WAY back before the Spiderman franchise made him a major Hollywood player and maker of “proper” fantasy films, Sam Raimi was the go-to guy for rough and ready cult features.
His Evil Dead (1981) – essentially a mash up of classic horror tropes and The Three Stooges – Evil Dead II (1987) and Darkman (1990) set him out as the curious little cinema-obsessed outsider to watch. His place in cult heaven was forever ensured, however, when he delivered Army Of Darkness in 1992.
A howlingly aware slice of cinematic ham, it gathered the director’s love of the old Ray Harryhausen stop-motion fantasy adventure epics he’d seen as a kid, mixed them up with all manner of creaky sword and sorcery movie traditions and threw in a healthy dollop of teenager-friendly humour. As such, it remains one of the finest cult-friendly films of the 90s.
Watching it today in Shout Factory’s neatly packaged up blu-ray reissue, it remains a work of such energy, action and downright silliness that it is almost impossible to dislike.
Leading the line in this cavalcade of cheap fantasy fun is Raimi’s old running mate and regular leading man Bruce Campbell. Few, if any, can muster the kind of eyebrow-raising mania that Campbell can and here he tightrope walks his way across the thin line between cult and crud beautifully.
Plot-wise it’s beautifully simplistic and cunningly knowing at the same time. Campbell is Ash, the gormless store worker who finds himself bizarrely transported back to medieval times. Conveniently this journey allows him to bring along a trusty shotgun and his 1973 Oldsmobile. He’s also bringing the chainsaw he wears over the stump of his missing hand that he lost in a previous flick but time is too short to go into all that here.
All you need to know is Ash just wants to go home. Before he can do that he must unite two opposing armies to fight the legions of the Deadites that he’s unleashed by mistake. Ash does a lot of things “by mistake” but that’s a big part of his appeal really.
Raimi keeps the crazy action flowing throughout and ensures we’re off on a classic medieval quest where our hero has to rescue his cute girlfriend and face off all manner of crazy special-effects-driven moments of madness such as a miniature army of little Ashes and tackle a double that grows out of his own shoulder. Yes, you read that right.
Loaded down with eyeball-watering sequences that feel like the B-movie equivalent of a particularly vivid acid trip and peppered with any number of quotable one-liners from the knowingly smarmy Campbell, this is a 90s game changer.
Cheap and cheerful it may be but the ambition that the director displays set the bar high for every bug-eyed cult auteur who followed in his wake.
Looking pristine and packed with extras this special edition release from Shout Factory is the perfect way to celebrate a film so dumb and devoid of traditional Hollywood attributes it makes you want to give it a big kiss.
