It was 1983, I was asked by my parents to babysit my little sister & brother for the night while they went out. My Mom had stopped at the local (beta) video store & got me a movie to watch after the kids were in bed. It was a horror film of course. She knew how to please her son. That night I watched the goriest & one of the scariest movies I had seen in the whole 13 years of my life: EVIL DEAD. I turned as many people on to this classic movie as I could. Little did I know that I would be sitting in my living room eating homemade burritos with the man responsible for the gore & effects from on of my top two horror films. When I first asked Tom for an interview he didn't even hesitate. From that point on until the actual event, all I could think about was my future encounter with him & holding the "Book of the Dead" in my hands. When he came over for the first time he also brought with him some of his amazing artwork. Not only did Joe & I get to find out what a wonderful artist Tom was but a great guy too. JOIN US....in our exploration into Tom's world.
CORNFLAKEOVERDOSE-How old were you when you first began drawing?
TOM SULLIVAN-I did the normal kids stuff. Ya know, love sufferings and war things. That was at 5 years old, 6 years old and all that. I didn't really take it seriously until I was 10 or 11. I was in Junior High school and you know that social pressure?....to ya know, be nice to people and friendly and all that?....I couldn't hack that. I was too terrified and shy. And there was a kid named Kurt Lux. This is in Wheaton, Illinois in the sixties, and he was really cool. He had Marvel comic book style down pat, so he was drawing Thor all day long. I remember he turned in an assignment on pilgrims and all these pilgrims, on the Mayflower, were done up like Marvel superheros. Women with massive thighs and that Marvel lipstick thing, big flowing hair. It wasn't historically accurate to say the least but he got an A on it. And also I noticed that he would draw during lunch and have a crowed of people including women around....er, young girls. And I thought, well hey this is cool, you don't have to talk to anybody and you get to be popular. And so I would start drawing really bad Superman & Batman, those are my guys, and it looked terrible. But I just developed this enthusiasm for it. My career, and interests, have always been between artwork and filmaking. The filmaking thing started when I was 5 when I saw the original KING KONG and I just knew if adults get to do this when you grow up, 
that's what I wanted to do . So I had an interest in developing dinasours, (that you've noticed) and special effects, and art and effects go together greatly. There's : sculpting, drawing storyboards, matte paintings, production design. Filmaking contains every discipline you can come up with basically. So I wanted to be kind of a renassciance guy and learn all the different skills I could. But none of the drawing cam easy. I don't have a "gift", I wasn't born with a natural talent. I hate that stuff. What I think people have is an interest and I definitely had an interest that my parents couldn't persuade me out of and teachers just couldn't stomp out of me so I'd become another corporate clone and all this stuff. So I just stuck with it. I was gonna do this. So I'm pretty much self taught as well, from anatomy to figure drawing. I've taken classes in various things but nothing on a structured college level. I've taken some painting and lots of figure drawing classes where you just go in and learn what you can and practice constantly.
COD-So did you always want to be a film maker?
TS-I always wanted to be a film maker when I grew up yeah. And having that creative control is important.
COD-Seeing the darkness in some of your paintings, I'm curious as to what your childhood was like.
TS-I thought I was pretty happy. Pretty good solid family. I was born in Marshall (Michigan) but we moved away when I was 3 months old. We spent a couple years in a really beautiful little neighborhood just outside of Birmingham, Michigan called Franklin. We lived on 14 mile road, and 14 mile road has a big canyon in the backyard and a river. Ya know some glacier left a scrape there. But it was this beautiful idylic setting. We were in an old farm house that some olympic guy had lived there before us and left an olympic size pool, right on the edge of this cliff. So anyway I saw KING KONG when I lived there and then I would go down into this valley and I thought that's where KING KONG took place because it even had a dead tree like the one Kong puts the girl in before the T-Rex comes in. I didn't know how big the world was but I thought....Ya know it worked for me and that helped foster it, I was really big into the civil war. I remember I always wanted to be a rebel. But I did lots of drawings and stuff. We then moved to Wheaton, Illinois around 7 years old, 8 years old and found a neighborhood of kids. It was just a swell place to be a kid growing up. We had neighborhood games. We'd play like "Capture the Flag", we had all these different neighborhood things. We'd like run all over blocks and it was a nice safe kind of place. I always had a big imagination and I always like organizing groups of kids for things. We had some friends who lived on the edge of a woods and I would make cardboard dinasours, like a ptyeradatcl with grocery bag wings. I'd flatten them out and cut them up and hang them in a tree and then we'd go get out bb guns and go through the "lost world" and hunt dinasours. (laughter) Cause I wanted 
to duplicate what I'd seen in movies. I earned money by mowing lawns to buy an 8 millimeter camera. This is pre-video. And I would make little stop-motion films. Little pixelate people, you know stop-motion, one frame at a time and then you have people sitting on the ground like they're driving, and then you'd shoot a frame and have them move up a little, a couple of inches. Shoot them again and then by the end of the day their nice new pants are completely worn out at the butt and their parents are screaming at me, but I've shot this cool race thing. And I would animate clay dinasours and little GI Joes and Major Matt Mason's...or....I forgot what these little characters were. But anything that looked fun and had wire in it I could bend I'd use as a stop motion model. So I just developed this stuff as I went along, but really on my own. I'd save every Famous Monsters magazine, every monster article I could, reviews of monster movies and magazines and things. I'd spend time at the libraries learning all I could about special effects and artwork. I equated myself with all the masters. Bookstores and libraries are my place.
COD-What's your earliest memory of being scared by a movie?
TS-There's a guy....I think William Castle made it. It was called HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Vincent Price invites a group of people....I remember we had a neighborhood girl who babysat us and my folks were gone and we knew exactly that they were gonna be back at 2 and that this movie would be over with at like 1:30 or something, and so we talked her into letting us stay up and watch it. I'm like 9 or 10, but it's really intense for a little kid. There's some scary things in there. Ghosts and people dying and all this crap. But I distinctly remember being terrified at that. Yeah HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, and I had no experience with monster movies before that at all.
COD-Do you have nightmares? And what's the scariest nightmare you've ever had?
TS-Yeah, nightmares. That's actually one of the most common questions with the EVIL DEAD thing and all the monsters, and I think they're more normal. I remember a Predator nightmare. You know the movie Predator with Arnold? And then they made a sequel which is in the city. My nightmares spanned both movies. It started in the jungle and I'm being chased by this horrible thing and everybody I would come across, as soon as I got out of site, they would die horrible, screaming deaths. And then I made it into a city and he's following me climbing up and over buildings, like in the second one. (laughter) And once again, I'd get in through a window and I'd hear him killing the people inside of it. It's just the endless chase thing. Oh, it went on forever. There's a reoccuring one where I'm in that like....falling asleep thing that usually happens when I'm on my back. But I find myself in the front seat of a van and the steering wheel is not attatched to the wheels of the car and I'm like just pummeling straight ahead. I don't know what any of this means. Contact the publishers if you've got an idea.
COD-What really scares you?
TS-Fascism. I REALLY hate fascism and since communism another really unworthy alternative is gone, we're only left with fascism. And the sad part is, as Americans, we love fascism. We're just unable to 
define it in a way that won't come back and show us our won reflection. By fascism I mean corporatism. The guy who invented fascism, Musillini, said fascism is corporatism, and from our federal government, our state governments, our city governments, they're corporations, and we've been led under public corp commercial law. We've lost the constitution and we're under a permanent state of war powers. I have the senate reports that explain all this in immense detail and after WWII our federal government assimilated fascists, nazi's, war criminals to an amazing degree in through such institutions as the CIA and all these other things. There's alot of wealth of really detailed, well substantiated government information on this, but it's not talked about. Anyway I miss it....
COD-Would you call yourself a Liberaterian or perhaps even an Anarchist?
TS-A liberaterian Anarchist. I feel that those ideas are actually quite compatible with the original ideas of this country. It's just that since the Civil War we've been under a permanent condition of Martial rule. Congress has changed its form completely. Our courts, walk into a courtroom and take a look at the gold fringed flag. It's a military flag. I don't want to own a weapon. I think solving problems with violence is a last, LAST resort, and doesn't really deserve to be in the political arena in this country, at this time. And anybody that advocates that is a fool, and whatever they're trying to change is doomed to failure. For one thing, if you tried it, your so out gunned that it's proposperous. And not only that, your ideas are useless if you resort to violence. But I think that there is alot of information that I'm working to help make people be aware of. Through public access television, and some other projects I'm working on. But that's really what scares me. Fascism. That we are turning into little corporate boons. Corporate slaves is the best thing for it. And I see members of my family and many friends who work for corporations and think they're secure in their job. Forget it. No. It's a bottom line mentality and when you hit 50 and you've put your 20 years in, your not gonna get your pension. When you hit 50 they're gonna trade you in for 25's. And if not, there are so many corporations that change owners, they renogiate everything. Your pensions and everthing are up in the air. Not only that, we have a "service economy" that we're developing, which from what I hear is soon to be a self serve economy. I disagree. I don't think it's service economy, I think it's a "servile" economy. Servants are people who when they're paid (at this point the tape messes up for aproximately 2 seconds)....they don't really care if you like the food, they want to have a smile because it's part of their job. But they just as soon spit in the food. And that's basically what we have when you go into a corporation. Expect to have your food spit on. I just went to a local movie theatre, and for the third picture in a row, and I was there with a birthday party so we couldn't exactly leave, the projector, in theatre number 6, and the theater owner will know who this is, is broken. The film rattles and shakes. It's like watching an earthquake. This is the third film and he hasn't fixed it. The owner says: "Oh, there's a problem?" And I had already had this conversation with his little usher, and I knew that it had been there for atleast 3 movies, and he didn't know there's a problem. He's lying. I knew he was. And I'm getting my food spit in by this guy, and then he challenges me. "well am I an expert in projectors?" Well I know enough to know that a sprocket is broken or somethings wrong, and I'm just being jerked around by a guy who is showing movies that cost 100 million dollars to make, that I gotta pay $6.50 to go see, and it's on a crappy screen. He's making great argument for video release instead of fine theatrical performance. But it's the same thing, nobody's happy. However, if you own your own business you take care and pride in what you do. It's just natural. That's the dynamic. But when your working for somebody else your a wage slave and your rights and everything are gone. They can search your car, your life is theirs. If I was working as an artist at many places, even the artwork concepts I came up with outside of work would belong to him. I'm not selling myself to anybody. And I'd just like to see America wake up because this is not only a toll on us, there's a toll on the rest of the world that is being forced to ya know, get us bananas at cheap rates and all this other stuff.
COD-That's actually one of the issues that I've been writing about because what your saying is right and I don't think anything is gonna change because everything's geared toward a corporation, cuz guess who pays for policial campaigns. Ya know, it's 
completely geared and its been that way forever. The corporations pay soft money into the parties and the politicians take that money and they need the money to run and feel obligated to serve the interests of the rich and the powerful instead of the working man because if they don't then their power is taken from them because they won't have money for them to do their campaigns in the future and so the whole system is geared towards that and until that changes we're just.......it's not gonna change. (We talk about art for a while)
COD-Why are horror themes predominate in your art?
TS-Out of all the kinds of genres I would like to do, the horror genre is the one that's paying the bucks right now. I work for a company called Chaosium out in Oakland, California and they produce role-playing games and the ones I've been dealing with are based on the writings of a novelist named H.P. Lovecraft. He wrote horror stories in the 20's & 30's and is still very popular today. There have been a couple of attempts to make movies out of his work and usually it tends to lose the Lovecraft nature of it. Wonderful to read, it's hard to turn into a movie. I think Stephen King has kind of ya know, everybody's familiar with him but when you see the movies it's not Stephen King. H.P. has got the same problems. Aslo I ran across these guys in college, the Sam Raimi and Rob Tappert who went on to make the EVIL DEAD films and at the same time Sam was and today is still very interested in comedies and that kind of thing. They were really influenced by the Three Stooges. It's the late 70's, horror films ya know with HALLOWEEN and TEXAS CHAINSAW and all that were really big and then when we started the EVIL DEAD horror films were peaking. By the time it was actually out, the peak was over and we were about the only thing on the market, which actually KINDA helped except that it couldn't get a decent rating. We were unrated which made it like worse than an X. Because if we had submitted it for violence not for sex it would have gotten an X rating and then no newspaper publisher will publish it because it's got an X and people would think it's a porno film, which it isn't. So they went unrated which still meant no one would publish it but it kept that stigma of the X off of it and you can see it on the Sci-Fi channel every other Halloween but they cut out most of my stuff cuz it's all the gory things. Ahh, that's life. (art talk)
COD-Who's your favorite special FX makeup artist?
TS-Dick Smith I'd have to say is the grand daddy of all the stuff. He brought makeup into the 21st century, and this is really known about Smith, but how absolutely generous he was with his information, considering that this is his stock and trade and people like Rob Botine and Rick Baker and others could contact him and he would invite them over to bring a pad of paper to take notes with, and now he's got an EXCELLENT class by mail that you can sign up for. You can buy his secrets. I don't recall the price but 
whatever it is, it's worth it, and if you comjplete the homework assignments he'll appraise them for you. Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Rob Botine, holy cow, there's so many excellent crews and groups and individuals which I really like. I think in a perfect world we'd all be making movies. Make movies not war.
COD-He's my favorite. I liked the job he did on Dustin Hoffman in LITTLE BIG MAN. Uh....THE EXORCIST, GHOST STORY, THE SENTINEL.
COD-What's your favorite horror movie?
TS-The best horror film ever made is an '83 production called THE EVIL DEAD. A roller coaster ride of screaming terror. Unfortunately the effects really suck!
COD-I would'nt say that but....(laughter) How about novel? What's your favorite horror novel?
TS-Gee I'm not sure I've read that many. I remember reading THE SHINING when it was announced that Kubrick was going to make it as a movie. Oh! Well I'm not sure if this is horror but definitely the story that gave me the most upsetting response was Harlon Ellison's I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM.
COD-Isn't that a book of short stories?
TS-Yeah, yeah but the actual "mouth" story is definitely one of the most horrifying ideas. I was reading it at a friends. I was over at his house in Ann Arbor and he said "you gotta read this". And so I'm reading it right there, and as soon as I get to the last sentence: "I have no mouth and I must scream", I ran to the bathroom and put my head in the toilet (laughter). Well it's that powerful, I mean if you've ever read Ellison he knows how to grab you by the hearts and minds. It's about a group of people who are suffering more than any individuals in the history of the world.
COD-What's the worst horror movie that you've seen, and why was it the worst?
TS-Well let's see. The worst horror film. Uh....I'm trying to think of one that may have actually had a scare in it so it would qualify as a horror film. Oh man, usually they're so raunchy. Um, bad horror films (Tom thinks seriously at this point). There's gotta be one that pops out though. I remember I walked out of LEPRECHAUN, how's that? And the manager agreed with me and he gave me my money back. (laughter)
COD-What's your favorite cereal?
TS-You mean breakfast or movie? I'm kind of a Grape Nuts kind of guy. When I eat cereal. Yeah, honey or just a banana, ya know, some fruit.
COD-Do you now or have you ever listened to Punk Rock?
TS-I listened to a BOOM & THE LEGION OF DOOM tape, do they qualify? I like punk rock because here's a voice that is created completely out of the commercial realm, started out anathetical to it. It was like challenging people to like and listen to it, and I like the idea that it was also based on analysis and evaluation of our current culture. And I think expresses the only opinion you can really have of our current culture.
COD-Exactly how did the EVIL DEAD project come about?
TS-Well, Sam Raimi had been going to school up at MSU with Rob Tapert and his brother Ivan whose now a Doctor. Bruce Campbell was a friend from Birmingham. Sam is from Franklin, Michigan. They had been making movies together since the 7th grade and they had 
titles such as: CIVIL WAR pt. I & II, JIMMY HOFFA. I think that was two parts. Cuase Jimmy Hoffa was last seen at a restaurant in Birmingham. So they went to that scene and re-staged it. I've never seen it. Sam was making films, had a BIG interest in making movies and at the time my wife was going to Michigan State and I read in the Michigan State paper about the Michigan State University film making association or something, and what it was, was Sam & Rob, and Rob Tappert was Ivan Raimi's (Sam's brother) roomate, they had a dorm up there. They had all these super 8 movies that they had made from Junior High on, and since they were now students they could create a film making society, rent a room, getting the student rates, and show their movies and charge admission for people to come in and see their amateur super 8 movies. And so this kinda created a demand for more motion pictures. Now basically they would earn enough on these shows because there was like nothing else to do on campus for kids and they would make enough to pay the hall and usually buy a pizza. I mean, it wasn't big bucks or anything. This gave Sam the success or atleast the steady progress of customers inspired him to keep doing this and he was thinking of how to make a break through film. At the time he was taking a class in some kind of ancient history and it came across they were talking about Egyptians and the title of the Egyptian Book of the Dead came up and he thought that was a great movie title. So he wrote an outline for a story called Book of the Dead and then thought horror films are really big, this would be about '78 or so. Horror films were really big with HALLOWEEN and TEXAS CHAINSAW and all, and so they thought they'd try and raise money and make their first feature. Sam had made a short film called CLOCKWORK which was kind of a stalker breakin' into a woman's house and assaulting her and I think she stabs him or something, but it was very short. I did some titles on that and at the same time he was finishing up a feature length comedy. An hour and 20 minute comedy called IT'S MURDER. Kind of a screwball, slapstick thing with all his friends in it. It's actually kind of amusing. But he wanted to make horror films cuz those were big, not that those were a big interest of his. He put together a small project called WITHIN' THE WOODS. Ellen is the heroine, and we shot that on super 8 down in the Marshall area where Rob Tappert's family owned a farm at that point on P Dr. and 14 mile. You can go and try to figure out where tht is. We finished the film, it ran about 20, 30 minutes long and is more of a hardcore horror film. Bruce Campbell is in it, Ellen Sandwiess, a couple of people from the first EVIL DEAD film, with their roles reversed. Bruce is the monster in WITHIN' THE WOODS. Ellen is the heroin. So we made this horror film, half hour long and Rob and Sam and Bruce would go around, they got some lawyers to help set up a legal package, and they would go to various investment groups like Doctors & Dentists and lawyers. They'll pool money and invest in odd little projects hoping to make some money back. Sam's folks and Rob's folks are pretty well to do and so they utilized friends to try and 
raise a little bit of money here and there. After a year of this they would set up their projector, have a nice dinner at these people's homes and then show them this really disgusting gross movie and then ask them, ya know we want to make a feature length of this. But after a year they managed to raise about 80 grand and that was enough to get us started and so we went down to Tennesee in winter because we had to shoot at that time period and we were expecting of course a harsh Michigan winter. In Tennesee it would be more calm. Actually that year Tennesee aned Michigan decided to swap weather and we had horrible weather down in Tennessee while they had actually fairly mild weather, snowless weather up in Michigan. However it added to the mood of the film because the film was about an isolated group of people being tortured by a guy with a camera. Ya know the camera is chasing everybody around, and that's pretty much what we felt like, cause we're all isolated in delieverance land somewhere in Tennesee we're just working our butts off. We're all living in this house together and it was fun and eating lots of starchy foods and your tired and you miss people back home and if you had any money there's no place to spend it. All that comes to you on the movie actually, and it really helps that gritty, I wanna get out of here kind of feel, with a sense of humor, but was actually a pretty cool experience. Everybody in it was jumping in and doing things nobody had done before. None of the actors had really had professional experience. I had never done anything like this. Sam had only worked in super 8 and everybody was just doing the best they could ya know. And with all the screw ups we made it through. It took another 3 years to finish the movie and get a distributor, and your first movie your always ripped off. And they were, but they managed to pay off their backers, families and get a little bit of money, but in the mean time while they were finishing the movie they were polishing hubcaps and washing cars and working in restaurants like the rest of us, and today of course they own XENA: Warrior Princess, and HERCULES, & the DARKMAN series, the EVIL DEAD films, the QUICK & the DEAD. They've got a mogul, they've got an incredible success and it's really well deserved and for anybody reading this, if Sam and Rob can do this, YOU can do this. You really can. If your ready for some hard work but doing something you really love and sticking to it, they are proof it pays off. I'm not sure he's the greatest skilled film maker or that they aim REALLY high and stuff by they sure know how to please people. In your tv shows and your movies. You've watched these EVIL DEAD films and they're a riot, they're alot of fun in a well traveled area. Nothing original, it's just got that spark to it that's alot of fun. Find that in yourself, that's the thing to do.
COD-How did EVIL DEAD do at the box office?
TS-I'm not sure final figures. I remember around '85 or so I talked to Sam and I think it had done like 26 million dollars, and for maybe a half a million dollar investment that's pretty good, ya know, to make 50 times your cost is good in any kind of business. But unfortunately in America it had that unrated thing and I guess it only made like 2, 2 and a half which is nothing in America. But the thing is on video tape, it ruled. If I can announce this, I have a big announcement. EVIL DEAD, the original EVIL DEAD is being re-released on video and in laser disc. The video release is going to be published, this is a big push, is going to be presented in 5 different boxes with 5 different peices of artwork and I'm doing one of them. It's a poster I did to promote EVIL DEAD back after it was finished but not released. It was never actually used but the guys had it in their office for a while and I finally got it back and now they would like to put it on the cover, so there will be a 5 package set as well as a laser disc which will follow a little bit after that, that I'm told is going to have an audio track not unlike the EVIL DEAD II laser disc release, which will have the director and producer and maybe Bruce and I would sure like to be in on it. Write Renaissance pictures and tell them 
you'd like to see Tom Sullivan to explain the secrets of the EVIL DEAD special effects and they know where to contact me (laughter). But I would really like to tell all these cool little stories. When you work on a movie you never see it as a movie, it's a home movie. I know where I was standing when they did the shots and I know how the effects are done and I know all the seams.
COD-How come you don't work with Sam anymore?
TS-It's that thing where I wanted to be.......I wanted to make movies. I really like Sam and these guys are infectiously likeable if your in the same room, man they're fun. They're really funny, gregarious, likable folks. The only problem I had though was I was an employee. In the first EVIL DEAD I had alot of creative input which was really rewarding and it hasn't been like that since unfortunately. The thing is, is this is a serious business and now Sam is out of the realm of being an independent film maker and is now working for studios. The best I can hope for was to be a piece of the cog again. Like working for George Lucas or Sam Raimi or anybody, there's only one thing better than doing that and that's working for yourself and that's really what I would like to do and I'm on the verge of creating an opportunity for myself. I've got a partner and we're preparing shows and a feature film that I wanna shoot in Marshall. I've also just joined a comedy troop from Kalamazoo called The Flying Turtles. Sop I'm gonna get practice maiing short films. We're gonna do television and live performances so I'm gonna get the chance to start practicing the film making end of it and doing alot of writing and looking forward to that.
COD-Had you had any film making experience prior to EVIL DEAD or prior to WITHIN THE WOODS?
TS-Just my own Super 8 movies. I always worked alone because I didn't have friends who shared this interest. Sam & Rob & Bruce & Ivan & Scott Speigel & Josh Becker & John Cameron. Sam had this great group of guys and he didn't just have one or two friends. He had like 5 or 6 that were always there to help him make movies and they would all help each other make films. A little Detroit film making community and they all went on with Sam and on their own to have pretty good careers. Sott Speigel is directing the sequel to the new DUSK TIL DAWN film. Josh Becker has produced a film or two of his own and John Cameron I think is an A.D. in New Zealand for HERCULES or XENA. He's also worked on a couple of the Cohen brother films. It's really great. I just always have had this independent thing going on but I sure wish I had a group of guys like Sam has been able to put together.
COD-How much time did you spend making EVIL DEAD?
TS-All together, 5 and a half months. There was 7 weeks down in Tennessee and then we came back and 4 or 5 months later I spent 2 weeks doing some shooting that we did at Rob Tappert's house south of Marshall. Then in August through November I spent 3 months working on the final effects and other shots we needed to do for EVIL DEAD. The finale effects we did about 30 shots. Some of them weren't used. There was some really gross ones with bugs and cockroaches bursting out of the dead guy's eyes that weren't used. I guess they were too extreme. The stop-motion was really time consuming. That was done with a film maker named Bart Pierce, and he more or less ran the camera and we 
split the animation up because there was so much of it. About 50/50, he's an animator as well. But knew how to really run this 16mm Mitchell camera we had. It worked out pretty well. This was over the span of a year but for my contributions it was a good solid 5 and a half months and I worked it out and that would be 7 days a week, 5 and a half months.
COD-What were the shots that were filmed here in Michigan, the outside scenes or were those in Tennessee?
TS-Yeah, the outside and the house, that was a shack we'd found that was just completely raw. It didn't have window glass in it. It didn't have a door. Cows had been using it as a toilet for years, decades. So they had to scrape up about three inches of cow dung off the floor. It had no electricity, no water. It was a shack. The front porch was unstable. We'd lost our location, the prime location for that house. by the time we arrived, the family that we were gonna rent it from got into a inner dispute and pulled it out. That house I guess would have been perfect, had a trap door and everything in it and so we had to redo this one and find other things to shoot until the house was ready. So what was shot in Marshall was largely the basement stuff. When Ash goes into the basement, that's kind of interesting. When your in the room in EVIL DEAD with people and the trap door is there on the floor, the trap door opens up and there's some steps. They go down about 6 feet and stop because there was just a regular hole there under the floor. There is no basement on that particular building. So you would see people go down the steps and then they would crouch down underneath and that would be that they were down there. Then when you see the camera is looking from the top of the steps down to Bruce, you see Bruce at the bottom of the stairs, it's actually 6 months later and it's at Rob's house in Marshall and your looking at other foootage. So the basement stuff is at Rob's house. Except there is a scene where Ashley, Bruce Campbell, walks off and walks behind a dark pillar or something and when he comes out the other side of the pillar he meets Scotty who scares him in the basement. And the Scotty stuff is actually shot in Sam Raimi's garage. What they did was, is when the camera moves following Bruce and goes behind the pillar the screen is black for a frame, for an instant, and then what they did is they edited these two pieces of film together. This is stuff only you'd know if you really saw it. There's also a shot where Bruce's girlfriend attacks him outside. He's trying to bury her and she attacks him and he chops her head off and her body falls on top of him and blood is pumping out the stump, which was my idea, (laughter) into his face and he's wrestling with her and the head drops down in the foreground. That was shot in a little field right out the back door of Robs' place.
COD-Did you rent the property?
TS-Yeah we rented the property. And we were being watched. We had somethings stolen. We'd left for like an hour or so, came back and the tools were gone. Somebody had been right there watching us.
COD-What was your total involvement in the first EVIL DEAD movie?
TS-My involvement was is I constructed props. The Book of the Dead, which is fully illustrated. I constructed the dagger, which had a little drilled hole in the mouth of this little skull so it would puke blood when it stabbed people. I did special effects makeup. I didn't do the normal makeup like the women or guys or anything, they handled that stuff, but when it came to scars, bruises, cuts, or horror makeup I created the prosthetics for that and applied them. I also designed the finale sequence with Sam Raimi and did storyboard for that. Once I got approved Bart and I would shoot the stuff in his basement in Detroit. Lots of stop motion. If you watch the film and you see arms bursting out of people with these horrible monster gloves, I'm wearing the gloves in all 
the shots with the gloves. I felt hands of the artist, it was important for my hands to be in the picture since we needed them. Also was important to me knowing with what Sam wanted out of the effects and at one point in the very beginning I'd ask Sam: "now Sam do you wanna show this stuff, ya know cuz you can stab a guy in the back and we can show him from the front, ya know and the knife goes in and he turns around and there's a knife already stuck in there. We can do that and cheat, or do you want to see the blade go in and then you know....do you want it real or are we gonna fake it?" And he said: "well can you make it real?" and I said: "well yeah, it's just, how much do you wanna show?" and so we wanted to show everything. So I thought well the least I can do as the artist then is to throw intestines into the audience, which I got to do. Ya know the hands burst out of this guys stomach and it's a big mess. I just have to laugh at that.
COD-What about the other two, ARMY OF DARKNESS & EVIL DEAD II?
TS-ARMY OF DARKNESS had a much larger budget, I think there was like 3 and a half million. On the first one I was THEE makeup guy. I really didn't even have an assistant and didn't have somebody to work with until we did the finale sequence. But on EVIL DEAD II it was a much bigger picutre. They had several makeup crews there. They had KNB which is Mark Shostrum....er no it wasn't it was pre-KNB. It was Howard Curtzman, Greg Nicaterro, & Howard Berger....I think I screwed up on one of the names, but anyway they are now KNB but they were working for Mark Shostrum at the time who's now makeup for Star Trek I think. So I was handling stop motion assignments. On a big film you get assigned sequences and I had the opening sequence and the "Deadite" sequence. I also remade props of the book and the dagger and some other little things. There were also projects that just didn't pan out. When Ashley gets propelled to this other dimension there's supposed to be these images of horror and I had painted these paintings up but they weren't photographed terribly well. It kinda flushed alot of work down the drain, but I still have the originals to that, that I'm gonna use for one of my projects. On EVIL DEAD 3 I was contacted, they needed a new copy of the Book of the Dead cuz they had lost the copy they had so over a weekend I came up with a new one. By the time I had sent if off to them though their art director informed them that they needed a larger Book of the Dead than the EVIL DEAD II Book of the Dead because Ash in number 3 gets sucked into the book so they needed something larger sized. So what they did was they took artwork and xeroxed it and cut out parts of it on to a montage and then put it on an art director's facsimile of my book. I got a really nice credit but it's for a couple of little drawings taken out of context rahter than anything that looks like anything I had to do with.
COD-What was the goriest scene for you?
TS-There's one shot where Ash's sisters' back is to the camera and she's shot in the shoulder with a shotgun. What we did was we had a dummy with a wig on and Scott Speigel, a friend of Sams worked at a butcher shop and he got like a side of ribs that we put along the back and hunks of meat and blood bags and all this stuff. We shot this in Sam Raimi's garage which was painted white on the interior. Had a little forest set up and put a little smoke in and somebody
actually.......you cannot do this. Don't do this ever anybody. We were stupid. We did it. But we actually had a real gun there and being as safe as we can but somebody actually shot this thing inside a garage. There were absolutely no problems. We worked this out very carefully. I mean the safety problems. The only other problem was one that hadn't occured to us was that when a bullet hits blood bags with that force it turns it into a vapor. So this white interior became pink. This is one of the many sacrifices his parents made.
COD-Any funny stories or juicy gossip from the EVIL DEAD days?
TS-Oh let's see. There was one weird thing that happened. It's KINDA funny. Everybody was out shooting at the house, the cabin location and I was back at the main house and I was preparing a makeup design for the following day and I was painting it on myself. I looked like this dead zombie and .......DING DONG!! It's like 11 o'clock at night, I'm not expecting anybody. Nobody working there would.......they would just come in the door. I don't know what's going on. I look through the little peephole and there's a couple there. Elderly, middle age couple, and I have NO idea what's going on. I said: "Hang on just a second". I go into the bathroom and scrub my face as best as I can. This is before I actually know that there were makeup supplies. I mean, I went into this thing really dumb. I was painting makeup on my face with acrylic paint, okay (laughter). Not only me but the actors. How do you get acrylic paint off your face other than with sandpaper, I don't know. So I've got this acrylic paint on my face which didn't help and I'm going what's the problem and they go: "THERE'S A FIRE DOWN THE ROAD, THERE'S A CAR ON FIRE!". I like freak, open the door and they freak cuz I'm looking like a dead guy and I go: "We're working on a movie, I'm making this.......". and they go: "but there's a car caught on fire". and man it was torched. TORCHED! I mean the flames were going up 60, 70 feet. And I'm thinkin' nobody's on this road but me and my friends and is one of them or more cooking to death in this car? So I like freak out and I go down there screaming and I circle the car and it's empty. I went back and called the police and realize I have NO idea where I am. I don't even know the address of the house or what road I'm on. Nobody was writing me letters. It was horrifying. So the next couple of weeks we'd work all night, try to sleep during the day and I was having cops bother me all the time thinking I knew something and no, I didn't know who these people were that rang my door. I just saw the fire and called, them. It turned out some kids had stolen somebody's car for a joy ride. A brand new car, and stupidly instead of just leaving it somewhere, they decided to torch it on that road. I thought I'd lost some friends.
COD-What's your opinion of the other two movies compared to the first?
TS-They get more fun and more comedy and I really think that's where Sam's interests lay. I kinda like that, cuz I think if you keep making grueling horror films they're just basically hard to sit through. But when they get fun and they have a sense of humor to them, well then it's something you really wanna share with people. I don't think the point was to beat up the audience but to have them like what they're watching. And there's that feeling of being over well tread area with the films. Alot of folks think number 3 like took it too far and I think number 2 is like generally peoples favorite but that's usually cuz they haven't seen number 1 yet. Of course they'll have that opportunity with the release of these new tapes. My favorite is number 1 actually. But I think they're all definitely worth while. If I had to pick one I'd number 1. I think its just got a cool spirit and a movement to it that works out really fun.
COD-My favorite is definitely number 1. Any final words, any last comments you'd like to add?
TS-No, I wanna really thank you though. Good luck with your zine. I think it's really interesting. Thank you very much.
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK TOM FOR COMING OVER (MORE THAN ONCE) AND SHOWING US HIS WORK AND JUST HANG OUT. I FEEL HE'LL NEVER KNOW WHAT A TREAT IT WAS FOR ME TO HAVE HIM IN MY HOME.
(this is not the whole interview, however this IS the entire part that was published in the 2nd issue of Cornflake OverDose. The interview went on for aproximately 2 hours (Tom loves to hang out and talk) and most of what we took out were artistic questions. Tom, Joe & myself, all being artists we were interested in his work other than just Evil Dead and talked about his paintings and influences artistically and other questions of that nature. We felt that our readers might not be interested in all of that so we left it out (well okay maybe the fact that our deadline was the next day and it was already 2am & I didn't have the whole thing typed out yet AND had to work in the morning).
If you see any spelling errors in here (cuz I know there is a bunch, then please if you have the time, contact me and tell me so that I may fix them. I just didn't really have the time to go thru this epic thing to check for all the errors. thank you. cod