Just what IS an amateur movie as opposed to a low-budget, independent film? EQUINOX was made by a group of special effects-loving friends of college age; they shot it over several months, taking special care with the effects. Which, as someone else points out, certainly are not "claymation," but standard, Ray Harryhausen-ish stop motion animation. The models were of foam latex and rubber skins over metal armatures; no clay was involved at all. After Muren and McGee, the main instigators, finished the film, as pointed out elsewhere, Jack H. Harris bought it and hired Jack Woods to shoot some additional scenes with the four leading actors (one of whom, of course, later became Herb Tarlek on "WKRP In Cincinnati). Woods himself appeared as Asmodeus, a character not in the original film at all. It was ungracious of Harris and Woods to remove Muren's credit as director. As for THE EVIL DEAD -- it's all a coincidence. When Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and their friends made EVIL DEAD, none of them had even heard of EQUINOX, much less seen it. And yes, this is the truth. Now's the time for some entrepreneural DVD company to release a disc with BOTH versions, the Muren original and the Woods revision, on the same disc.
