Highly inventive US film directorproducerwriteractor Sam Raimi first came to the attention of film fans with the savage, yet darkly humorous, lowbudget horror film The Evil Dead 1981. From his childhood Raimi was a fan of the cinema and before he was ten years old, he was out making movies with an 8mm camera. He was a devoted fan of The Three Stooges, so much of Raimis film work in his teens, with good friends Bruce Campbell and Robert G. Tapert, was slapstick comedy based around what they had observed from Stooges movies.Among the three of them they wrote, directed, produced and edited a short horror movie titled Within the Woods 1978, which was then shown to prospective investors to raise the money necessary to film The Evil Dead 1981. It met with lukewarm interest in the US with local distributors, so Raimi took the film to Europe, where it was much more warmly received. After it started gaining positive reviews and, more importantly, ticket sales upon its release in Europe, US distributors showed renewed interest, and Evil Dead was eventually released stateside to strong box office returns. His next directorial effort was Crimewave 1985, a quirky, cartoonlike effort that failed to catch fire with audiences. However, he bounced back with Evil Dead II 1987, a racier and more humorous remakesequel to the original Dead that did even better at the box office. Raimi was then given his biggest budget to date to shoot Darkman 1990, a comic bookstyle fantasy about a scarred avenger. The film did moderate business, but Raimis strong visual style was evident throughout the film via inventive and startling camera work that caught the attention of numerous critics.

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