DIRECTOR
Sam Raimi
SCREENWRITERS
Sam Raimi
Ivan Raimi
PRODUCER
Robert G. Tapert
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Bill Pope
MUSIC
Danny Elfman
Joseph LoDuca
EDITORS
Bob Murawski
Sam Raimi
CAST
Bruce Campbell (Ash)
Embeth Davidtz (Sheila)
Marcus Gilbert (Lord Arthur)
Ian Abercrombie (Wiseman)
Richard Grove (Duke Henry the Red)
Timothy Patrick Quill (Blacksmith)
Michael Earl Reid (Gold Tooth)
Bridget Fonda (Linda)
Patricia Tallman (Possessed Witch)
Ted Raimi (Cowardly Warrior)
Deke Anderson (Mini-Ash #2)
Bruce Thomas (Mini-Ash #3)
Bill Moseley (Deadite Captain)
Angela Featherstone (Girl in S-Mart)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time (theatrical): 81m
Running
time (director's cut):
96m
U.S. release: February 19, 1993
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
Other Sam
Raimi movies
reviewed on this site:
- Darkman
- For
Love of the Game
- The
Gift
- A
Simple Plan
- Spider-Man
|
If you ever want to get a funny
debate going among movie-loving friends, ask them what they think
of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987). Some
will immediately laugh and gush, "Great movie."
Others will say, "Stupidest movie ever made." Still
others will say both in the same breath. The debate, I suspect,
will begin anew with Raimi's Army of Darkness (which Universal
refused to release under its proper title, Evil Dead 3: Medieval
Dead). This, too, is the sort of film that inspires a response
like "Jesus, that was dumb, and I loved every minute of
it." Army of Darkness is stupid in the fearless,
half-admirable way that the best Ren & Stimpy episodes
are stupid; it keeps topping itself just when you think it can't.
Actually, "stupid" isn't the right word here -- a better
label might be "campy," and very intentionally so;
Raimi's Evil Dead films are essentially gutbucket comedies,
and this one's no exception. This extended guitar riff of a movie
blows the doors off any fantasy-adventure I've seen in years.
Raimi, known mostly to readers of Fangoria for directing
the first two Evil Deads before stumbling onto mainstream
success with Darkman,
hasn't outgrown his devotion to monster movies, superheroes,
and the Three Stooges -- the three pop phenomena that guys gravitate
to but most women find inane. (Army of Darkness is not
the ideal date movie.) Raimi is a playfully inventive director
-- his movies are big, junky toy boxes -- and his affection for
senseless, sophomoric trash is infectious. He turns violence
and gore into slapstick, yet he isn't cruel; his affection extends
to his characters, even the slobbering zombies. Especially
the slobbering zombies.
Army of Darkness picks up at the exact instant that Evil
Dead 2 left off, but if you missed the first two installments
(though obviously I recommend them), the new movie stands pretty
well on its own. Raimi re-introduces us to Ash (Bruce Campbell),
the college student who found the ancient Book of the Dead out
in a cabin in the woods and unleashed the forces of hell, one
of which possessed his girlfriend. (Amusing trivia: Bridget Fonda
plays the girlfriend in the new footage.) After much mayhem and
blood-spritzing, Ash somehow created a vortex that spirited him
to Medieval England, along with his crappy '73 Delta-88 Oldsmobile.
Armed with a shotgun and a chainsaw (the latter of which is attached
to the stump of his right hand), Ash now finds himself fighting
the "Deadites" and questing for the Book of the Dead,
his only ticket home.
Raimi, who wrote the script with his brother Ivan, approaches
this scenario as if someone had given him a deep pail of Magic
Markers and told him to draw the ultimate comic book. The setting
is Frank Frazetta by way of Monty Python, the action strictly
Three Stooges Meet Jason and the Argonauts (lots of eye-boinking).
Like Brian De Palma, Raimi borrows from a lot of sources but
mooshes the stolen elements into an inspired style all his own.
As usual, he shows you things you don't see every day: a shot
of an arrow in flight, filmed from the arrow's point of view
(Raimi loves that shtick -- he's done the POV-of-flying-object
in almost all his movies); a sequence in which Ash's face is
pulled like Silly Putty. Raimi doesn't have a thing on his mind
except to give you a raucous good time, and he does. In a period
when you can almost see the director's dour face hovering over
the camera, worrying about being taken seriously, it's a goddamn
relief to have someone like Raimi who cackles gleefully from
the first shot.
It's been six years since Evil Dead 2, and even longer
(13 years) since Raimi and Campbell finished shooting the original
Evil Dead, so Campbell has lost his frat-boy look (his
Ash still acts like one, though). But age has given him an edge:
After the crap he went through in Evil Dead 2, nothing
shocks or impresses him any more. When a crowd of grateful people
hail him, he muscles through them: "Yeah, yeah ... Right
... Get the fuck outta my face." Wiry and demented, Ash
slams his way through the most chaotic and absurd situations
(such as when he breaks a mirror and his own tiny reflections
emerge from the shards of glass and attack him) as if he were
dealing with nothing more unusual than a loud kegger. Campbell,
a gifted physical comedian with a deadpan knack for cheesy B-movie
dialogue, fits into Raimi's fantasies as snugly as Robert De
Niro fits into Martin Scorsese's urban dramas. Buddies since
high school, these two deserve each other, and deserve to grow
old together on film.
Darkman was Raimi's crossover hit because it satisfied
the audience's need for a comic-book movie with style and a kidding
sense of itself; unlike Batman and Dick Tracy,
it came out of nowhere, with no particular pretensions. If Army
of Darkness becomes another hit*,
that's because it has everything connoisseurs of great junk look
for: zombies in armor, swordplay, gunplay, slapstick, a damsel
in distress, a truly loopy hero, jaw-dropping visuals (literally,
in one case), and enough slaphappiness for ten movies. Army
of Darkness is epic fun. If all Sam Raimi wants to do is
make cinematic comic books, I won't mind as long as they're as
energetic and screwy as this one.
* The movie, of course, was not a hit.
After gathering dust on the shelf since 1991, it was released
in a February 1993 death slot, considerably cut (from 96 minutes
to 81) and with a watered-down, studio-mandated ending. Most
critics dismissed it, and it went away fast. For years, fans
had to settle for bootlegs of the Japanese laserdisc to see the
film as Raimi intended it. Then, in 1999, Anchor Bay rolled out
its excellent 2-disc DVD set containing both the theatrical cut
and the director's cut. It's generally agreed that Raimi's
original (much darker) ending is by far the better of the two.
|
