Way back in the glorious year of 1992 a horror film was released that concluded a trilogy of horror movies, the only problem being that they forgot to include the horror. Which upset some cinema goers well a few that I spoke to anyway. This one has a few names for me it was always called ‘Evil Dead III – Army of Darkness’ the others include – Ash v’s The Army Of Darkness, Evil Dead 3 - The Medieval Dead, Bruce Campbell v’s the Army of Darkness, Army of Darkness, I think that covers most of them. This was produced by Robert Tapert and written by the Raimi brothers of Sam and Ivan. There were two versions of the movie with the US missing 7 minutes of action when released it was also one of the early films to have multiple different endings and the theatres saw a different one to the video market and then a different one again for the DVD releases. Directed by the now famous Sam Raimi it stars his college buddy in Bruce Campbell and Embeth Davidtz. Other cast members include Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, Richard Grove, Timothy Patrick Quill, Michael Earl Reid, Bridget Fonda, and Ted Raimi. Budget wise it was a small one even for pr ’92 films with a budget of $11m it went on to return $21.5 which to me scrapped a profit. Critically wise the scores are much lower than mine but the other two are almost in agreement with IMDb giving it 7.5 out of 10 which is actually higher than the 73% from Rotten Tomatoes.
Ash was accidently sucked through a time hole into the middle ages where he is instantly captured by Lord Arthur’s men. [Note – see end of Evil Dead II]. Ash is instantly suspected as being one of Duke Henry’s men and it set for execution is he doesn’t help Arthur. After watching one of Henry’s men fall foul to the creature in the pit Ash is thrown in there after him. Killing the beast and climbing out he now has his weapons, and he is going to use them. Taking some form of control of the castle he releases Duke Henry the Red’s men and gains the attraction of Sheila, the sister of one of Arthur’s fallen knights. His demands of castle’s population are to find a way to send him back and guess what he has to retrieve the Necronomicon Exmortis again. This time it is held in a churchyard surrounded by the evil dead. All Ash has to do is travel there alone and retrieve the book which the wise man will be able to use to recite the words and magic to send him back to his own time. Oh, and he has to recite the magic words when he collects the book that’s it get to the graveyard. Get through the graveyard, say the words collect the book and bring it back to Lord Arthur and his wise-man will work out how to send him home. It’s almost too simple.
I think these college guys have an evil sense of humour and when they released the first Evil Dead movie, they felt they had an image that had to portray. One of shock and horror in an attempt to win over the horror fans and money executives. The mask slipped slightly with the second as they retained the horror, but their fun side started to show. By the time, this one was being made they had given up pretending to be anything other than the funny and amusing film makers they wanted to be. I remember an old friend watching this movie and laughing his head off and at the end say it was a pile of crap. I was confused as he was laughing a lot. I asked and he said that he was laughing at it because it was so bad. I pointed out that that was exactly what they were going for. This is a silly and stupid romp through a time travelling loudmouth braggart. Ash has become egotistic and self opinionated. He cares about himself and that’s about it. He has a boot full of chemistry books and a knowledge of how to kill the deadites. So, he steps into this new historic world desperate to get home and no idea how to get there. He’s pi… erm he is not incredibly happy and as a result he is grumpy for most of this movie. Which just makes it funnier. He ignores all advise and help given to him and is just the grumpiest man in this honourable world. In a time where myths and quests involved remembering enchantments and magic words, but he can’t be bothered with that. He is here just to get out as quickly as possible and no human is going to get in his way. The only issue there is he is not just up against humans. The humour is silly to say the list the unbelievable stuff that they get up to is hysterical from frying his face on a stove and using kitchen equipment to remove his face or pouring boiling water down his throat all of which had little to no effect on the victim. The army of dead is just as silly and funny with many of the best one liner’s out there. This is simply a stupidly funny and amusing movie. This is great and if you can put up with the stupidity then you will actually enjoy all 81 or 88 minutes of it. Oh, and don’t forget Klaatu Varada Nikto!
Next up is another horror movie that is not really a horror movie to me, but this is another example of a great 80’s movie where all the movies were great weren’t they???
Klaatu Varata Nickel...Necktie...oh what’s the damn word