With Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1987), writer-director Sam Raimi pulled off a typically impossible feat—he made a sequel to a cult movie milestone ("the ultimate experience in grueling terror") that was widely considered to be better than the original. Initially, Raimi had wanted to press on from the exposure afforded him by The Evil Dead (1981) to a sequel that would catapult its benighted protagonist Ash (Bruce Campbell) into the Middle Ages. When moneyman Dino De Laurentiis came aboard (at the behest of Stephen King, then making his own directorial debut with the De Laurentiis-produced Maximum Overdrive, 1986), the power behind the newly minted De Laurentiis Entertainment Group demanded a scenario more in line with that of Raimi's original cult hit. With a budget 10 times that of The Evil Dead, Raimi's follow-up has a more aesthetically pleasing look and a host of special effects that pays homage to a score of horror and suspense classics: the canted angles of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), the anthropomorphic trees of The Wizard of Oz (1939), the fruit cellar of Psycho (1960), stop motion animation reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen, the boarded-up windows of Night of the Living Dead (1968), the "blood flood" from The Shining (1980), the rays of light streaming in through a sundered wall from Raising Arizona (1985) and it's anyone's guess whether Ash's perambulating hand was a nod to The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), The Crawling Hand (1963) or Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965).

Sam Raimi was born on October 23, 1959, in Royal Oak, Michigan, to a father who sold furniture and a mother who ran her own lingerie business. Raimi's oldest brother, Sander, had been an amateur magician. When Sander died by drowning at the age of fifteen, Raimi took up the study of magic in honor of Sander. The first movie Sam Raimi remembers seeing was Fantastic Voyage(1966). As a teenager, Raimi made Super 8 films based on old Three Stooges two-reelers with his friends, among them Bruce Campbell. Campbell was the star of all of Raimi's amateur films because he was "the good-looking one."

When Raimi was studying literature and history at Michigan State University, he would exhibit his 8mm films at the university cinema and charge attendees $1.50. The abusive feedback from his fellow students taught Raimi a lot about audience expectations. Raimi and his friends made the Super 8 short Within the Woods to show investors the potential of his screenplay for The Evil Dead.

Raimi made Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn to repay the investors on the original film. Making The Evil Dead left the then-21-year-old Sam Raimi $40,000 in debt. 

Peter Deming would go on to lens such popular films as My Cousin Vinny(1992), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) and Scream 2 (1997), as well as Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2001) for David Lynch. Deming shot second unit on Sam Raimi's next film, Darkman (1990).

After spending the $125,000 he made filming Evil Dead II, Bruce Campbell worked as a midnight to 8 a.m. security guard at an Anheuser-Bush plant in the San Fernando Valley.

Richard Domeier had a long career since 1995 as an on-air host for the QVC home shopping corporation. Campbell's first paying gig post-Evil Dead II was a guest spot on the CBS primetime soap opera “Knot's Landing.” Doug Beswick, the stop-motion animator who created the dancing of the undead Linda, had been an animator on the old “Davey and Goliath” show.

Sources:
Sam Raimi interview by Alan Jones, Starburst, 1987
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell
"Hot Coffee and Cold Blood: The Making of The Evil Dead" by Bill Warren, Video Watchdog No. 46, 1998
The Evil Dead Companion by Bill Warren
Sam Raimi interview by Jonathan Ross, The Incredibly Strange Film Show, 1988