Sam Raimi

Filmmaker Sam Raimi started out making horror movies on the barest of budgets and wound up helming one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history, an arc made possible by his exemplary creativity and tenacity. During the early 1980s, the Michigan native won both acclaim and notoriety with his ghoulish and gory debut, The Evil Dead, but it was the movie's '87 sequel, Evil Dead II, with its unusual mix of scares and slapstick silliness, that led to Raimi's reputation as a director of note. Also becoming a prolific producer, Raimi managed to realize his dream of helming a superhero movie with '90's Darkman, and he followed up that modest hit with the adventure-oriented Army of Darkness, the third installment in the Evil Dead series. In '98, Raimi made a substantial departure with the more straightforward and undeniably tense thriller A Simple Plan, a film that won numerous accolades and positioned him as more than just a genre director. Though not immune to ill-advised projects (Crimewave, For the Love of the Game), Raimi was eventually tapped to launch the Spider-Man series, with the first two movies proving to be highly successful both commercially and critically. Though 2007's Spider-Man 3 fared well at the box office, it was widely derided, leading Raimi to return to his horror roots and craft the eerie and effective supernatural tale Drag Me to Hell.