The genesis of THE EVIL DEAD (1981) was contained in this 31 minute 8mm short from 1979, made by a young Sam Raimi and his friends Bruce Campbell, Scott Spiegel and Ted Raimi. Made for a reported $1600 in Marshall MI, WITHIN THE WOODS featured Campbell as a zombie and Ellen Sandweiss as the heroine; both returned for THE EVIL DEAD, in which she played a monster and he the hero, “as opposed to a woman screaming and carrying on through the whole film” (Campbell).
THE EVIL DEAD has of course become a genre classic in the succeeding years, while WITHIN THE WOODS has gone largely unseen. It was supposed to be part of the 2002 Anchor Bay EVIL DEAD DVD release, but got excised (literally at the last minute) due to music rights issues. As of 2026, WITHIN THE WOODS survives only as a poor quality VHS dupe, with dropouts and blurry imagery predominating.
As in THE EVIL DEAD, WITHIN THE WOODS features four twentysomething airheads having an extended party in a wilderness house, built on land that “Used to be part of an Indian burial ground.” Bruce (Campbell) and his girlfriend Ellen (Sandweiss) wander off to picnic in the woods. He digs up several arcane objects, including a ceremonial dagger, and leaves her alone to be pursued by an unseen something—denoted, as any EVIL DEAD fan well knows, by lengthy tracking shots through the forest.
Ellen makes it back to the house as the sun goes down, only to have Scotty (Scott Spiegel) wander off. Bruce then turns back up as a homicidal zombie who implores Ellen to “Join us!” Attempting to ward off her attacker, Ellen accidentally kills Scottie, who then becomes a zombie himself—as, it’s inferred, will Ellen.
Much of the imagery of WITHIN THE WOODS was directly replicated, and improved upon, in THE EVIL DEAD, such as a reverse POV move away from the front door of the house after the camera has pursued Ellen through the woods, and the POV tracking shots, which in WITHIN THE WOODS aren’t particularly well done. Also replicated by THE EVIL DEAD was the quasi-parodic tone, which often threatens to, but never quite does, explode into the full-blown comedy of EVIL DEAD II (1987).
The young Sam Raimi clearly understood the power of mood and atmosphere, conveyed via disquieting sound effects and artful spotlighting, and included some ingeniously rendered no-budget special effects by Tom Sullivan (yet another name that went on to work on THE EVIL DEAD). On the downside, the music, taken from various unlicensed sources (including the 1977 Tangerine Dream score for SORCERER), never matches the imagery, and the level of artistic ambition on display doesn’t come close to approaching the technical bravura. That of course is a problem that afflicted THE EVIL DEAD, and also, it can be argued, much of Sam Raimi’s subsequent Hollywood output.
Vital Statistics
WITHIN THE WOODS
Renaissance Pictures
Director/Screenplay/Editing: Sam Raimi
Producer: “Rip Tapert” (Rob Tapert)
Cinematography: Tim Philo
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Mary Valenti, Scott Spiegel