When Spider-Man was just a zygote ...

So my friend visits for the weekend. She hasn't stayed with me in over three years, not since before she got pregnant and had her son - she used to visit once a year. I happened to mention yesterday that "Evil Dead" was filmed in east Tennessee, not too far from where I live. This morning, she gets online to find directions to it, and it isn't long before we're setting off for Morristown to find the remains of Ash's cabin in the woods.

First, we had to figure out which way to go once we got to the proper highway. (Note: Fans who post in the blither of excitement on a *reference* site "you go on this highway" without specifying in which direction or how far need to be bitchslapped by an S-Mart price sticker. I'm just saying. It is not a magic highway that starts at one point and keeps going indefinitely in only one direction like a giant conveyor belt.)

Second, we had to figure out which way to go once we got on the road off the main highway. Yes, it forks in two! Nobody tells you this in the aforementioned blither! ("Do we go right or left?" "Well, follow those cars, they're going left." "What, you don't think anyone turns right around here?" "Are THEY?")

Third - WTF is up with no parking guidance? It's a two-lane county road with no shoulders. Where do you reference fans park, up in a tree? Do you maybe parachute in? I pull into a driveway of a small house across from the gap in the barbed wire leading back on the woods path, intending to knock at the door and ask permission to park there. ("I'M not talking to anyone." "It was your idea." "Well ..." "Okay, I'll just depend on some neighbor's good will, then." *Georgia twang from the passenger seat* "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.")

By luck, next to the house we find this guy and his daughter on bicycles in their driveway. He lives next door and lets us park in his driveway for the short time we'll be traipsing in the woods. ("How long you think you'll be?" "Oh, I don't know - however long it takes to re-create the first chainsaw scene on-camera for our weird relatives?" No, I'm nicer than that!) He also tells us he was a teenager when the movie was filmed there, but that he doesn't know much beyond the fact it was filmed, and over the years he's given directions to 15-20 people to find the cabin. "I don't suppose you'd go with us?" I asked, thinking of a great story photo-op.

"Nah."

Little girl: "I'd like to go."

"You want to go?"

"Yes!"

"Too bad." (Heh. Thanks for trying to help anyway, kid.)

So, with our commandeered driveway, we set off into the woods, stepping over felled branches and trees on a car-wide trail that was easy to follow maybe an eighth of a mile into the woods. The stone chimney! Pieces of rusted tin roof (where are the B-52s when you really NEED them to shout?) in the leaves! The big pit! (There was no basement to the house, so to simulate going downstairs, Sam Raimi and crew dug a pit in the floor and the actors would crouch down to "descend" and the downstairs shots were actually filmed in a basement elsewhere.) Of course, there was no actual cabin to be found, it having departed this world in a fire sometime between 1980 and the present day.

We hiked a quarter-mile to look at an unmarked cabin that wasn't there, spending $10 in gas money to get there and back and another $10 on snacks along the way. (And no, we didn't take any bricks from the site, why would you ask such a thing??)


EDIT: I've added a few photos of the adventure here just in case anyone wants to take a gander.