Army of Darkness (1993)

A movie that only true horror buffs could love, Army of Darkness is officially part 3 in the wild and wacky Evil Dead trilogy masterminded by the perversely inventive director Sam Raimi, who would later serve as executive producer of the popular syndicated TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Raimi's favorite actor, Bruce Campbell, returns as Ash (hero of the first two Evil Dead flicks), a hardware-store clerk who is magically transported--along with his beat-up Oldsmobile and a chainsaw attachment for his severed left forearm--to the brutal battlefields of the 14th century. He quickly assumes power (who else in the Middle Ages packs a shotgun and a chainsaw?), and unites his band of medieval knights against the dreaded Army of the Dead. Raimi gleefully subverts almost every horror-movie cliché as he serves up a nonstop parade of blood, gore, and vicious sword-bearing skeletons--an affectionate homage to animator Ray Harryhausen's classic Jason and the Argonauts. The frantic action is fun while it lasts, but even at 80 minutes Army of Darkness nearly wears out its welcome. You know that Raimi can maintain the mayhem for only so long before it grows tiresome, and fortunately this madcap movie quits while it's ahead. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

Good, Bad...I'm the guy with the gun!

Yes the format is dead...BUT if you own an HD DVD player (buy it on close out) why not get the supporting HD movie software dirt cheap. Yes these titles will be re-released on Blu-ray but why pay twice the price for the same HD quality picture...plus the HD DVD player is an excellent standard DVD upconverter...much better than the $79 DVD upscalers that are on the market today. June 17, 2008

Classic

This movie is a classic horror/comedy. Bruce campbell is a great actor and this and the evil dead series are instant classics. I just wish they would of made more. June 8, 2008

Such a great... but incredibly cheesy movie

Army of Darkness is one of the best cheesy classic "Horror" movies of all time. Especially for 13 bucks this is a must pick up hd-dvd June 4, 2008

Don't mess with Ash!

This, the best & third entry in the Evil Dead series, is an absolute blast! It's funny, exciting, scary, well acted, beautifully designed and choreographed, and, most of all, imaginative to the extreme!

Bruce Campbell is fantastic here (as usual), but here he's really allowed to excercise his funny bone, and man does he stretch (in more ways than one). You'll be laughing and cheering along with him the whole way through!

As for plot: Ash, our scrappy hero from the first two Evil Dead movies, is sucked through a dimensional vortex thingy (courtesy of Necronomicon, the demonic book of the dead) and finds himself lost in time...the middle ages, more specifically. Before you know it, he finds himself saving the kingdom and setting things right when the Necronomicon's evil minions, the army of darkness of the movies title, start causing trouble. Epic, silly gold! May 14, 2008

The Medieval Dead

Having abandoned genuine scares in favor of all-out slapstick, Army of Darkness, the third entry in the Evil Dead series sees Bruce Campbell lost in time, low on gas, surrounded by evil and facing the Medieval Dead with only a chainsaw, a '73 Oldsmobile, his trusty boomstick and a lot of attitude in a film that owes more to Ray Harryhausen than George A. Romero, albeit with an R-rating (it's one of the last films to use stop-motion extensively, with more sword-wielding skeletons than Harryhausen managed in his entire career). Never quite as much fun as you'd like it to be, it's certainly aged much better than expected - initially regarded as a disappointment, today it stands up rather well, especially when seen away from its two more small-scale predecessors. Joe LoDuca's unapologetically old-fashioned epic score is a lot of fun too, particularly cues like `Manly Men' and `Building the Deathmobile.'

There's no shortage of different editions of the film on DVD, and the fact that Amazon have lumped all the reviews for them in one big identical heap that appears on every editions page doesn't help sort them out. Seeing the two versions of the film side by side on Anchor Bay's 2-disc DVD (issued as the Special Edition and the Boomstick edition) - the US theatrical version with the S-Mart ending and the longer director's `Bootleg cut' with the original `Planet of the Apes' ending, the differences in the longer version are mainly extended scenes rather than deleted ones, though the use of a few alternate takes means that some of the most quotable lines from the shorter version are lost ("Good, bad, I'm the one with the gun." "Maybe my men can hold them. Maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot." "Hail to the king, baby.") and the picture quality is a lot softer. It has to be said that both versions have their merits: there's a bit of repetition in the long version (Marcus Gilbert's every other line in the last half hour seems to be "We are deserted!") and while a lot of good stuff was lost when the film was trimmed for the US, the shorter version IS a lot snappier and the S-Mart Dedite ending is quite fun even if it doesn't set up the will-it-ever-get-made Evil Dead 4 promised in the original ending.
April 28, 2008

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