be freezing.
Or you wold be sleeping 24 hours a day
and than you'd be up for days.
I just wanted to hide away.
They'd say, it's because my wife died six years earlier,
I was like: "No! It's the accident."
"Well, non of our tests showed anything."
And to not only have that experience,
but to have the medical community, over and over, deny
that this could be happening to you.
It was heartbreaking that you had to go trough that again,
to be victimized again.
With loosing Penny, with the accident
and with the other situations
that you had to go through in your life.
You got through enough for a number of people's lives.
That's for sure.
I got a call from Rob Tapert.
They couldn't find any "The Evil Dead 2" books of the dead,
so I made a new copy.
By the time they got it for use in "The Army of Darkness",
the art director reminded them that Ash needs to get sucked into it.
So the art director did a derivative version of mine.
I think Tony Gardner sculpted a new one based on my design.
They used a couple of pages of my artwork
stuffed them together and enlarged one of the figures
from the original pages.
It's not my favorite book cover of the three.
That was my connection with "The Army of Darkness".
They offered me that if I came down they'd suit me up
and have me as an extra in the film. That would have been great.
But I couldn't get out there at the time.
I just had my car accident and I was...
too depressed.
Not a fun guy to be around.
An awful time actually.
I stayed in my room for three years.
I came out as little as possible.
Things just got worse.
It was a big mess.
What got you out?
Going back, meeting Ken Kish.
In 1998 maybe,
I'm walking around the Motor City Con, a big convention.
In Novi, Calif...
In 1998 I see... I met...
In 1998 I'm at Motor City Con in Novi, Michigan.
And I see a big display of black t-shirts.
And one of them had "The Evil Dead".
I said: "Hey! That's my design. I worked on that. "
He said: "You're Tom Sullivan?"... he knew who I was.
It was Ken Kish.
He runs the Cinema Wasteland Horror Movie Expo.
He said he was planning a horror convention in Strongsville, Ohio.
And if I wanted to be his guest.
I was the first guest he invited.
I let him in once.
I met Tom Sullivan for the first time,
at the first ever Cinema Wasteland show in Strongsville, Ohio
back in fall 2000.
One of the assignments I had from my bosses
was to got to the show and make contact with Tom Sullivan.
To see if he'd be involved in creating a special "Book of the Dead" edition
of "The Evil Dead".
At my first Cinema Wasteland,
Mike Felsher came to visit
and at the time he was working for Anchor Bay,
the terrific DVD packaging folks.
They're now into Blu-rays, of course.
But this was a fun project.
It won some awards.
What awards?
I don't know.
Best DVD packaging?
I remember I beat out the "Pearl Harbor" package.
Then there was "The Evil Dead 2".
Once again based on lost pages
and pages I'd drawn for the "The Evil Dead 2" book.
And then the last one.
Right off the press: The "The Army of Darkness" Blu-ray version.
It's a collectible. I'm not going to open it.
But it's got new art in it.
New secret hidden messages,
revealing what a smart ass I really am.
When did you do that?
In the last couple of month.
It's brand spanking new.
- Where is that from? - Australia, mate.
That started the whole new thing.
I'd never done a convention for "The Evil Dead"
until Cinema Wasteland.
It was the first one.
Since then I've done hundreds of them.
All over the country.
California, Florida, New York.
It's been terrific.
I think it's been fun to see you and everybody else
making the rounds.
The film's been around long enough,
it's considered a weirdo classic.
If you stick around long enough, weird things happen.
So it sort of permeated people's consciousness a little bit now,
so it's fun to be able to travel with a lot of this same group.
And to go to these conventions.
Why not? What the hell?
Let's celebrate the fact that we're still here
and the movie's still popular.
Conventions are amazing places to network.
You meet people you never met before.
You can go looking for them, or they'll be looking for you.
I'm here at the 10th anniversary show of
Cinema Wasteland,
Ken Kish's amazing drive-in themed convention here in Strongsville, Ohio.
I'm here at "Spooky Empire", the mayhem show.
This is my first time in Orlando, Florida.
I'm here at the "Wizard World Comic Con" in Chicago.
With Bruce Campbell, Hal Delrich, Theresa Till, Ellen Sandweiss
and Betsy Baker.
Boy! Am I beat.
This has been swamped, this is madness.
It's standing room only.
It's half an hour to and from the toilet.
It's amazing... wow!
And it's not really letting up.
It's crazy here and I'm having a blast!
Very coo“ - Yeah! Shop smart! Shop S-mart!
What is that?
This is... this is 'the' book.
The book of what?
The book of "The Evil Dead".
- The book of "The Evil Dead"? - Yes.
Serving is the sole purpose in life... it's good to have a purpose.
Mr. Cthulhu, what is your vision for America?
My vision is to wipe it off the face of the earth.
Tom and I, we go way back. He's one of the old soldiers from Detroit.
You're my favorite "The Evil Dead" memory.
- Oh gosh! - You are!
I'm Robert Herdsman. I know Tom since "The Evil Dead 2".
He's the gay one.
Tim sucks!
He had his effects shop there, doing the stop motion animation.
I've seen "The Evil Dead" and it just blew me away.
We were lucky enough to work with him on "The Evil Dead 2".
He's an incredible artist.
He'd done great paintings and we had a great time.
You can call me what you like...
- How long did it take you to grow that? - Six month.
What did your mom think?
Which of these are yours?
From one dinosaur artist to another:
Your stuff is just fantastic!
- You made those? - Yeah.
How did you do it? What's your name? - Steve.
Sol pick up the ball and throw it to one of them.
The first thing you said today that made sense.
I don't even know what I am talking about.
Throw the ball to first base. Now? Who's got it? - Them!
You know, in film you don't get to take bow.
Conventions are the best way to do that.
You meet with them, you talk to them.
You find out how much your work meant to people.
It kind of gets lost when you don't hear applause.
It's a nice thing to get feedback.
I never expected to meet people, like you.
Who saw my work and decided that's what they have to do.
That happened with me and "King Kong" and Willis O'Brien's work.
And it's just neat that this energy keeps getting passed around.
I think of all the forms of immortality, that's about the healthiest.
He was incredible. Sam was great to hire him.
The same with Rob and Bruce.
His visuals still are extremely memorable
and a part of that whole franchise.
Tom was like the island, we were the current that flowed around him.
He was the rock.
He was unflappable.
You want to talk some more about Tom?
I took an interest in Tom's work
because I'd grown up with the "Evil Dead" movies.
And he's the man behind the magic.
I mean, look at all these props.
So many classic props you'd recognize from the movies.
And here we go!
Look! It's John...
it was logical,
because you had talked about special effects makeup on top of the art,
it seemed logical to use you for "The Evil Dead".
Not that we didn't know anyone else.
Maybe we'd heard of some random people.
But it was a new field for us too.
So you were leading the way.
All the way through it...
because he was willing and very patient.
And he doesn't freak out.
He was so patient with Sam.
Like: "You don't want to use my designs? What do you have in mind?"
"Pal, that's hard to say!"
"Let's try!"
And if you want me to mold things...
you see, this is reality, this is concrete...
Many other effects guys might have completely wigged out
on Sam, within days.
Because he did that thing.
But Tom was such a calm and nice guy.
"Let's work this out."
So I'd say: He was invaluable!
Tom, this is for you:
I want that 20 bucks back, you cheap crook!
You borrowed them from me, 30 years ago.
I want it back now!
The interests on that got to be astronomical...
let's start with 1.000 dollars.
I just want to say how proud I am of you and your career.
- You always entertained me. - We all figure out how we can do something.
There's no manual for this business.
We do the best we can.
On we go! To the next convention and beyond!
Thank you, Bruce.
- Then we got that Ryan Meade. - Who's that guy?
A young film maker. A renegade.
- Really? - Yeah. He's his own kind of guy.
They speak of him in legends.
Yeah, he's okay.
You got to kick his ass every once in a while but...
I know how that is.
We'll check it out.
We also lost a snake.
We thought we'd lost it inside Bart's house.
We were scared to death.
Because if his wife ever found it...
she'd just walk out.
Eventually I found it though.
Later in the day. It was in my underwear.
Is there a way... we could end this... with a 'party down"?
Which means? Which means?
Party down! Yeah!
She's your girlfriend, you take care.
I'm getting the hell out of here.
That was fun.
There goes it...
Okay-
That was interesting!
- The artist will know what to do. - Let's do one more of this.
- What is this? - The "The Evil Dead 2" book of the dead.
It's the skin I made
for the VIAVISION "All Evil Dead Movies on Blu-ray"-collection.
It's going to be six discs.
This documentary will be one of the bonus features.
- I am very proud about that! - No way!
It's true.
If you live in Australia or New Zealand
you got quite a treat coming your way.
Kick ass!
You got the dagger, the six discs...
it's ultimate! And got 16 new pages of artwork.
- How's that coming along? - Pretty good. Still two pages to go.
So many years later and you're still drawing.
You're still drawing and painting.
- You're creating and molding... - It slowed down but, yeah...
- It's badass! - Absolutely.
I am very happy-
I am proud of you, fucker.
Thanks.
It's like 30 years later and you're still painting that book.
Can get rid off it.
It's a crowd pleaser.
I am blessed that I kept my copyrights.
What made you do that back in the day?
Why did you feel you'd like to keep your copyright?
[Mumbling]
A friend said: "Always keep your copyrights."
And I had an opportunity to make that happen.
Sam and Rob were generous with that.
And I appreciated it.
And they keep on giving.
They're really cool!
- I want to watch the movie! - I want to watch it again, dad.
Let's watch the movie again!