It is indulgent and hokey and 180 degrees from the expected trajectory. In a way, Army of Darkness could be one of Sam and Bruce’s goofy 8mm shorts, except on an 11 million dollar budget.
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In anyone else’s hands the movie would be a stogy groaner, but Bruce and Sam earnestly giving it their all makes even the corniest moments laugh out loud funny. He stops just shy of saying “nuyuck, nuyuck, nuyuck.” There are also liberal doses of cartoon sound effects, Crypt Keeper level puns, and a couple of facial prosthetic gags that could have come straight out of Tom & Jerry. the Zombie Three Stooges.” Ash goes so far as to actually do a Curly-style eye poke block at one point. The opening credits are cleverly staged to read “Bruce Campbell vs The Army of Darkness,” but Sam and Bruce’s love of old-school physical comedy is so prominently on display that it might as well be “Bruce Campbell vs. This is fortunate, because more than the ambitious action, impressive creature designs, and high adventure, slapstick is at the heart of AoD. It’s that kind of brotherly love that elevates the slapstick to another level.
![doom army of darkness doom army of darkness](https://flopmovies.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/img_2040.jpg)
When Ash is riding through a forest, you can bet Sam is always right off screen, personally smacking Bruce in the face with a branch. You can practically feel Raimi’s glee with each punch, slap, and pratfall he makes his star endure, take after take.
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He knows how to challenge Bruce, bring out his best, and most importantly, abuse him mercilessly. Raimi is intimately familiar with his friend’s style and strengths. It’s Sam Raimi’s professionalism, ingenuity, and boundless enthusiasm that allows Campbell to truly shine in AoD. The man has been in more than a few stinkers that not even his vast charisma could save. The unlikely success of Army of Darkness can’t entirely be attributed to Bruce, though. In a decade defined by Jason, Freddy, Chucky, and other marketable miscreants, Evil Dead is the only horror franchise known for its hero rather than its villain. His physicality, comic timing, and unbridled (and unhinged) energy turned Ash into a horror icon. Bruce makes Evil Dead 2 his show from the first frame to the last.
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If they first movie hints at Campbell’s charismatic potential, the sequel is a full strength punch to the face. Much like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, though, Campbell’s Ash initially shows little sign he will be the last one standing. When Raimi began translating it to feature length, Bruce was one of the actors/crew/shemps who made it happen. The Michigan native cut his acting chops on his buddy Sam’s 8mm shorts, including the proto-Evil Dead proof of concept, Within The Woods. On paper, it sounds like a terrible idea, and it probably would have been if not for Raimi’s not-so-secret weapon, Bruce Fucking Campbell.īruce Campbell’s rise from small-time nobody to the B-movie god he is today is inextricably linked to The Evil Dead. He leaves behind the gore filled cabin in the woods and drops his main character almost 700 years into the past, loses most of the horror elements, and turns the story into a screwball fantasy adventure, complete with King Arthur, a steam-punk robot hand, and wisecracking skeletons.
![doom army of darkness doom army of darkness](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWKSAOxXYAAcMsL.jpg)
In 1992, Raimi makes an even more shocking left turn with the next sequel, Amy of Darkness (aka, more appropriately, Medieval Dead).
![doom army of darkness doom army of darkness](https://i.imgur.com/F5ifnFd.png)
The result is a perfect blend of horror and comedy, but a far cry tonally from the first film. A half-remake, half-re-imagining, Raimi pairs down the cast and expands the mythos, ramping up the madness by a factor of ten.
![doom army of darkness doom army of darkness](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/96/e6/50/96e6500bbd464c6c93f87899e8cdaa5d.jpg)
To everyone’s surprise, the movie becomes a success in the burgeoning VHS market, and Raimi is back 6 years later with Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. Thinking only as far as the premiere, a young Sam Raimi and his pals from Michigan throw everything they have into this unrelentingly gruesome horror show. It starts in 1981 as a low budget (mostly), straight-faced shocker about a cabin full of friends who unknowingly release an ancient, body-possessing evil. With the exception of Coscarrelli’s Phantasm series, the Evil Dead trilogy has the strangest trajectory of any single director’s vision. Because nobody could have pulled off this kind of absurd ambition better than these two knuckleheads. If anyone needs an example of how a great collaboration can save a film, look no farther than the second sequel in the Evil Dead series, Army of Darkness. The ying and yang of director and actor is rarely as intrinsically linked or as hilariously abusive as between Sam Raimi to Bruce Campbell. Scorsese has DeNiro, John Cassevetes had Gena Rowlands, Edgar Wright has Simon Pegg, with Nick Frost thrown in as a bonus. Some directors are lucky enough to have a muse, an actor they collaborate with so easily and intuitively that it raises their work to a higher level than either could achieve alone.