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Army of Darkness Review
-October 14th, 2001-
Halloween's around, and I've been itching to review a horror movie. Not just due to the related horror part, but mainly because I've never attempted to review a movie. It was a tough choice between reviewing something from either side of the pond; either I review/make fun of a terrible horror movie, or review an extremely good horror movie. And since The Blair Witch Project was unavailable for renting this past week, it was down to deciding between the original 13 Ghosts or the legendary third title in the Evil Dead series. Army of Darkness was the winner.
Army of Darkness is, without much questionable doubt, the greatest horror film ever created. There's really no other way of putting it. Taking place directly after the events of the second Evil Dead, where our hero Ash(played by the demi-God Bruce Campbell) was propelled through time with the Necronomicon(AKA The Book of the Dead) back to ancient medieval times, where he and his Boomstick are considered evil and gets him shackled. Thus, Army of Darkness begins.
From here, Ash gets himself out of a heck of alot of trouble thanks to the help of the "Wiseman"(who considering he works with King Arthur I assume is just Merlin without a name), gets accepted as some sort of savior amung the locals(or Primates as Ash refers to them), and goes on a "quest" to get the Necronomicon back. Why? As we all know, the Book of the Dead doesn't exactly possess the power of such other novels as Hop on Pop or The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. With the Necronomicon, Ash is guaranteed a way home, one way or another. He just needs to get it. So he begins his quest, and soon meets his greatest fear: himself. Bad Ash decides to pop in, along with 5-6 mini-Ash's, and in the end it's Bad Ash who suffers the same fate Ash's sweetheart did in Evil Dead 2. After chopping up his dark side into about 24 different pieces, placing them in a burlap bag and tossing it into a nice makeshift grave, Ash sets off again and finds the book.
 Only problem is, there's three of them. And like most of us, Ash isn't too great at making decisions. First pick gets him sucked into a bottomless abyss, second pick bites his good hand until there's no tomorrow. Alright, so now it's pretty narrowed down, right? Yay, time to pick up the book and go home. Unfortunately, Ash recalls "The Wiseman" saying he had to speak three words of an incantation before he could take the book. His memory ain't that great. Doing things the American way, Ash chants the first two words as he remembers them and coughs slightly for the last, then grabs the book. This apparently doesn't settle well with the rest of the earth, because this unlocks The Evil and Deadites start crawling up all over the place. Ash's only defense, which is a pretty good one to begin with, is completely ignored by... whomever it is that decides Evil is supposed to be let out(Lou Pearlman's alive in the Middle Ages?). "What? I said it, didn't you hear me? I did!".
Our hero rides back to Camelot, or wherever exactly it is that the castle is located at, and low and behold, the place has gone bonkers. The entire village claims ol' Ash should be their hero and lead them to victory, but his main concern is getting "Back to the future!". Then Ms.Ash's New Chick gets kidnapped by a flying Deadite, raped by the reincarnated Bad Ash(who is actually more of an Ugly Bad Ash now), and thus becomes a Deadite herself. Meanwhile Ashy-Boy has a change of heart due to his new girlfriend being nabbed by The Evil as reports come in that a huge army of Deadites prepare to attack in two days, and begins preparing "scientific" ways of defeating the Deadites. This mainly consists of catapults and arrows with sacks of gunpowder on them. There IS an ace in the hole though... Ash's newly-spiced up car, which was turned into a giant War Machine of Death. If I could drive down the street with a car like that, maybe I'd be more motivated to actually get a license. Gives Road-Rage a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
 As you can imagine, a large all-out war begins between the Deadites and the knights trying to defend the Necronomicon, and in the end all the good stuff happens. Bad Ash is exploded, Ash's new chick is changed back to normal, and Ash heads back to his own time. Only thing is, he apparently didn't say the incantation EXACTLY right again, and... well, Deadites seem to inhabit our world regularly. Engaging in an awesome battle with a nice S-Mart Shopper, Ash saves the day, proves to his fellow employees that he wasn't lying about his story, and gets a new red-head girlfriend with a cute butt. Definitely an anti-sexist movie. The End, or something.
The Good
AOD blends together horror with something not commonly associated with the word: humor. Wacky, inane humor. Sure, the Scary Movie series did it, but is there actually a plot to both? AOD manages to keep the light-hearted spirit of the movie together, with horror & fighting always around the corner, still manages to be funny, and... how about that... in the end, it all makes sense. Speaking of fights, those aren't half-bad, either. Not exactly Jon Wu-Chinese-Coerigraphed-Flying-Jump-Fighting that wins awards, but I'd settle for AOD's hack-with-a-chainsaw-blast-with-a-boomstick style of fighting any day.
The Bad
The length seemed to be my only concern. The movie racks in a good 83 minutes without commercials, which for you non-math maticians is about an hour and a half. That's a good amount of time for a regular movie, but AOD isn't normal. I was dying for more. Luckily, both the director Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell have shown interest in making a fourth Evil Dead in the future, so perhaps that need will be fulfilled in the near future.
The Ugly
The only things ugly in AOD are Deadites and King Arthur.
Final Thought
If you're looking for a horror movie this year past the standard Scream sequels/spin-offs or one of the 78 Halloween titles, give Army of Darkness a check. Compared to the two previous movies, AOD is known as the "breaking title"; the movie that gave Evil Dead the recognition it deserved. Since I've never seen the past two yet, I wouldn't know, but while you're at it you might as well try those too. And whatever you do... don't scream "YAY!" everytime Ash pulls a one-liner. Yes, you may repeat it, but no, you may not scream "YAY!".
-Grand Master Dragon
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