Licence To Thrill: The Evil Dead
Richard Leinfellner on converting the video nasty to humble 8-bit computers
Released in 1981, Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is the original video nasty, a cult horror hunted down by puritans such as Mary Whitehouse, especially following its home video debut. Almost 40 years later, we take a look back at the videogame the movie inspired. Groovy!
Following on from an iconic decade for horror movies, the Eighties was a turbulent time for fans of the genre. The tabloid newspapers had caught on to the phenomenon, and in the traditional mainstream media fashion, a scapegoat was needed for all of society’s ills. Horror movies, loved predominantly by daring teens and young adults, were an easy and predictable target, with The Evil Dead one of those releases at the heart of the debate. Yet it wasn’t just this notoriety that marks out The Evil Dead as a prestigious member of the fright club – the way the film was produced was also innovative, beginning life as Within The Woods, a proof-of-concept short designed to generate investment. The novel crowdfunding exercise succeeded, and with a modest budget assigned, director Sam Raimi, together with his friends Robert Tapert (producer) and Bruce Campbell (lead actor) set about converting the short into a fully fledged feature. The result, renamed The Evil Dead, sees five students, including Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), journey to a remote cabin in Tennessee for a short getaway. Unfortunately for the quintet of vacationers, the dilapidated cottage is haunted, and, after an ill-advised recital of an archaeologist’s bizarre recording, its resident demonic entity is resurrected, possessing and torturing the youths in turn.
It’s not hard to see how The
Evil Dead attracted the ire of the UK’S moral guardians: limbs and heads are removed, eyes are gouged and, in the movie’s most infamous scene, Cheryl is sexually violated by demonically possessed trees. With its original US release garnering enough interest to see it
licensed overseas, the film arrived in the UK in 1983, just as the term ‘video nasty’ was beginning to gain traction in the nation’s newspapers. The subsequent banning of its video release saw The Evil Dead touted as the ‘number one nasty’ by activist Mary Whitehouse, possibly due to it being the most high-profile of its peers. And because it has blood. Buckets of blood.
In the UK, The Evil Dead was distributed by Palace Pictures and Palace Video, handling the cinema and home releases respectively. Set up by Nick Powell (who passed away in 2019) and Stephen Woolley, Palace was soon involved in the fledgling computer software market, forming Palace Software in 1984. Having covered for a friend’s Saturday job at the Palace Video store in Kensington, Richard Leinfellner found himself heading up the company’s videogames division along with Peter Stone. “I said we should make games because we’ve got access to licences,” begins Richard. “Palace Video was distributing things like The Evil Dead, so we went to Nick and he said it was a good idea – it was literally formed just like that.” When it came to Palace’s first game, its biggest movie to date seemed like a good starting place. “There probably wasn’t even any money passing hands,” says Richard.
“And it was just seen as a way of promoting the movie. If we paid anything, it would have been a pittance.” With Richard handling coding and Peter Stone the game’s graphics, Palace Software set up base at the Scala Cinema, doubling as storage for Palace’s master tape collection. “We got raided by the Obscene Publications Squad because of The Evil Dead movie!” laughs Richard. “They basically came in and took all those
master tapes away, and Pete was saying, ‘Don’t tell them what you’re working on or they might take the computers as well!’” Having only dabbled in computing at this point, Richard had already acquired a Commodore 64 programming manual from a Foyles bookshop and begun to work his way around the computer. But before he could begin coding The Evil Dead, he had to watch the movie itself. “Actually I don’t really like horror movies,” he admits. “But we went round Pete’s place and got some pizza in and watched the film together. We took note of the key scenes, like the swing, getting through doors and
Pete was literally colouring in squared paper and I was coding into hexadecimal
Richard Leinfellner
barricading the house, and quickly settled on it being a survival horror type of game, taking it from there.” With the game design done and dusted within two days, Richard and Pete began work. “Pete was literally colouring in squared paper and I was coding into hexadecimal,” remembers Richard. “It was very labour-intensive, and Pete’s not an artist, so it didn’t look great. While making The Evil Dead, we realised we needed an artist!”
But regardless of the game itself, it was its subject matter and licence that was most likely to create publicity. Did Palace worry that it was foisting an adult-themed videogame on a predominantly teenage audience? “Yes and no,” grins Richard. “I don’t like horror movies, so it wouldn’t have been my choice, but it was the one we had available. At the time, there could be a link made to the fact that this was an 18-rated movie, and we were making a kids game out of it. But it was a different time, and it seemed really harmless to be honest.” When the officers of the Obscene Publications
Squad descended upon the
Scala Cinema, Richard suddenly
thought that maybe it wasn’t quite harmless – yet ultimately it was the game’s simple display that helped assuage the press and angry parents. “A computer nasty it is not,” concluded Your Computer magazine in its September 1984 issue review. “[…] Anyone who fears, or hopes, that it might be a real sickener will be disappointed.”
The Evil Dead, with the Commodore 64 as its lead version, is presented in a top-down view with the player taking on the role of Ashley, initially standing outside the ominous cabin. Inside are Ash’s friends, along with a constant parade of nasties, from dismembered legs, arms and heads to fully formed possessed mutants. Also strewn around are helpful objects such as wooden planks, axes and swords, and these can be used to either block up the windows or destroy the many enemies that beset the small selection of rooms. It’s an uncomplicated concept, and one that relies on much trial and error in order to devise the most effective tactics for survival. “It’s quite a basic design,” confesses Richard, “and it was inspired purely by the barricading of doors and the chopping of people’s limbs off.” However, even Richard’s simple blueprint failed to escape the dreaded bugs, with one in particular causing him grief, as he explains. “To this day, there’s a bug where one of the doors starts opening when it should be shut. I still don’t know why…maybe it’s ‘the curse’?”
Hold on… a curse? “It was for personal and marketing reasons – it got us some really good PR,” beams Richard. “Mainly, as I was delivering the master tapes for Evil Dead to the duplicator, I got knocked off my bike by a white van outside Euston Fire Station.” It does indeed sound as if the fates didn’t want the game of The Evil Dead to reach the public.
“Or maybe it was Mary Whitehouse driving that van!” chuckles Richard. Prior to the motorbike incident, Palace Software had troubles of its own with the game’s launch party that was held, appropriately, at the London Dungeon. “It was so typical of game development back then,” says Richard. “We had a game launch party without a game…” Showing off a few limited videos of the Commodore 64 version of The Evil Dead proved a stressful time for the game’s designer, who proceeded to consume a large amount of – again, appropriately – Bloody Marys. “I was interviewed later on, and one of the quotes was that Richard Leinfellner is starting to look like one of the exhibits!”
The curse notwithstanding, The Evil Dead was completed, delivered to the duplicators and released on the Commodore 64 to a muted reception. With the small team at Palace Software already moving on to other projects, third-party coders were brought in to convert the game to the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum, the latter not even deemed worthy enough to be sold on its own, sneaking out as a B-side to Palace’s spooky follow-up, Cauldron. “Ironically, we started out with licensing, and planned to do more,” notes Richard. “But it became a bit awkward because people actually started wanting money for it. So we decided to focus on producing original games, or rather games that were inspired by other properties – for example, Barbarian, which was basically Red Sonja.”
For Palace Software, greater things, such as the aforementioned Barbarian, would soon come, and despite the inauspicious beginning, The Evil Dead served its purpose in getting the new publisher public recognition and column inches in the gaming press. And as his first published game, it holds a particular place in Richard Leinfellner’s heart. “My cousin went to a Comic Con a few years ago,” he remembers, “and Sam Raimi was there signing autographs. My cousin went to talk to him and told Sam that I did Evil Dead on the Commodore 64. And he replied ‘Yes, and I’ve got a copy on my shelf!’ So that’s my claim to fame right there, that my game is on Sam Raimi’s shelf!”