The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi

The Unseen Force: The Films Of Sam Raimi provide a behind-the-scenes, movie-by-movie survey of the career and work of innovative film director Sam Raimi. He made his debut in 1982 at the age of 23 with the independent horror film "The Evil Dead" which was so successful Raimi went on to direct two sequels. Included by film expert John Muir are more than thirty firsthand accounts and interviews with filmmakers that have worked with Raimi, from the cinematographers who shot the early films, to the producers, screenwriters, actors, special effects technicians, and music score composers who collaborated to make his films the stuff of box office legend and the focus of a devoted following of dedicated fans. The Unseen Force is a welcome and greatly appreciated contribution to the annals of filmmaking and filmmaker histories.

This book is a must have for fans of Sam Raimi. It provides in-depth coverage of all of his movies with information from interviews with members of the cast and crew on each of the films. The author gives his own commentary on each movie and discusses Mr. Raimi's development as a director. I was already a fan of Sam Raimi because of the Evil Dead films and Spider-Man. After reading this book I am interested in checking out some of his other movies as well.This is the fifth book I have bought by John Kenneth Muir(Horror Films of the 1970's,Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre,Films of John Carpenter and Wes Craven:the Art of Horror) and I would recommend each of them to horror movie fans and movie fans in general.

Having read Bill Warren's "Evil Dead Companion", Bruce Campbell's "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor" and Josh Becker's "Evil Dead Journal" (available online at beckerfilms.com) the story of the production of Sam Raimi's classic 1981 film "The Evil Dead" is becoming somewhat tedious. That said, I still managed to learn some new "Evil Dead" info in Muir's book. The main draw of this book is that it gives all of Raimi's films equal coverage, rather than focusing on his two franchises. The aforementioned books by Warren and Campbell are probably better choices if you're simply an "Evil Dead" trilogy fan and Mark Cotta Vaz's books on the production of "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" (which has a pretty skimpy chapter in "The Unseen Force", but to be fair, the author couldn't have seen it in time for publication) focus mostly on the conceptual stage and offer little insight into Raimi as a director. It's nice to see "Crimewave", "Darkman", "The Quick and the Dead", "A Simple Plan" (Raimi's best film, as far as I'm concerned), "For Love of the Game" and "The Gift" getting some attention rather than used as context for the cinematic adventures of Ash and Peter Parker. The writing is scholarly but enjoyable, and Muir's interviews with Ian Abercrombie, Betsy Baker, Douglas Beswick, Brent Briscoe, Gary Cole, Kevin Conway, Willem Dafoe, Peter Deming, Chris Doyle, Phil Gillis, Daniel Goldin, Richard Grove, Lance Henricksen, Joe LoDuca, William Mesa, Simon Moore, Verne Nobles, Tim Philo, Robert Primes A.S.C., Thell Reed, Cliff Robertson, Amy Robinson, Chelcie Ross, Ellen Sandweiss, Randy Ser, Thomas Smith, Dana Stevens, Tom Sullivan, Theresa Tilly, Sherree J. Wilson and Christopher Young offer a more diversified portrait of Raimi as a filmmaker than previous books (although this is the first to focus primarily on Raimi himself). If there is one area where the book lacks, it is in the actual biographical details. The death of Raimi's older brother Sander, a tragic and defining moment in his childhood, is glossed over, and a few childhood stories in the tradition of Campbell's book would have been nice (nobody from the Raimi family was interviewed for the book, nor was Campbell) but as a look at Raimi's cinematic accomplishments, "The Unseen Force" doesn't disappoint.