Movies
Sam Raimi and Friends’ 1979 Short ‘Attack of the Helping Hand!’ Foreshadowed ‘Evil Dead 2’
Today we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Evil Dead 2.
As most are aware, the Evil Dead franchise actually began in the late ’70s. The Evil Dead was of course released in ’81, but its origins date back to a ’78 short titled Within the Woods. Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell, the 31-minute short was the direct predecessor to The Evil Dead, serving as a proof-of-concept that allowed for the ’81 film to be made.
But Within the Woods certainly was not the only short film made by Raimi and friends in their early filmmaking days that proved to be hugely influential on the Evil Dead franchise.
Made by the friends in 1979, the Super 8 short film Attack of the Helping Hand! was written and directed by Scott Spiegel, who went on to co-write Evil Dead 2 nearly a decade later. A spoof of the Hamburger Helper commercials that were airing at the time, the 6-minute short centered on a woman being attacked by the product’s mascot: a white glove with a smiley face on it.
Of course, the idea of a disembodied hand would later be to used to great effect in Evil Dead 2; perhaps the film’s most memorable sequence sees Ash cutting off his own hand after it becomes possessed, which then scampers around and torments him. Attack of the Helping Hand! clearly inspired that sequence, right down to the hand humorously flipping the middle finger.
Oh and it starred Sam Raimi as a friendly milkman!
Without Attack of the Helping Hand!, it’s possible that Ash Williams would’ve never cut off his hand in Evil Dead 2. Celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary by watching the ’79 short below.
Zach Cregger is no stranger to violent movies, with his first two at-bats in the horror genre yielding the films Barbarian and Weapons. But even those movies can’t compete with the level of violence on display in his next movie Resident Evil, he teases in a new chat.
Zach Cregger tells Empire Magazine that Resident Evil is “definitely the most violent thing I’ve done.” He teases, “You gotta go grotesque! I wanted to go all the way.”
“So it’s gnarly. It’s brutal,” Cregger continues. “A very bloody affair.”
He also tells Empire, “Fleshing out what [the Umbrella Corporation is] up to and how the T-virus works, that’s not what this movie is. This movie is about one dude’s journey on foot, fighting monsters. I don’t give a fuck about checking boxes. All I cared about was just telling a fun story. We step on the gas at about eight minutes in and never take our foot off the floor.”
Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX September 18 from Sony.
The film is being billed as “a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise” from the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons).
Austin Abrams (Weapons) stars as Bryan, a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in a non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
Zach Cherry (“Severance”), Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”), Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird”), and Johnno Wilson (“Twisted Metal”) round out the cast.