Two years before The Evil Dead (1981), Sam Raimi shot a 32-minute horror film over one weekend for $1,600. The plan: make something scary enough to convince Detroit doctors and dentists to fund a full-length movie.

WITHIN THE WOODS (1979) premiered before a midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd in Detroit, impressed a local critic, and helped raise the money for what became The Evil Dead.

In 2002, a restored version of the film sat finished on a DVD master. The soundtrack had been re-recorded to clear the music rights. The menus were built. The disc was days from manufacturing when Raimi personally ordered it removed. If you look inside the files of the DVD that shipped, the ghost of its menu screens is still there.

Raimi - who of course went on to direct Spider-Man, A Simple Plan, and most recently, Send Help - has kept it locked away ever since. The only copies in circulation are bootlegs several generations deep.

Notably, Bruce Campbell isn't the hero in this Evil Dead prototype. He's the monster. Bruce gets possessed, and Ellen Sandweiss spends the film fighting him off.

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