Army of Darkness

Army of Darkness (1992) is the third Evil Dead film, and the series drops horror here and goes fully to comedy. Ash fell into the Middle Ages at the end of the previous film. This one starts there. He is taken prisoner in a castle, then declared a saviour, and to get home he must find the Necronomicon. Taking the book, he gets the words wrong and wakes an army of the dead. The first two were horror films. This is sword and sorcery, silent comedy and a skeleton battle mixed together. The skeleton army is an open salute to Ray Harryhausen; the stop motion is deliberately old fashioned. Bruce Campbell's Ash is one of cinema's most self satisfied heroes and the whole humour comes from that: he keeps getting things wrong and never admits it. There is more than one ending. The studio wanted a finish where Ash gets home victorious. Raimi's own was darker: Ash oversleeps and wakes to find the world already over. Both circulate in different versions. The budget was far above the earlier films and the studio cut it down. It did not do well commercially and became a cult film later. It runs 81 minutes. Good for: cult comedy, Raimi, and quotable lines. Less good for: anyone expecting horror will be wrong, and the effects are deliberately primitive.