It may be the strangest accreditation in the history of movies: "Fake Shemp," a term that appeared mysteriously in the final credits to 1981's The Evil Dead. It's loosely associated with the film's Deadites -- human bodies possessed by demons -- and has since become a shorthand for the horror franchise's unique variation of the undead. Both 1987's Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn and 1992's Army of Darkness cited fake Shemps in their credits, as have a number of director Sam Raimi's other productions.

Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell are self-professed fans of The Three Stooges, and the classic comedy team's influence weighs heavily on the Evil Dead franchise. "Fake Shemp" is an obvious reference to Shemp Howard, one of the Stooge's founding members. But the cut goes deeper than that. It specifically refers to a bizarre set of circumstances at the end of Howard's life, one which has helped the term spread beyond the Evil Dead movies.

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The Three Stooges Fake Shemp

Shemp was one of the original Three Stooges, along with his brother Moe Howard and Larry Fine, who originated the routine on vaudeville. According to the biography The Three Stooges Scrapbook, he left the group to pursue a solo career in 1933 and was replaced by his younger brother Jerry "Curly" Howard. Curly was with the team during their breakout movie success in the '30s and '40s. When he suffered a stroke in 1946, Shemp returned as a replacement. Curly Howard died in 1952 after a protracted illness, while Shemp himself passed away in 1955 after suffering a sudden heart attack at the age of 60.

That left four movies still unfinished on the Stooges' contract, forcing producers to scramble. Whenever possible in those films, they focused on Larry and Moe as a duo. The rest of the time -- when Shemp's presence was unavoidable for continuity purposes -- they brought in Shemp's stand-in Joe Palma. He appeared in those scenes shot from behind or with his identity similarly obscured -- hence a "fake Shemp."

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Evil Dead Fake Shemp Credit

Raimi coined the term after The Evil Dead ran into production problems of its own. Campbell's autobiography If Chins Could Kill goes into the details. When the shooting schedule hit budget-related delays, most of the cast and crew quit. Raimi and his producer Robert Tapert were forced to use friends and family to fill in for the Deadites. Accordingly, he anointed them "Fake Shemps" in reference to Palma and the Stooges' body double. Raimi's brothers Ted and Ivan -- as well as producer Robert Tapert's sisters Dorothy and Mary Beth -- both appear in the credits.

With the success of the Evil Dead films, the term quickly became an alias for the Deadites in general. In fact, the word "Deadite" didn't appear in the credits until Army of Darkness. For the two previous movies, the zombies were credited as Fake Shemps. Since Deadites follow different rules than the undead in other movies, the term made an easy way to single them out.

And the term has expanded beyond the Evil Dead franchise, too, referring to any film where a body double is required to finish shooting (though never formally in the credits as Raimi does). Fake Shemps are often used when an actor passes away, as was the case with Brandon Lee in The Crow and Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. On a less fatalistic note, use of CGI to recreate actors' visages -- such as Mark Hamill's deepfake appearance in The Mandalorian -- is considered a Fake Shemp. It's a bizarrely fitting legacy not only for the Stooge himself but for a film franchise that used it to describe creatures rising from the dead.