The Incredible Record You Never Knew The Evil Dead Remake Held
Fede Alvarez's 2013 remake of "Evil Dead" is remembered for a lot of things. Many horror fans believe it stands head and shoulders with — or is even better than — its 1981 progenitor, and many of them consider it a rare example of a horror remake or reboot that actually works as a successful standalone entity. The movie drew new eyes to the career of Jane Levy, who had mainly been known for the ABC cult hit sitcom "Suburgatory" before taking on the role of detoxing heroin addict Mia Allen and launching Alvarez' career, paving the way for his horror hit "Don't Breathe."
Making $97.5 million on a $17 million budget (according to Box Office Mojo), "Evil Dead" proved a triumphant success. Aside from its box office success and its ability to generally please the franchise's fanbase, "Evil Dead" also boasts a special record that you might not know about. It won't surprise fans of the franchise, but it will shock movie buffs unfamiliar with the bloody, grisly soul-swallowing heart of the Necronomicon.
What sort of stunning record does the 2013 "Evil Dead" remake hold?
You (and everyone else) have got red on you
This Article Contains Spoilers for Evil Dead (2013)
"Evil Dead"'s record is not in bucks but in buckets of blood. As in gallons of the fake stuff, poured everywhere and all over everyone and everything during the filming.
According to horror website Bloody Disgusting, Evil Dead holds the record for most stage blood used in a single film. Roughly 50 thousand gallons of the stuff made it into a single scene alone, likely the blood rain scene that serves as the film's climax, in which Mia is coated head to toe in dripping effluvia. That doesn't likely even include the stuff that gushes from her evil doppelganger when she saws her in half, or what shoots free of the stump of her severed arm after it gets trapped beneath an overturned Jeep.
But the film's overall total is hard to confirm. According to IMDB, roughly 50 to 70 thousand gallons of stage blood were used in the making of the film overall, depending on whether you talk to Alvarez or the studio. Alvarez himself told Bloody Disgusting that he didn't count how much blood was used during the whole shoot, but took in totals day by day. "I know we ordered a truck the other day that was...50,000 gallons? Just for one scene!" he told the website in a 2013 onset visit, a claim he repeated in an interview with Collider.
As far as closest competitors go, Peter Jackson's "Brain Dead/Dead Alive," according to Showbiz Cafe, used 300 liters (almost 80 gallons) of blood just for its climax, and no totals have ever been released about how much blood was used in the whole movie. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" allegedly used 500 gallons of blood during the filming of Glenn (Johnny Depp)'s death alone according to ScreenRant. More recently, "It: Chapter 2" tried to enter the discussion, boasting a scene in which Beverly (Jessica Chastain) was forced to swim through 4,500 gallons of fake blood, according to The Independent.
Any way you slice it, that's a lot of food coloring and Karo syrup.