Trivia
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Spoilers (1)
George Ives portrayed the fictional "Mortimer Young" (head of fictional film restoration company "Forever Young Films") in the introduction of the theatrical re-release and DVD release.
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A teaser trailer for the film was shot long before the movie was in production. It featured Bruce Campbell (filling in for the role later played by Dan Hedaya) bloody and crawling down the road, just like the movie.
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Holly Hunter had auditioned for the role of Abby, but turned it down because she was performing a play in New York at the same time. So she encouraged her roommate Frances McDormand to go and audition for the role.
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While M. Emmet Walsh's character is named "Loren Visser" in the screenplay, his character is never actually named in the film (his cigarette lighter has "Loren" written on it), and he is listed as "Private Investigator" in the credits.
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Jim Piddock provided the voice of fictional film historian "Kenneth Loring" on the DVD audio commentary track, which was scripted by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
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The title is based on a phrase from the Dashiell Hammett novel 'Red Harvest', in which "blood simple" is a term coined to describe the addled, fearful mindset people are in after a prolonged immersion in violent situations.
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Officially, the title is spelled with a period at the end - it appears this way on screen. Most television listings and video releases leave the period off.
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On the advice of Sam Raimi, the Coens went door-to-door showing potential investors a two minute 'trailer' of the film they planned to make. They ultimately raised $750,000 in a little over a year, enough to begin production of the movie.
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The finished film was brought to L.A. and shown to the major studios, and all passed on the movie. Later that year it was accepted into the 1984 New York Film Festival, and then shown at the Toronto Film Festival, where a deal was made with Circle Films to distribute the movie domestically.
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Frances McDormand once noted in a 1996 interview that M. Emmet Walsh was the oldest person on the set.
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Above Ray's bed is a copy of Mel Ellis' novel "This Mysterious River," which is about a petty crime that begins simply but eventually spirals out of control.
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Spoilers
The infamous "body disposal" scene lasts just over 13 minutes and contains no dialogue, except for what we hear on a car radio.
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