Film Favourites: Army of Darkness

You just grew an extra testicle simply by looking at this poster.

The Film

Sam Raimi's third and most spectacularly over-the-top outing in the Evil Dead Trilogy, Army of Darkness, pits our super-everyman hero Ash against legions of evil Deadites in 13th century England, answering the age-old question: What would happen if you made a one-handed chainsaw-wielding chin fight medieval demon zombies? The answer is the collective sexual awakening of the universe.

I think my stick went boom.

The Plot

After surviving two previous movies fighting various manifestations of an evil in the woods (and, on occasion, himself) Ash, a housewares sales assistant at S-Mart, is thrown into a time vortex and transported to 13th century England. With the use of his handy bottomless shotgun and some conveniently available chemistry books, he must help the people of the past defeat the Deadite onslaught once and for all, save the girl, and get home in time for work. How hard could it be?

"It'll be fine. That fountain of blood was totally just a fluke!"

The Critique

The first movie was a low-budget cult horror. The second was a parody of a low-budget cult horror. The third movie, however, is in a league of its own. Taking the unspeakable monstrosities of the original and the ridiculous visual humour of the sequel, Army of Darkness is the natural conclusion of ramping both of those aspects up to the max. No other movie could get away with being as simultaneously hilarious, awesome and occasionally creepy as this one, and that's probably down to the genuinely arousing performance of the god of all men, Bruce Campbell.

If only there were a word to adequately describe him...

This is a man who has made a career out of being able to pull a larger range of silly, sexy and downright psychotic faces than a schizophrenic mime artist. With a expertly cheesy yet solid script in hand, all of the other actors in the film are pushed to the sidelines by this unstoppable whirlwind of testosterone-fuelled flamboyance. It's almost an honour to watch him devour the cheap scenery with more gusto than a free continental buffet. His ham-acting isn't hammy, it's a calculated performance; a dance. Bruce Campbell is an artist.

Poetry in motion.

OK, enough fawning over my (second) biggest man crush. You may have noticed that I mentioned something about cheap scenery; this is indeed true. Despite having nearly 40 times more money to fling around than the first film, Army of Darkness was still made on a relatively modest budget - and yet one which evidently ran dry part way through filming. Some of the scenes, particularly those of the evil Deadite army, look pretty decent - not groundbreaking but, you know, fine - whereas others are laughably bad, but in a kind of adorable way.

Yeah, they're totally holding his nose shut...

The movie balances precariously in that uncanny valley between fun-bad effects and just-plain-bad effects and would possibly be impeded by the obviously plywood sets and painful overlays (see above) if it weren't for the one thing it does absolutely perfectly: being jolly good fun. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll scream in terror at the awful effects. It's terrible and ludicrous and absolutely perfect.

It's Special Because...

I was actually first introduced to the Evil Dead trilogy whilst visiting some friends in Luxembourg many moons ago. Their mother was mortified that my brother and I had never seen the movies so we were sat down and put through all three movies in one fell swoop. That's quality parenting right there!

Naturally, I fell in love. This film may not have been as character-defining for me as the past movies in this series, but it's still as worthy of being here simply for being so enjoyable. It's a great trilogy and Army of Darkness is a great movie and that's enough for me. I introduced my darling gee-eff to The Evil Dead quite recently and, being a notorious horror wimp, she despised it. Much goading later and I convinced her to watch the other two and, lo and behold, she loved them. That's what makes Army of Darkness the best of the three; horror, comedy, action, none of the above, you'll adore it whatever your film preference. This is truly a movie for everyone.

Anyone can get behind a movie with steam-powered Oldsmobile tanks in it.

Best Enjoyed With

Someone who's not usually a fan of horror. Say it's really scary, force them to sit down to watch it and try to get through the whole film pretending it's a serious horror.