'The gorier the merrier' became our prime directive." Films that were witnessed amongst them included Massacre at Central High and Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Campbell quoted, "the message was very clear: Keep the pace fast and furious, and once the horror starts, never let up. The many films that they watched were the "two films for two dollars," allowing them the chance to document the behavior of what would become their target audience. This would later lead to research of low-budget horror films at the local drive-in theater. The three felt the end result was very effective and represented a new direction that their films could take, that of a semi-successful horror film. This moved Raimi to write the short film Clockwork.
The three were highly valued fans of the comedy genre, though they decided not to do such a film as they felt "a feature-length yuck fest just didn't compute." To do the film as a horror was put forth after they were inspired by a well noted scene from It's Murder. These were the practical reasons that convinced the three to put forth a feature length film. Campbell didn't mind stating that "I could always move back home." Tapert was fearing that he would become an expert in fisheries/wildlife while Raimi was afraid that he would go back to work at his dad's home furnishing store. Raimi felt it to be impossible citing that they could never pull off the funding. While putting the finishing touches in It's Murder! Tapert suggested doing a feature length film to Raimi. Sam Raimi was studying literature at Michigan State University with Robert Tapert finishing his economics degree. In January 1979 Bruce Campbell was a college dropout who had just quit his job as a taxicab driver. 2.5 Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness 2, and Evil Dead 7 Crossover.