Wes Craven and Sam Raimi are two of the most influential horror filmmakers of the late 20th century, with each director helming numerous movies that are now regarded as classics. Craven kicked off his career in the 1970s with the grim and gritty films The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, both of which presented audiences with an unflinching look at the carnage that human beings can wreak on one another. He followed up on this initial success with the teen slasher hit A Nightmare on Elm Street, the delightful chilling The Serpent and the Rainbow, and the cleverly self-aware Scream franchise. Raimi started his career with the wonderfully gory The Evil Dead, which spawned two sequels, a TV series, a remake, and a reboot. His other forays into horror include 2009’s Drag Me to Hell and the surprisingly macabre Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

While they were making career- and genre-defining horror films, Craven and Raimi also engaged in some friendly fire, using their own films to taunt one another. Of course, this was all in good fun without an ounce of malice or ill toward one another. So without further ado, let’s take a look at this adorable little fraud.

Craven Throws Down the Gauntlet — or Does He?

In Craven’s 1977 survival horror film, there’s a torn poster of Steven Spielberg’s hit film Jaws hanging in the Carter family’s RV. A young Raimi saw that and interpreted it as Craven challenging what was then considered one of the most thrilling films made.

By the time Raimi got around to making his groundbreaking horror flick, The Evil Dead, he decided to respond to Craven in a similar fashion, which he confirmed in Esquire, “I thought it would be funny to tear a Hills Have Eyes poster into pieces in The Evil Dead, to tell Wes, ‘No, this is the real horror, pal.’”

This is the start of the hilarious rivalry between the two filmmakers, but it should be noted that the poster in The Hills Have Eyes may not even be that of Jaws, so Raimi may have picked a fight over a slight misunderstanding. Oops.

The Fight Heats Up in the 1980s

Both Craven and Raimi made defining horror films in the 1980s, and both of them used these films to take lighthearted jabs at one another.

Once Craven realized he was in a feud with Raimi, he decided to fire back with 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street by featuring a scene in which Nancy tries to keep herself from falling asleep by watching TV. One of the channels she lands on is playing Raimi’s The Evil Dead, and this is when she begins to nod off.

However, Raimi decided to respond with a more evasive tactic; in 1987’s Evil Dead II, Freddy Krueger’s glove can be seen hanging in both the fruit cellar and the shed of the cursed cabin in the woods. Was this Raimi waving the white flag in this battle?

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Craven Takes One Last Shot

Craven further established himself in the 1990s with Scream, which cleverly satirized horror movie cliches. What a perfect opportunity to snipe at his old rival.

During the party scene, Randy asks his friends which horror movie they want to watch: The Evil Dead or Halloween. Because Craven was still at war with Raimi, the group of partygoers skipped The Evil Dead and picked Halloween. Oof.

Raimi Gets the Last Laugh

It should be noted that, while the two filmmakers were lobbing cinematic grenades at each other, they never once met in real life. But at some point, they were bound to cross paths, and that’s when Raimi got one last jab in, this time in the flesh. He told a pretty humorous story in Esquire, “Years ago, I was at the Cannes Film Festival giving a radio interview — I had never met Wes — and he came up to the booth. I thought, ‘This is where I’m going to get old Wes.’ I hid and leaped out with a terrific shout, and he just jumped out of his skin. Then I introduced myself. He gave me a look like, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ He’s been very kind to me ever since.”

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Raimi Pays Tribute to a Fallen Hero

While it’s nice to know that there was never any bad blood between Raimi and Craven, unfortunately, their friendly rivalry was cut short by Craven’s tragic passing in 2015. Still, that didn’t stop Raimi from referencing the films of his late frenemy, although this was probably intended to be more of a eulogy than a potshot.

In the first season of Raimi’s Starz series Ash vs. Evil Dead, there’s a scene set in the original cabin from the Evil Dead movies in which Freddy Krueger’s glove can still be seen hanging in the background. 

Raimi went a step further to bring everything full circle in Season 2 by having the characters travel back in time to 1982; they pass by a movie theater that has a poster for The Hills Have Eyes hanging outside.