Army of Darkness (1992)
Once upon a time, I had this UK horror/fantasy film magazine—kind of like Fangoria, but not. The name escapes me, but it featured a run down of the practical effects work in Hocus Pocus—the guy’s mouth sewn shut, and Army of Darkness, with its various Deadite designs, Evil Ash, etc. I’ll have been no older than 10, and those images seared into my brain and stayed with me. I didn’t see Army until a “bootleg version” inexplicably titled, Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness, wrapped in phony brown paper bag DVD packaging, arrived on region 1 US DVD circa the early noughties. As a Brit, I didn’t grow up watching Raimi’s beloved Three Stooges. In fact, I’ve still never seen anything in full, but as a child of the ’80s, I did religiously absorb Blackadder, The Young Ones, and Bottom, which all helped prepare me for its slapstick elements. Speaking of the genius, Rik Mayall, there’s a hilarious Drop Dead Fred-esque face-stretching incident in Army when Ash picks the wrong Necronomicon.
Love is blind, and I love Army of Darkness. For all its faults and flaws, inconsistencies, and glaring mistakes, it’s a joke that I am happily in on. Is horror/fantasy Allhalloween appropriate? For me, unequivocally yes. Although it has crones, thunder and lightning storms, and howling at the moon, I was still slightly concerned whether a magic spells, swords and sorcery story would be the ideal tonal fit for Hallowe’en, but it really plays. Army of Darkness—the ultimate experience in medieval horror—what is essentially Evil Dead III, aka The Medieval Dead is my daft as a brush, skeleton-packed, off-the-wall faux-epic pick to keep you cackling after 8pm.
The year is 1300 A.D. and our ol’ mate—the long tormented (mostly by Sam Raimi) sap stranded in, or out of time, Ash—after being sucked through a mind-bending vortex along with Sam’s trusty Oldsmobile at the climax of the previous picture, finds himself a shackled, pilloried, and whipped prisoner. After impressing the primates with his twelve gauge Remington “boomstick” from the sporting goods department of S-Mart, the peasants begin to hail “he who has come from the sky,” laying on a harem of wenches who feed him grapes as he scoffs chicken legs like he’s Henry VIII. However, the foolishness and spinelessness of Ash means disaster is always just around the corner.
Evil Dead II is a cinematic bible to me, and I completely adore KNB’s (Kurtzmann, Nicotero, and Berger) practical puppetry, make up, and Army of Darkness Deadites, especially as they were working 24/7 on a measly $800 a week for this non-union shoot. How folks can say these effects aren’t masterly is beyond me. Army is incredibly cinematic—whether it be the forest of bendy rubber trees, Introvision front-projection composites, force perspective miniatures, matte paintings, the “she-bitch,” or the flying Green Goblin Deadite attacks. 86 minutes really flies by.
Earmuffs, “Ringers,” but the final flurry castle raid is arguably better than the battle for Helm’s Deep, and for my money, any Game of Thrones episode. Does The Two Towers have a squadron of talking crossbow skeletons? Nope. Does GoT have a ginger-bearded, bony bagpipe band with a femur flute soloist? Don’t think so. I easily get battle fatigue during these kinds of lengthy clashes, but the theatrical cut of Army pitches it just about right. Elements of a personal fave, 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also leapt out, including throwing the ladder down, Ash cutting the rope and flying up the castle side, and impaling an attacking witch with a spear using her own momentum to skewer her.
Campbell continuously moans that Army should be a PG as opposed to an R, but having said that, censorship when done right isn’t simply the arbitrary exclusions of sex, violence, and cussin’—it’s about eliminating potential mimicry. Yes, this is a film that features loquacious skellingtons and a spurting blood geyser, but a man also skillets his face off a hot stove, and pours boiling hot water down his throat, which (crucially, as far as censors are concerned) doesn’t burn him—and perhaps most egregiously, the movie features a quite disturbing, gropey sexual assault of Sheila in the presence of the newly resurrected, exhumed, skeletal Army of the Dead.
Bruce Campbell antagonist and director of Army of Darkness, Sam Raimi, can be witnessed wearing a French beret, barking theatrical directions into a megaphone like a certifiable Cecil B DeMille. Raimi allegedly briefed youthful cinematographer, Bill Pope (Darkman, The Matrix, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Baby Driver) on his ways of working prior to hiring him, saying words to the effect of, “So, buddy. I’m gonna tell you exactly where to put the camera, how high to put the camera, what lens to put on the camera, where I want the camera to move to, how fast, and what speed.” When Pope agreed to those terms, Raimi conceded, “Actually, I have no idea about lenses, or light, or any of that stuff. I was just testing you to see if I could push you around.”
There’s something mechanical, almost clockwork about Raimi and Pope’s palpable, creative cinematography here—the nonstop intricate ballet between the camera operator, and Bruce, with the precision of the moves contrarily retaining a handmade feel. It’s brilliantly shot and lit, and without doubt, one of the most visually inventive films I’ve ever seen. The classic “force” POV splitting tree trunks in half in its wake, the swaying camerawork eliciting feelings of queasiness and vertigo, and that incredible tracking shot with all the characters turning camera left, and ending on Bruce, as everyone eyes Ash is a real sight for sore bones. Traditional film grammar aside, this is a movie that expresses itself using every kind of shot you could possibly imagine, but it’s also fluent in cinematic punctuation—the communicative way moments are emphasised and underlined. Raimi’s kinetic skills always shine though, no matter how absurd it gets.
Whether he’s in a Hitchcockian shirt and tie, smoking endless cigarettes, calling everyone “buddy,” tormenting Bruce by making him flap his arms and squawk like a chicken, or run around with his foot nailed to the floor, Raimi abuses his directorial authority in the most mischievous of ways. Some directors acquire positions of power to get laid—Raimi just wanted to chuck dummy skeletons at Bruce from off camera. He has an uncanny knack for filling his frames meticulously and unsparingly—creating, at times, an overwhelmingly detailed sensory experience. Take the fantastically immersive nature of Army‘s Skywalker Sound mix. Raimi’s crash zooms are accentuated by the clanking of cast iron hits during Ash’s gearing up. I adore the Army of the Dead’s ADR ad libs—it’s all so dense, and when the skeletons start chattering away, that’s some of my most treasured stuff. The film editing credit, “R.O.C. Sandstorm” was actually a Sam Raimi pseudonym, as after the his previous picture, Darkman was recut by Universal against his wishes, he had to boldly, and covertly tinker with the movie a mere 48 hours before release. Sam resolutely did not want history to repeat, so opted to infiltrate his own edit room undercover with support from long-time collaborator, Robert Tapert.
Personally, I could watch exploding skeletons all day long. Alas, Dino De Laurentiis would disagree. “Let’s have two skeletons blowing up instead of five,” De Laurentiis would dictate, as a method of slashing Army‘s run time down. Sam’s half of the movie—the bits he edited, ended up quite lengthy and less disciplined—some may argue, overindulgent. Raimi allegedly said to his editor, “Dino is old, and he won’t remember his notes, so you don’t have to follow them.” Then Dino would become enraged because he did remember, and after making specific requests, there were still five exploding skeletons instead of two. The “I slept too long!” ending with Joseph LoDuca’s enormous, booming score (Danny Elfman’s involvement was limited to a single “The March of the Dead” cue) was legitimately disturbing back in the day. In spite of Army being an overtly daft film—same with Evil Dead II, which I saw aged 15 or so, and was horrified by Ted Raimi’s sweet Henrietta, then found myself suddenly laughing along with my school mates, Rob and Phil, and then secretly scared again. It was, and still is, the perfect balancing act of humour and horror. Army teeters more on the precipice of silliness, and occasionally stumbles and plummets over the edge, but in the interest of sheer Hallowe’en spirit—enjoyment and laughter as well as terror, it fits the brief.
This alternate, Planet of the Apes-esque conclusion from the longer cut definitely has its tragic merits, but I much prefer the action-packed, upbeat, heroic, S-Mart-set, hideous horror hag ending from the truncated theatrical—sans the former’s spliced back in, lower quality scenes. It’s (I believe) canonical in terms of what followed, although I’m not proficient. The Evil Dead films are very much a closed loop trilogy to me. As Gali often says, the series has “grown arms and legs.” The 86-minute theatrical also boasts the, “Come get some,” and “Hail to the king, baby,” zingers that 1996’s Duke Nukem 3-D so shamelessly stole, as well as Robbie Hart’s jilting fiancée from The Wedding Singer (in the Van Halen T-shirt), making out with Bruce. Mournfully, the edit room floor eradication of Charles Napier as Ash’s boss is, I’m sure, one of cinema’s greatest tragedies.
Army of Darkness is a complete oddity in the sense that Universal, and De Laurentiis forked $11 million in the first place to produce a picture with a deliberately dislikable and contemptible coward as their lead protagonist. Army is, in a way, the pinnacle of the Evil Dead series in respect to the character of Ash, but it’s not as representative, harsh, or as darkly visceral and frightening as Evil Dead II. Bruce Campbell is Buster Keaton in Dead By Dawn—plate smashing and body flipping, but here he’s Elvis Presley. Campbell is comedically adept, physically fit—in peak condition, and dare I say devilishly handsome—to the degree that we are forced to ponder why he wasn’t a bigger commercial star.
Having said that, in the longer bootleg cut, the contentious slapstick windmill segment is twice as long as the theatrical, and feels thrice as long. Although a tad long-winded and annoyingly broad—and featuring the obnoxiously goofy mini-Ashes, it’s essentially another nifty Bruce Campbell one-man show. His solo second act here is admittedly hard to swallow at times, as the more compelling and comical moments revolve around Ash interacting with the medieval folk. Let’s just be grateful the fabled deleted sequence, in which Ash gets caught up in a can-can line of dancing skeletons was vetoed, as that may have represented the crossing of a tonal line in the sand. Although, I still don’t think I’d hate it.
Of course, Campbell is not entirely alone here. There’s the striking Embeth Davidtz (Schindler’s List), with her truly creepy pallid transformation into Evil Sheila, “Chop Top” Bill Mosley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects), a bafflingly brief Bridget Fonda cameo (she loved the first two movies), as our third different Linda, and loyal brotherly stalwart, Ted Raimi pops up in count ‘em, four roles—Cowardly Warrior, Supportive Villager, S-Mart Clerk, and Brave Fighter.
Mixed and middling reviews, meshed with a strange marketing ploy to sell the film as if it were somehow detached from the beloved Evil Dead series, as opposed to the essential, climactic third part of a trilogy, sent Army hurtling into the cult classic category like a catapulted skull. Those primates, Siskel and Ebert—like stuffy grandparents were never willing or able to understand Army of Darkness, and that suits me just fine, cos who’d want to glance around and see those two critics’ corner squares at your happenin’ Hallowe’en gathering? Miserable bags of bones.
With the kind of inane nattering that would be more at home at a bus stop than on a film criticism TV chat show, America’s dumbest critical duo barely scratched the surface of anything they reviewed on At the Movies, and Raimi’s sequel was no exception. Their primitive intellects wouldn’t understand alloys and compositions, and things with molecular structures, slapstick coughing skeletons, botched incantations, or flying Deadites. In Gene Siskel’s unsurprisingly smug, joyless, sarcastic, condescending faux-analysis, he whinged that Army of Darkness didn’t have the wit of Back to the Future. Only a soulless, movie-misunderstander such as Siskel would view this highly humorous, film-literate homage as “a rip-off of Ray Harryhausen’s (Jason and the Argonauts) stop motion skeletons,” and cruelly remark that, “They’re more compelling than any of the humans in the film.” I mean, what is wrong with this geezer? At least Roger Ebert praised the film’s effects, and felt Raimi was making The Naked Gun of horror by spoofing medieval warfare films—which isn’t quite on the money, but not a million miles from the truth. He also stuck up for Bruce by saying Campbell does exactly what the role calls for.
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