ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992)

DIRECTED by Sam Raimi.

SCREENPLAY by Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi.

STARRING  - Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams/Evil Ash,  Embeth Davidtz as Sheila,  Marcus Gilbert as Lord Arthur,  Ian Abercrombie as Wise Man,  Richard Grove as Henry the Red,  Timothy Patrick Quill as Blacksmith,  Michael Earl Reid as Goldtooth,  Bill Moseley as Deadite Captain.

PLOT  -( NOTE - As with Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness disregards some of the continuity from the previous film. This time the final scene of Evil Dead 2 is rewritten and refilmed. Instead of being instantly hailed as a hero, this time Ash is taken prisoner by the knights and has to prove himself. Just consider all this plot jiggery pokery to be a quirk of this unique series...)

Trapped in the medieval past, Ash Williams is taken prisoner by Lord Arthur and his men. He and a group of other prisoners, including Arthur's enemy Henry the Red, are taken to Arthur's castle. Once there Ash is thrown into a pit and forced to battle some Deadites. Ash survives this ordeal and in a show of strength humiliates Arthur and frees Henry. Ash is hailed as "The Promised One" - a warrior prophesised to save the kingdom from the evil of the Deadites.

Ash is sent on a mission to retrieve the Necronomicon Ex Mortis from a cursed graveyard. On the way he spends a night in a deserted windmill where he is attacked by a bunch of miniture versions of himself. Accidentally ingesting one of these tiny clones causes a new evil version of himself to grow out of his body. Ash temporarily defeats this evil clone and advances into the graveyard.

Once in the evil lair, Ash accidentally mispronounces the incantation that frees the Necronomicon. This has the result of unleashing further evil upon the land on a level that is much stronger than before.

Very soon an army of the dead led by Ash's evil twin is rampaging across the kingdom. To make amends for his mistake Ash must lead Arthur's men into battle and defend the kingdom against the army of darkness...

DIALOUGE  - Wiseman - "When thou retrievest the book from its cradle you must recite the words 'Klaatu Barada Nikto'."

Ash - " 'Klaatu Barada Nikto' Okay..."

Wiseman - "Well...repeat them."

Ash - " 'Klaatu Barada Nikto !' "

Wiseman  - "Again !"

Ash - " I GOT IT, I GOT IT ! I KNOW YOUR DAMN WORDS !"

Sometime later upon entering the cursed graveyard and finding the Necronomicon...

Ash - "KLAATU.  BARADA.  NNNNNecktie. Necter. Nickle....Noodle. It's an 'N' word...it's definitely an 'N' word."

PERFORMANCES  - Once again Bruce Campbell knocks it out of the park with his portrayal of Ash Williams. As with Evil Dead 2 he takes what was established in the previous movie and develops the character further. This time Ash is even more pissed off than he was by the end of the previous film. He's firmly in action hero mode by this point but is still something of a reluctant hero. He's loudmouthed, he's rude to absolutely EVERYBODY he meets (which is hilarious), blunders into situations without thinking and is - at times - massively incompetent. But he also has moments of sheer inspiration and brilliance. 

For all his faults he's still the man you'd want on your side in a fight. Its a great performance, it's Ash (and Campbell) at the top of his game, full of comedy and charm. Ash is a complete dick in this film but incredibly funny with it.

Campbell also plays Ash's evil clone. Looking completely unrecognisable in decaying shotgun blasted face makeup, Evil Ash becomes lord and master of the Deadite army. He's somehow more capable than the real Ash and you can tell that Campbell's really enjoying chewing the scenery playing an arch villain.

Embeth Davidtz plays Ash's love interest Sheila (not called Linda for once, though we do get to see her in flashback, this time played by Bridget Fonda). Sheila is a lady of the court and after initially mistrusting Ash eventually falls in love with him ("First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me" as Ash eloquently puts it). Sheila temporarily becomes a Deadite but the spell is broken, so you get to see both good and evil sides of her character. 

Rounding out the cast we get Marcus Gilbert as Lord Arthur who is first completely hostile towards Ash but eventually grudgingly comes to accept him.

 Then we get a great performance by Ian Abercrombie as the Merlinesque Wiseman. The Wiseman is initially reverant to Ash due to his position of being "The Promised One" but you can tell that he eventually gets really pissed off with having to deal with this loudmouthed idiot that he's been saddled with. It's great.

Finally, we get Richard Grove playing Arthur's rival Duke Henry the Red. Henry and his men appear to be at war with Arthur at the start of the movie but Ash earns Henry's respect by freeing him. Later, Henry and his men appear like the cavalry at the last minute to help out Arthur's army with the Deadites. The evil army is defeated and a new kingdom is born as peace reigns across the land. Everyone lives happily ever after, except for Ash who still has to find a way back to his own time...

SFX  - With an even larger budget than before Army of Darkness is a visual feast. For a start we get some great looking Deadites...

 

Deadite Sheila is great, she manages to be both sexy and creepy at the same time. "I may be bad...but I feel good" she purrs after being transformed...

The Deadite Captain is quite a good creation too, thats cult horror actor Bill Moseley under all that makeup (not that you'd know by looking at him)...

Last but by no means least is Evil Ash himself who has become yet another iconic character in the series. Evil Ash gets two distinct looks in the film (three if you count the fact that he originally looks like normal human Ash). We get his standard rotted and scarred look...

Later on, Evil Ash gets set on fire and his skin burns off, leaving us with a sometimes stop motion other times animatronic Skeleton Warrior...

Theres also a really great looking flying Deadite who kidnaps Sheila...

Speaking of skeletons. We get LOTS of them during the battle scenes. Some are stop motion in a full on Ray Harryhausen/Jason and the Argonauts tribute style...

Others are puppets...

And many more are extras dressed up...

ALL are excellent. Skeletons are cool.

We get some nice trick photography when Ash is menaced by tiny versions of himself...

And some decent puppet work when Ash literally grows an evil version of himself...

 There's also a great moment where Ash gets sucked into a fake Necronomicon and ends up with a stretched distorted face...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - By this point the Evil Dead series had become more of a comedy than horror. As a result the gore is practically non-existent in this entry. Theres a moment where we get a fountain of blood spewing from an ominous looking pit but that's as far as it goes for the red stuff...

We do get quite a lot of shotgun blasts from Ash's "boomstick" though (once again completely bloodless) and we get lots of hack and slash sword and axeplay in the final battle scenes. Skeletons get shot, skewered, blown up, set on fire, squashed by boulders and otherwise maimed in large scale numbers (NOTE  - no actual skeletons where harmed during the making of this film).

At one point Ash even customises his trusty Oldsmobile into a Mad Max style, steampunk, skeleton killing machine...

Like robots, with skeletons you can be as violent as you like because they don't bleed all over everyone.

RATING  - Some fans of the Evil Dead series absolutely hate Army of Darkness for not being a gore movie or for being a fantasy horror comedy rather than a "serious" horror film. I'm not one of them. In fact - if anything - it's my favourite out of the original trilogy.

Army of Darkness was the first Evil Dead film I ever saw. Back in '92, me and my friend Dean where bored one Saturday afternoon, so we went into town and visited the local ABC cinema. Army of Darkness was the only film playing that wasn't a crappy romantic comedy, so we bought our tickets and watched it.

To say that this film caused me to fall in love with the Evil Dead series is an understatement. A couple of days later, I went out and rented the first two films and loved them too. A week or so later I bought them on VHS and proceeded to watch the absolute hell out of them multiple times throughout that summer. When Army of Darkness came out on video that Autumn, I did it all over again. 

So, purely on a nostalgic level I have a lot of love for this film, the fact that it's genuinely great too is just the icing on the cake.

Its fast, its funny, its action packed, its just as batshit mental as the previous entries. Bruce Campbell is hilarious, the direction and camera work - as ever - is frenzied and creative, the monsters are brilliant. The extended battle scene at the end wouldn't be bettered until we saw the Battle of Helms Deep in The Lord of the Rings movies.

Army of Darkness is both a loving tribute to classic sword and sorcery fantasy movies and a great horror comedy in its own right. 5 skeleton warriors out of 5.

Whenever I watch this film it always causes me to have a massive smile on my face and you really can't ask for more than that.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  -

And finally, above is the cover to the first issue of the comic strip adaptation published by Dark Horse comics. A spin-off comic book series is still being published today - 31 years after the movie first graced cinema screens.