Halloween Horrors: ARMY OF DARKNESS

ARMY OF DARKNESS  (1992)
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Ambercrombie, Richard Grove
R for violence and horror.
SCAREmeter: 4/10
GOREmeter: 6.5/10
OVERALL: 3.5 out of 4 stars

ARMY OF DARKNESS completes the seriously extreme arc of the Evil Dead trilogy, from the original, marketed as "The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror," to this third chapter which bore the taglines like, "Trapped in Time.  Surrounded by Evil. Low on Gas," and, "They Move. They Breathe.  They Suck."
Following the success of Raimi's DARKMAN, the third installment in the saga of all-too-groovy anti-hero Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) was green-lit with a budget over three-times that of EVIL DEAD II, continuing the brilliantly ridiculous conclusion of that film where Ash has been inadvertently been warped into Medieval Europe during his attempt to eradicate the evil demons unleashed by the Necronomicon, identified as "Deadites."
Whereas in the original, Ash was a bumbling everyman and was transformed into a crazier and more capable man of over-the-top action in the second film, in ARMY OF DARKNESS, he is equal parts smartass/dumbass/action-hero/heartbreaker/asshole.  Narrating his own story, the quick prologue details how Ash began as a lowly employee at the local S-Mart, killed his possessed girlfriend, Linda (providing a cameo for Bridget Fonda, the third actress to play Linda in as many films), and wound up dropping from the sky with an Oldsmobile in the Middle Ages.  With his possessed hand now replaced by a chainsaw and a sawed-off double barrel shotgun, the men of 1300 A.D., led by Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert) aren't sure what to make of him, but suspect him of being in the employ of Arthur's enemy, Duke Henry the Red (Richard Grove), so they take him captive and throw him into a pit as a form of execution.  In the pit, Ash fights a Deadite, successfully killing it in full view of the bewildered people tormented by these demons.  Lord Arthur's Wise Man (Ian Ambercrombie) identifies Ash as one spoken of in prophecy to rid them of the Deadites, and informs him that the only way to send him back to his proper time is if Ash successfully quests for the Necronomicon, but when Ash fails to complete the instructions properly, an army of Deadites and corpses is brought up from the grave to wreak havoc on the land.
While the first two films in the series were plentifully campy and humorous, each could still be, at least partially, aptly described as horror movies, or rather, horror-comedies.  ARMY OF THE DEAD keeps the horror elements, but seems wholly disinterested in scares; instead it's a no-holds-barred supernatural action-adventure comedy.  This is Ash at his most hilariously badass, getting away with lines like "Give me some sugar, baby," and, "Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys and compositions and things with... molecular structures."  Plus, he gets to play two parts; one, the "good" Ash who wields a sawed-off shotgun and a chainsaw/mechanical hand, the other, "Evil Ash," a Deadite version of Ash whose face is partially blown of by a shotgun and the rest of him is charred, thanks to the first Ash.

Evil Ash

Of the Evil Dead trilogy, ARMY OF DARKNESS is definitely the most fun, with Raimi and Campbell going off completely unhinged, taking inspiration from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, then filling it chock full of B-movie special effects, including the excellent climax which features an army of stop-motion animated skeletons led by Evil Ash, plus a surprising amount of explosions when it all kicks into a ROAD WARRIOR-mode.  Movie fans will get a real kick out of some of the references, too, especially the use of a famous phrase from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. 
Tone-wise, it's barely related to its predecessors, and while the first two were outrageously gory to the extent that THE EVIL DEAD garnered an NC-17 rating (on re-release a decade after its first) and EVIL DEAD II had to make cuts in order to avoid an X rating, ARMY OF DARKNESS is very comfortably suited in its R rating, never even edging into "hard-R," and any moment of gore is mitigated by a direct comic-fantasy context.  If it abandons the horror genre (if not its elements), it still soars on its new semi-satiric swashbuckling thrills, with fun and over-the-top action sequences that no other movie is likely to get away with.

"Shop smart.  Shop S-Mart."