Happy 50th, Ted Raimi!!

Ted Raimi–one of my favorite actors of all time–turned 50 this week, and I took a stroll down memory lane to revisit some of my favorite roles of his. While his older brother Sam often gets the spotlight for directing movies like Evil Dead and Spider-Man, at least some of his success should be attributed to the awesomeness that Ted Raimi brings to his brother’s projects.

Take Evil Dead 2, for example. Ted played the wonderfully disgusting Henrietta, wearing a cumbersome latex suit. Henrietta has some of the best scenes in the entire movie, including the fight scene where she gets dismembered. If you look closely when he is hovering in the main room of the cabin, you can see the sweat pour out of the earhole in Ted’s costume when Henrietta turns to look at Ash.

And then of course there was Army of Darkness, where Ted played half the cast. He was an S-Mart employee, a soldier with an eye patch in Arthur’s army, a cowardly villager, another soldier in the army, and the voice of several skeletons in Evil Ash’s army of the dead.

And how about the Spider-Man franchise? J.K. Simmons’ portrayal of J. Jonah Jameson is universally loved, but what about Ted Raimi’s Hoffman, who Simmons got to play off of for three films?

And who could forget Darkman, where Raimi played Durant’s right-hand man Rick, who met his untimely end at the hands of Liam Neeson.

In addition to making his brother’s films better, Ted has had an amazing career on both the big and small screens, appearing in films and shows that are cultural icons. He’s been in Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Alf, Baywatch, seaQuest DSV, Xena, Supernatural, Shocker, Candyman, The Grudge and dozens of other movies and shows over the years.

So happy 50th, Ted! Thanks for being a part of so many of the reasons we’re horror fans today!

Oh, and if you can’t get enough of Ted, he started a new webseries this year where he tells scary stories and teaches viewers how to make some of his favorite mixed drinks. it’s called Deathly Spirits, and you can watch the first episode right here. You can catch the rest at his website.