Army of Darkness
Do I lose my Sam Raimi fan card if I say that “Army of Darkness” is a significant step down from the previous “Evil Dead” movies? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not only the natural progression from 1987’s “Evil Dead II,” but tons of fun, but the film plays like an absurd comedic parody that doesn’t have anything scary in it than a second sequel to one of the most intense, brutal horror films of the 1980s. If you consider the tone of “Evil Dead II” was already leaning comedically, again, it makes sense the direction this film goes, but maybe some genuine scares would have been nice here to close out the big-screen adventures of Ash.
Of the three “Evil Dead” films, “Army of Darkness” is the one I’ve seen the least, partially because it’s the only one I don’t own of the Raimi-directed ones. The film, after a brief prologue which casts Bridget Fonda as Linda, Ash’s girlfriend who was murdered by the evil in the second film, starts with Ash having been thrown into Medieval times, and being looked upon with skepticism by the armies of the time, even after he has killed a winged monster. He is taken captive as one of the soldiers of a rival army, but a wise man adviser to Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert) thinks he is the one prophesied to vanquish the evil in the Necronomicon. After he takes care of business in a pit with evil-infected fighters in a pit Arthur throws him in, he convinces them to get him home, but first, he must retrieve the Necronomicon, and recite the exact words to ward off its power. No fudging the words, or else.
Sam and Ivan’s script for “Army of Darkness” actually follows a similar structure as “Evil Dead II,” complete with a sequence of Ash, isolated in a windmill, having to deal with parts of himself possessed by the evil, and it’s a terrific showcase for Bruce Campbell as Ash to do some wild physical acting. One thing that is abundantly clear in the second and third films in this trilogy is how Raimi looks at Campbell as another prop rather than a traditional leading man with an intended character arc, and that is helpful when he goes really broad comedically in both this film and “Evil Dead II.” Does Ash really have an arc in these films? I would argue he doesn’t have a character arc, but he certainly has a story arc he’s gone through, and Campbell takes this leading man opportunity, bankrolled by a major studio (Universal, whom I’m guessing did so as a favor after Raimi directed “Darkman” for them), and rolls with it with his natural charisma.
Regardless of whether I think the tone for “Army of Darkness” is the right one, I cannot deny that this is a great showcase for Raimi’s talent. He pushes his use of stop-motion and makeup effects to the hilt with the Army of the Dead that rises up, forcing Ash to take a leadership position in battling them off. That end battle sequence feels like a satirical dig at large-scale battle scenes, even though the one this reminds me the most of- the Battle of Helm’s Deep in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”- was still a decade off. He has use for that iconic car from all of his films that had me thinking “The Road Warrior” had an influence here. And his storytelling is surefooted enough to know he doesn’t need to pad this type of story, giving us a running time akin to the previous films, but a narrative that hits all of the major plot points this story requires to feel complete. One still can wish it was probably a bit more on the scarier side than it is, though, even if it does what it wants to do fairly well.
