Back in 1978, a couple of college-age buddies got together and shot a short horror movie called "Within the Woods". You probably never heard of the movie: I've seen it, and it's nearly unwatchable.

They shot this movie in order to shop it around a bit and raise some funds to shoot a feature version of the film. And actually, they managed to scrape together enough to shoot it, though not without some problems.

It's called The Evil Dead. The buddies were Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell. They later went on to make a few more movies.