Retro-Video: Baby Faced Sam Raimi Faces His Critics on UK Talk Show

Any "Scariest Movies!" list is redundant. But it is Halloween and I wanted to post something related to that special day giving us carte blanche to eat candy, scare children and indulge in horror cinema.

In 1987 as parents worried horror films, with all their sex and violence, were making masochists outta their kids, Evil Dead II opened. It got especially heated in the UK (Look up "Video Nasty" for the whole story). Not deterred of avoiding bad press or run-ins with enraged parentals, director Sam Raimi walked into the eye of the storm.

A week shy of its UK release, he appeared on the talk-show Central Weekend Live. It gets intense. But Raimi (age twenty-seven; didn't look a day past nineteen) sat there calmly and objectively defended himself and his work. Even as some in that studio audience wanted him crucified. None of them had seen Evil Dead II, mind you. Had they done so, perhaps they'd have seen it wasn't on the exploitive nature of Cannibal Holocaust and I Spit On Your Grave and just a silly cartoon with gore.

Ironic to think years later, they probably took their grandkids to see Raimi's Spider-Man films.