Why Evil Dead II Couldn't Use Footage From Its Own Franchise

Irvin Shapiro is a name that may not be familiar to the average viewer, but will be familiar to those with a bit of international film distribution history. Shapiro, one of the founders of the Cannes Film Festival, was in charge of researching interesting or important European films and finding film and home video rights in the United States. Without Shapiro, American audiences would not have seen Sergei Eistenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin", Robert Weine's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", Jean Renoir's "The Great Illusion" or Jean-Luc's "Breathless". Godard, of unfathomable influence. He has worked with Stanley Kubrick, George A. Romero and Martin Scorsese. The story goes that Shapiro first suggested the title "The Evil Dead" to Raimi.

When Raimi was doing "Evil Dead II", he wanted to buy some time. Rather than provide a dialogue-heavy expository dump explaining the events of the first film, he simply wanted to cut out a few select scenes, constructing a brief, convenient flashback. But as Raimi himself explained in "The Evil Dead Companion", the distribution rights had been tossed to the winds by Shapiro:

"We tried to get the rights to the Evil Dead footage to use at the start of 'Evil Dead II'. Unfortunately, because the picture was sold by Irvin Shapiro to so many different countries, and different distributors in each country, we would have had to go to each of them - there were probably around 50 of them - and obtain authorizations to use it in their territory, it was a very strange situation - some of the distributors had even ceased their activities."

So that was it. No one knew who had the rights or even who to talk to.