Delta 88: Sam Raimi’s Best Uses of the Classic
Director Sam Raimi has one of the most entertaining filmographies in cinema history, and it’s usually obvious in the finished film that the man at the helm was having a lot of fun bringing the images to the screen. One of the ways Raimi enjoys himself during a production is finding a way to work in an important Easter egg: a cameo appearance for “The Classic,” the yellow 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale that appears in almost every single movie he has ever made.
ORIGIN
During a new interview with Cineatomy, Raimi explained, “That car was my mother’s car in Detroit back in the ’70s. It’s a 1973 Delta 88 Oldsmobile, and I found out that when I was making my Super 8 movies it always was the car I could borrow. ‘Mom, can I borrow your car to put in the movie? Mom, I need to run over Bruce Campbell, can I use your car?’ When I went to college, she gave that car to my brother and I to use to get back and forth from the university. Then, when I made my first feature film, I needed a car to put in the film, and the only one I could have access to again was my mother’s car. ‘Can I use your car for Evil Dead to put in the movie?’ ‘Yeah.’ Then I made the sequel, and it had to be in that ‘cause it was established. And I found out after that that it had actually been in all my movies that I’d ever made. And I started to just put it in the movies. ‘Cause it had always been there. I felt comfortable with it.“
Raimi had the #1 movie at the box office last weekend with his latest film, Send Help, and while the Delta 88 doesn’t make a major appearance, fans have spotted it in there. In celebration of the success of Send Help and the continuance of the Delta 88 Easter egg tradition, this seemed like a good time to look back at some of the best uses of the Classic.
ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992)
The Delta 88 got its most prominent role in the Evil Dead franchise, as it’s the beloved vehicle of our hero Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell). As Raimi said, it was established as Ash’s car in The Evil Dead and remains parked in an evil-infested forest in Evil Dead II – but things really get fun for the Classic when it gets caught in a vortex and dropped into the past for the events of Army of Darkness. Facing an army of the undead in the 1300s, Ash converts his busted car into a rolling weapon known as “The Death Coaster,” complete with spinning blades mounted on the hood.
A couple of decades later, the Delta returned for the TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, where it was still Ash’s preferred mode of transportation. In the second season, the car even gets possessed and goes on a deadly rampage.
SPIDER-MAN (2002)
Raimi’s career was boosted to a whole new level when he was hired to direct Sony’s Marvel Comics adaptation Spider-Man – and, of course, he brought his mom’s Oldsmobile along with him, even giving it a role in Spider-Man’s origin story. In this film, the Delta 88 is the car driven by Ben Parker (Cliff Robertson), the uncle of Spider-Man himself, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire). Bitten by a genetically engineered spider, Peter develops spider-like abilities… and at first, he only intends to use them to win money and impress his high school crush. It isn’t until Uncle Ben is killed in a carjacking involving a thief that Peter had just let pass by that he becomes a hero – and his first order of business is to catch up with the thief that’s speeding through the streets in the Classic.
Peter’s Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) kept the car after Ben’s death, so it also appears in Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3.
THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (1995) and OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (2013)
Sometimes Raimi will take on a project that makes trying to include the Delta 88 quite a challenge. For example, the Western film The Quick and the Dead takes place in 1881. This particular car wouldn’t exist for another ninety years, so how could he get it into the movie? Well, he found a way. He had the car stripped down to its chassis so it could be made to look like a wagon and roll through the filming location.
Oz the Great and Powerful was also a challenge, because they didn’t have Delta 88s in 1905 Kansas or in the Land of Oz. Again, Raimi had the Classic disassembled so it could be represented on set. Part of the car’s engine block and camshaft were incorporated into the machinery used by “the Wizard,” a.k.a. James Franco’s character Oscar Diggs.
THE GIFT (2000)
The Delta 88 isn’t involved in any spectacular moments in this supernatural thriller, but its role in the film is notable due to the person driving it: Cate Blanchett! Blanchett stars in The Gift as down-on-her-luck psychic Annie Wilson – and you really know she’s down on her luck because the Oldsmobile is her car. Blanchett had just been up for the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Elizabeth when she went to work on The Gift, so I have always found it very amusing to see her driving around in the run-down Classic, struggling with a driver’s door that doesn’t want to close.
CRIMEWAVE (1985)
Surprisingly, what may be the least popular movie on Raimi’s filmography features some of the biggest Classic action. When you first hear word of it, Crimewave sounds like it may be a lost gem that somehow fell through the cracks. A slapstick comedy directed by Sam Raimi from a screenplay he co-wrote with Joel and Ethan Coen, it must surely be amazing… But it was a very troubled production that resulted in such a messy film, Raimi and Coens were afraid that it would ruin their careers just as they were getting started. Thankfully, it didn’t make any impact.
The film-noir-gone-goofy action builds up to an epic car chase through the streets of Detroit and onto the Belle Isle Bridge, with Sheree J. Wilson behind the wheel of the Classic, being pursued by two hitmen (Paul L. Smith and Brion James) while her love interest (Reed Birney) tries to stop them, fighting one of the hitmen on top of the vehicles. The script originally called for this fight to occur on top of a subway train, but it had to be changed to automobiles due to budgetary limitations. Raimi saved the subway train fight until he had a budget to pull it off with, and you can see a version of it in Spider-Man 2.
The chase ends with a crash and the Delta 88 teetering on the edge of the Belle Isle Bridge, which is quite a sight.
Those are some of the coolest appearances of the Delta 88, but you can also spot it parked on a street in A Simple Plan, floating in the air in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and sitting in a couple of different locations in Drag Me to Hell. It makes a background appearance in Send Help and makes a quick cameo during a chase sequence in Darkman (where the driver and passenger may or may not be Joel and Ethan Coen).
The only Raimi feature film where you can’t spot the Classic somewhere is the 1999 baseball drama For Love of the Game. In one of the great tragedies of Raimi’s career, the scene he worked the Oldsmobile into for that movie didn’t make it into the final cut.
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