Four young people find an ancient cursed book in the woods and are attacked by a horde of demons - more than a decade before The Evil Dead (1981).

Around 1967, a business major at Pasadena City College raised about $6,500 and made a monster movie with his friends in the canyons outside town. They animated the creatures themselves, frame by frame, working out of a makeshift garage studio.

That film became EQUINOX (1970). Producer Jack H. Harris, the man behind The Blob, bought it, hired an editor named Jack Woods to shoot extra footage and add a sinister park ranger, and released it. Made for about the cost of a used car, it grossed over $800,000.

The kid who raised the money and led the effort was Dennis Muren, who would go on to win nine Academy Awards and to build the creatures of Star Wars, E.T., Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park.

Sam Raimi maintains that he had not seen Equinox before making The Evil Dead. To be fair, there's only so much a group of young filmmakers can do with pocket money and demons in the woods.