Review of Army of Darkness (1992) by Bill M — 07 Mar 2016

Bruce Campbell is god!.... simple as. It may be the weakest of the Evil Dead trilogy, and you could certainly say it somewhat tries a little bit too hard, but Army Of Darkness is an insane amount of fun, it caps off in style possibly the most diverse (and outside of the back to the future/indiana jones and lord of the rings trilogy, the most consistent) trilogy of films ever, each one was radically different to the last, the first being a grungy, nasty masterpiece of hardcore gory darkness laced with black, black humor, the second (and absolute) best a sort of remake of the first, and an outright live action cartoon, Evil Dead 2 is an explosion of ferocious insanity, hilarity and demented invention, and Army is a python-esque medieval, action adventure, fantasy, comedy epic.

It's ragged, overblown and sometimes slapdash but just utterly fucking joyful. The directors cut on US blu ray is the only version you or anyone should be watching, that this movie took THIS long to be seen in all it's glory is mad, you get more battle, more glorious gags and the entire unbutchered sequence of ASh being attacked by mini versions of himself, the full version of this scene is a sublime extended bit of insanely silly slapstick and highlights the comedic genius of Bruce Campbell, in not sure there is a better psychical comedian in the last 30 years.

This is also the full Ash, the truly complete character we came to know and love, brash, macho, stupid, clumsy, disastrously incompetent at times and when it comes down to it, an outright badass of an action hero, it's like the three movies gradually assemble this character into who we now think he always was from the start (in the first film he's basically a complete little weed who nuts up and becomes the final guy) and the film is packed full of madcap cartoon nuttiness and crazy action and effects, plus an hilariously bleak ending.

This movie is always a true pleasure to watch. Massively quotable too, "give me some sugar baby" and for the cheap seats, "this is my BOOM STICK"! brilliant.