31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 20 (Army Of Darkness)

Hail to the king, baby.

Holy fuck, was that ever fun. Army of Darkness is just a goofy silly spooky movie, with the slightest hint of something darker lurking within the wings. It's very nearly a complete 180 from Evil Dead 2 in tone; where that movie was definitely a horror movie, this is more of an action comedy. I quite like action comedy, and the familiar Evil Dead element of demons and possessed people is definitely present in there so it's not leaving you totally in the dark. Nevertheless, it's a different sort of movie... but god, what a brisk little experience. It's maybe 80 minutes long if you include the credits. You could almost watch it twice in the time one viewing of Dawn Of The Dead would take you, and things again move along at a clip. Of course, being an action movie gives it a different sort of pace. A horror movie is paced by the horrific deaths of the people in its situation, and the scares, ramping up until there's one or two folks left to confront the evil. Here, your acts are a bit different. Act 1: Ash earning the trust of the medieval folk. Act 2: Ash's quest for the Necronomicon and his assorted trials and fuckups. Act 3: A base under seige by a fucking undead army, and all the swordfighting and whatnot that comes of it. Well, let's tackle those bit by bit. Like the last movie, we get a quick little summary of the film before it. Things are a bit different and they bothered to refilm a whole bunch of it, recasting Linda and reshooting the bit where Ash cuts off his own hand. Quite why they did that, I don't know; I doubt it was an issue with reusing Evil Dead 2 footage because a moment later they reuse Evil Dead 2 footage and show Ash falling through the portal. Hell, I'm pretty sure Ash falling into the Middle Ages and landing is reused footage as well! Weird. What's striking is how differently Ash is acting here. Maybe it was spending half of Evil Dead 2 alone and getting fucking tormented by demons, but here he's a lot more of... well, an asshole. He's got total disdain for all the commoners, calling them "primitives" and whatnot... yikes. It can be funny to watch him just be totally done with this shit, particulary the bit where he climbs out of the pit and starts shouting at everyone. He doesn't actually give a shit about stopping the undead or whatever. All he wants is to go back to his own time. It's weird that he thinks that would even be possible, but lucky for him it is. All he's got to do is pick up a book and say three magic words. Easy peasy, right? Well...

First, though, spooky scenes in the woods and the return of the magic Steadicam or whatever that chases him into an old windmill. It's still really effective and great... but that's about the last really spooky thing in this movie. Well, there was also the geyser of blood from the pit, that was really good. Other than that, the movie's fairly bloodless. Anyway, the windmill is where we go full slapstick... and bleed in a bit of my Clara Oswald talk, because what should beseige Ash but tinier versions of himself born from the shards of a mirror? This is absolutely ridiculous. From RAMMING SPEEEEED to Ash having to pry his face from the stove with a spatula to getting his foot pricked, it's total Looney Tunes. Even more so than when his own hand was fucking around. Then some body horror as one of them gets inside him and starts growing out of him like a fucking tumor, creating... Bad Ash! A literal dark mirror of our hero! Well, Bad Ash forgot one thing. Good? Bad? The other one is the guy with the gun. (Or Ash is not that good, depending on your cut.) How do you bury a dark mirror? You act like a smartass and then copy the shot from Evil Dead 2 where you give Linda's grave a cross. Even more ridiculousness abounds in the graveyard, with fake Necronomicons that suck Ash in and give him an elongated face he has to cartoonishly shake away, or bite him. Then comes lifting the real book... and the motherfucker forgot the words. It's three goddamned words and he forgot it. They had scrolls and ink! They shoulda gave him this shit in writing... but then again I suppose they expected him to remember three little fucking words. He did not, and we get more slapstick with skeletons as all hell breaks loose. Bad Ash is revived, looking like zombie Randall Flagg (how's that for a semi-obscure reference?) and they've even got Ash's cute medieval girl! Oh no! Ash at first doesn't give two shits, but I guess he's an asshole with a heart of gold because he decides to help these poor doomed fools out. Bad Ash, being a dark mirror, is also taking command of the titular Army of Darkness and turning Ash's medieval girl into a demon while he's at it.

And then the battle begins. The credits simply billed this as Bruce Campbell Vs. Army Of Darkness. That's what we got here, in a sense. It's a good thing he brought a chemistry book with him to that cabin, because he can make gunpowder and fuck up an advancing army of skeletons. What follows is just action movie gold. There are stop-motion skeletons, explosions, sword fights, comedy beats, some sort of fucking steampunk car with a propeller blade... holy shit. It's incredible; a comedic Helm's Deep done 10 years beforehand. A simple sort of satisfaction, but a satisfaction nonetheless. You even get to see a burned stop-motion dark mirror skeleton zombie of Ash get catapaulted and explode at the end. The day is saved, everything's made right... and now all that's left is for Ash to get home. Which he does on the VHS copy I had. I own the theatrical cut so that's what I've been watching, but the first time I saw the movie was the director's cut. I've seen both endings, and I enjoy them both. The "S Mart" ending on the theatrical is fitting with what the movie's been building up Ash as. He fucks up the words again and that somehow brings the demons to the store so he can blast them with a shotgun and kiss a pretty lady, roll credits ding. The "sleep" ending also continues the theme of Ash being a grade-A moron, as the fucker can't even count to six properly which makes him sleep through the end of the world. It's pretty bleak, but it fits with Ash's idiocy and it's what Sam Raimi wanted at first so who am I to say it's inferior? Well, that's Army of Darkness. I dunno if I like how much of an asshole Ash is now, but I can't deny that at its base level it is a fun action movie with spooky themes that is also over in less than an hour and a half. I can dig that. Fun is a good thing; just look at that Dirty Pair writeup again. Throw it on before Halloween comes around and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Next time: The best zombie apocalypse story ever?