JOHNNY: Rob, welcome to allthingshorror. You are the wunderkind who runs www.evildeadchainsaws.com, manufacturing & selling non-working replica chainsaws based on the props seen in ‘Evil Dead 2’ & ‘Army of Darkness’. Firstly, your site that mentions you are involved in special effects and modelmaking for TV & film. How did you first get into the industry, and who are your biggest influences?

ROB: I came into the special effects industry mainly because of seeing the ‘Evil Dead’ & Romero Dead trilogies at an early age. This led me to become interested the work of Tom Savini. Around that time I started experimenting with my own make-up effects and working with friends & creating my own home movies. When I left school I took a BTEC in ‘3D Studies’ and an HND in ‘Theatre & Media Production’. Looking back I now realize that, with the exception of life experience, these courses didn’t really further my career to any realistic extent. Having finished the HND in 2000, I moved to London and after 2 years of bits & pieces of special effects freelancing and lots of stop gap temporary jobs, I got a full time job in special effects which I’ve now been in for 5 years.

JOHNNY: Did you produce your first chainsaw purely as a way to make money, or was it more of a pet project?

ROB: Around July of 2002 I bought a Homelite XL chainsaw off EBay. As a pet project, I modified this to make it look like the real working chainsaw from ‘Evil Dead 2’, although this only meant a small amount of work changing the handle shape and adding a grill to the side, and I was happy to leave it at that. Over the next few years I worked on a range of special effects gags in my spare time; like trick machetes & compressed air squibs. Around 2005 someone suggested I should try to sell some of my effects rather than just making & storing each one, then moving on to the next idea. After a few months thinking about it I thought the best way to start out would be to keep it simple and concentrate on one really good idea, maybe introducing other items later on. During this period I discovered NightmareGloves.com run by Anders Eriksen in Denmark, He makes replica Freddy Kruger gloves. He gave me the idea to do much the same thing; find a prop I can replicate and setup a website selling them. After a little research I settled upon the chainsaw from ‘Evil Dead 2’. Between May to December of 2005 I prototyped the idea until I knew I could make something I could sell. I launched the website around December of 2005 with the first of the 3 model saws; the workshed saw. The remaining two saw models were designed & added to the website by the middle of 2006.

JOHNNY: You must capture as many stills as possible from each film, allowing you to view the chainsaws from every conceivable angle. Was there ever a moment when you thought you had taken on too much?

ROB: Yes & no. Because ‘Evil Dead 2’ was filmed out of sequence, props can get broken, repaired & modified during the course of shooting, making continuity difficult. This meant that there are subtle differences in the chainsaws in virtually every scene in which you see one, making it impossible to just make ‘A Replica Chainsaw’. All 3 saws are amalgamated from various shots/angles at certain points in each movie, with a little educated guesswork to fill any gaps.

JOHNNY: Can you take us through the process of manufacturing a chainsaw?

ROB: Generally I don’t discuss exactly how I produce my saws. This is because of the large amount of time, effort & money I put in to developing the design itself & first prototype, coupled with the fact I’m the only person currently selling these professionally, with the exception of saws turning up on ‘Ebay’ from time to time.

I use a combination of cast resin mouldings, parts machined up from scratch, and real chainsaw parts to make my saws. Each saw is made up of over 100 separate pieces, from the guide bar & chain down to the smallest nuts & bolts and from start to finish takes three weeks to make.

JOHNNY: You have supplied the chainsaws to ‘Evil Dead – The Musical’. How did that come about? Have you seen the musical yourself?

ROB: When I first started EDC I found out about the first Toronto run, and I emailed them in December of 2005 to see if they’d be interested in buying one of my saws. The production run that was well underway at that point and they decided to stick with the trusted props they already had rather than chopping & changing mid production run. In May of 2006, Christopher Bond emailed me regarding the upcoming New York production and it went from there.

I haven’t seen the musical yet, no. Living in the UK, the USA is a fair trek to see a show although hopefully it should make its way over here at some point.

JOHNNY: Did you try to get in touch with the creators of the original prop chainsaws for any helpful tips?

ROB: I don’t think if that ever occurred to me at the design stage. Subsequently I have spoken to people but not while I was prototyping the idea. I knew that with the exception of the exterior look of the saws, the difficult inside structure would most likely be quite different to the inside of their original saws. With the help of stills from each of the movies I designed everything else myself, although I did get a little advice from a far more experienced person, Bill Person; head modelmaker on a large number of films including a couple of the recent Bond movies.

JOHNNY: Finally, have any of the ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy production team, particularly Bruce Campbell or Sam Raimi, expressed any opinions regarding your chainsaws?

ROB: I haven’t spoken to Bruce or Sam yet so I’m not sure what they would make of my saws. As I mention on my site; I only sell my saws though my website at this point and don’t tour the convention circuit either in the US or UK, although if I do start it shouldn’t be long before I bump into them. I have spoken to both Tom Sullivan and Rob Kurtzman, who worked on the special effects for the first and second films respectively. Tom actually has one of the saws I supplied to ‘Evil Dead – The Musical’ New York in his ‘Evil Dead Museum’ although its now looking a little worse for wear having been covered in blood & bashed about every night onstage for 6 months!