| Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead: A Review The third and final installment in the Evil Dead series, Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead (1993) again places our hero, Ash fighting against a hoard of the undead 'deadites' that now plague the film in the setting of 14th Century England. At the end of the second part, Ash was sucked into the past via a porthole which opened to destroy the deadites, as well as sucking his car and a couple of trees along with it. Ash lands in a dusty landscape, looking as far from an English setting as possible, how many deserts are there in England now? Let me think, oh yes, none. But despite this, it doesn't take the Knights to come galloping to the scene and proclaim Ash as "He who has come from the skies to deliver us!" well, at the end of part 2 at least. In Evil Dead fashion, the beginning of this movie changes the ending of the last and now Ash is considered a deadite himself, but luckily for him, that bad case of deadite-ism has vanished. Soon, Ash is thrown into a chain line and marched to the castle nearby to be 'fed' to whatever lurks in the pit inside the castle grounds. What lurks in there happens to be a deadite, and after parting a heavy steel door, that somehow was made pre-industrial revolution, Ash is thrown down into the darkness to be eaten by the monster, but Ash has other ideas, and, with the help of the spiritual leader of the people, Ash chainsaws the monster into a grave, pulling himself from the pit and ordering all to bow down to his "boom stick," or gun as most call it. Then, in a sudden change of heart, the people begin to stand in awe of Ash and he ends up sampling the highlife as several beauties feed him grapes, only interrupted by the slight inconvenience of a she-witch deadite who is quickly dispatched. Slowly, Ash comes to realise that he is wanted to stay and fend off the monsters in the night as well as go on a one-man hunt for The Book of the Dead, with subsequent hilarious results involved facial deformation and attacks from flying fake books of the dead! It is while on this expedition to return the book to the people of the castle that he messes up the words to release the book safely and eventually falls victim to a dozen miniature evil-Ash's! After a fantastic scene, which ends with a two-headed Ash fighting with himself and a burial of evil, shotgun killed Ash, we witness the return of Ash to the castle where he takes his payment, a potion that will let him sleep for a century per drop and awake back in his time. However, something was neglected to be mentioned, as this film is set in 1300 AD 6 drops will take him to the turn of the 20th century and 7 will send him a few years into the future, as well as leaving him stranded in England! But still, the movie gets going when evil-Ash climbs from his grave and begins to build an undead, skeletal army who quite soon attack the castle, but not before claiming Ash's love interest as their own for evil-Ash! In the final sequences, a classic battle ensues between the living and the dead as Ash drives his Sedan about the castle grounds, chopping and slicing undead monsters with a killer-windmill mounted on the hood of his car! Finally, Ash and his evil counterpart do battle and Ash saves the day, as you would have guessed and then, well, whichever ending you witness (as there were two filmed) Ash either ends up back at his job in S-Mart or ends up in a dystopian English London in the year 3000! Army of Darkness has all the trademark style of an Evil Dead film as well as the amazing, face-changing book of the dead and Bruce's square-jawed sparrings with wave after wave of undead foes. As usual, the effects are great and well placed; although, talking skeletons that at times assume rather bulky, human-in-a-costume shaped roles, at times feels wrong and you occasionally yearn for that pasty skinned goo-dribbler deadite we all know and love from the previous films. As usual, Campbell is a slice of brilliance in his role of Ash, as well as evil-Ash and Raimi's intuitive style exudes from all undead pores of this movie. As you might have guessed, this is a riotously inventive film and always serves up a barrel and a half of laughs for all undead fans. However, Evil Dead 3 replaces all horror with all comedy in a horror situation, but this is still a wonderful idea, no matter how disjointed it feels from the first two parts. Another factor which makes this movie a distant son of Evil Dead 2 is that Ash is no longer the hansom, nice-guy hero. In this part, Ash is transformed into another hansom, square-jawed hero who happens to have become a bit of a womaniser, quite distant from the Ash we knew from the 80's, huh? But still, as this is a comedy more than a direct horror sequel of Evil Dead 2, it's okay and this film remains a fantastic battle-royal that always serves up laugh after glorious, undead laugh, perhaps too many, and that's why this movie doesn't fit brilliantly well with the first two films. But despite this, Army of Darkness is a great movie and is of course, worth a few watches to the average fan, and a lifetime spot in the collection for the horror nut. It may be different, the horror may not be gory or controversial anymore, but damn it, this is a fine specimen of a movie made by a talented film maker and starring one of horror's greatest B-Movie legends, Bruce Campbell. Watch it, watch it again, and for god's sake, watch it some more! This is a great, but distanced movie in the forever-famous Evil Dead trilogy! Here's hoping for part 4 to see how Ash gets out of that sticky situation of waking up in post-apocalyptic London or S-Mart shopping centre! |