Real Men Love Army of Darkness

I’ve also specifically chosen not to include any of the one-liners, just because there are too many great ones: literally the entire article would be filled with gems like “this is my boomstick” or “good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun.”

The “VS” title

I have never, and probably will never see a better opening credit sequence than the one in Army of Darkness.  Neither will you, for that matter. Because while Sam Raimi could have chosen to open the film with “Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness” or “Army of Darkness starring Bruce Campbell,” he instead chooses the infinitely cooler, and infinitely more suited to the film it precedes: “Bruce Campbell vs Army of Darkness”.

It’s a simple little thing. Two letters. “VS.” And yet, it summarizes everything awesome about Army of Darkness and gets the viewer ready for the rip-roaring action/comedy/horror film to follow. The opening titles are, for lack of a better word, perfect.

The blood fountain

This special effect, seen when a random peasant falls into The Pit, was originally supposed to be in Evil Dead II (to be specific, during the scene where the hot redneck chick gets grabbed by the woods and is eventually slammed into a tree) but was cut for budgetary reasons.

The shot doesn’t necessarily fit within the context of Army of Darkness – despite how violent the film is, there is never any blood apart from the fountain in this particular scene – but it’s over-the-top, hilarious, and pretty damned entertaining in its own right. It also makes the deadites seem a hell of a lot scarier than they’ll appear to be in the rest of the film: if they’re capable of causing a man’s body to erupt in a fountain of blood, what else are they capable of?

As it turns out, not that much outside of perfunctory possession and hand-to-hand combat, but it’s nice to still be scared of them for a while.

Ash gets his chainsaw back

There’s always a great moment in action or drama films where the hero, who has been mercilessly and endlessly beaten at every turn, finally achieves the means by which he can defeat his oppressors. When the powerless suddenly become the powerful, it’s a great moment – and the only thing that can possibly make a moment like that greater is when one throws chainsaws and zombies into the mix.

After getting the crap kicked out of him by a deadite chick, Arthur’s wiseman takes pity on Ash and throws him his chainsaw. As the saw falls slowly downward, Ash jumps up and catches it with the stub on his right wrist, resulting in a satisfyingly corny sound effect that feels like a mixture between a hollow thump and a gun cocking. After Ash lands, it only takes a few seconds for him to rev up his saw and decapitate the evil deadite. Despite the fact that in the last twenty minutes he’s been beaten up by a zombie, a group of small children, a few knights, and the chick from Schindler’s List, Ash finally takes his throne as the badass we all know and love.

“SWORD BOYYYYY!”

There is only one scene in Army of Darkness that always gets a laugh, regardless of when I watch it or who I’m watching it with. This is all thanks to one completely awesome, totally unappreciated side character:  the sword boy.

After being punched out and humiliated in front of his men, Arthur intends to duel with Ash to win back his honor. Before he can do that, however, he needs a sword, and so calls for his weapon boy. The boy runs up with a sword, kneels in front of Arthur with the hilt pointed outward, and is promptly shoved to the ground as Arthur puts his foot on the boy and kicks him backward to get the sword out of the sheathe. Nevermind that it probably would have been easier (and less degrading) to simply pull the sword backwards out of the sheathe – it’s just a nice moment that makes Arthur look like a hilarious asshole and always gets a laugh.

The odd thing is that, as far as the film goes, it’s actually one of the more subtle jokes.

The Boomstick monologues

As I promised I wouldn’t single out one-liners just for the sake of singling out one-liners, the interesting thing about the “This is my Boomstick” speech is that it directly contradicts the events of Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. In those films, Ash finds the shotgun in the evil cabin in the woods. According to his monologue to the “primitive screwheads,” he bought it himself from S-Mart. That, or he did just find it in the cabin, but also knows exactly what sort of gun it is and how much it costs. I have nothing more to say – the picky fanboy part of my personality simply felt the need to point out it.

Fighting the She-Bitch

This is the scene where Army of Darkness dictates the rules of its world to the viewer. Yeah, Ash can jump and catch a chainsaw without it toppling down and cutting him in two. Yeah, the world is full of evil demon zombies. Yeah, there was a huge fountain of blood a few bullet points back. Still, when all things are considered, the film has remained somewhat realistic when taken in the context of your average horror film.

When Ash fights the She-Bitch, however, the viewer knows how this movie is really going to play out. Armed with only a double-barreled shotgun, Ash fires no less than four consecutive shells at the female demon without ever once reloading. How does the fight end? For no reason whatsoever, Ash turns around, aims the shotgun over his right shoulder, fires, and lets out an exhale of satisfaction as the demon falls dead behind him.

Hell. Yes.

The badass Blacksmith

This dude, played by an actor Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell used to put in their old super-8 movies, has only one line (“I’ll stand by ya”) despite being in roughly 90% of the movie. When Ash is brought into town, he looks up, shakes his head, and goes back to work. As Ash begins to prove himself more and more, he begins to take a quiet liking to him. By the time the deadites attack, he’s a hardass in his own right and – technically – one of the main characters. There’s really not much more to say about him, but I thought it might be worth pointing him out.

Ash creates a robot hand

For many, this is the deciding moment in Army of Darkness: that scene in which you will either accept what the film has to offer and therefore love it unconditionally for the rest of your days, or, alternately, you’ll find it too corny and turn it off right then and there.

Without a doubt, this is the scene where Real Men wholly devote themselves to the film.

Having lopped off his evil, infected hand in Evil Dead II, Raimi evidently knew that for the film’s swashbuckling adventure sequel, Ash would probably need his hand back, if only for swordsmanship purposes. But how to do this? Ash’s hand was not only chopped off, but sentient and evil – it’d hardly allow itself to be reattached to its former host. And Ash definitely couldn’t keep a chainsaw on his hand for the entire film. What to do?

I’m not sure whether it was Sam or co-writer Ivan Raimi who came up with the idea,  “Hey, let’s give Ash the ability to somehow create a super-strong, robot prosthesis to replace his hand,” but whoever it was deserves a goddamned medal.

To replace his hand, Ash takes the gauntlet off a suit of armor and, using his insane engineering skills, he somehow makes a working, robot death fist out of Renaissance-era materials. Nevermind the fact that we can’t even make prostheses of this quality today, and nevermind the fact that Ash is allegedly supposed to be stupid, but hey – if you came to this film looking for logic and realism, then your priorities are sadly out of whack.

Unfortunately, Ash never really does anything spectacularly epic with the fist (he picks up a hot teapot and grabs a sword, but that’s about it), but still – the force with which he crushes a steel wine cup and the badassity with which he mutters “Groovy” make the entire scene worthwhile.

Lil’ evil Ashes

It’s very difficult to pick a favorite scene in a film filled with such uniformly hilarious/awesome setpieces, but if I was forced at gunpoint to pick my favorite scene in Army of Darkness, it would probably be Ash vs tiny, evil versions of himself.

The lil’ Ashes appear in the fragments of a mirror that Ash breaks (in the extended version, he does so after running out of the windmill, looking back in and thinking someone is there, and accidentally sprinting headfirst into it – in the theatrical version, he just sort of looks at it for two seconds and then tackles it like a moron) and have two main goals: firstly, to trick Ash into swallowing one of them so a full-size evil version of Ash can be created, and secondly, to cause Ash an extreme amount of pain – hopefully, enough to kill him.

To do this, they choose to set up numerous Looney Tune-esque traps for him, including (but not limited to) shooting at him with his own shotgun, tripping him into a hot stove, jamming a nail into his foot, and poking him in the ass with a metal fork.

And for all the zany hilarity that ensues in the scene, the best part by far is the fact that almost no effort whatsoever is made to hide the fact that in every shot that consists of more than one Lil’ Ash in the same frame, Bruce Campbell is only playing one of them. In the above screenshot, for instance, one can obviously note that one Ash is played by Bruce Campbell, another is played by some ugly guy who has chosen to stretch his face as far as possible, and another played by a guy who seems to look a bit like Michael Showalter. The Evil Ashes, their plans, and their appearance give a new definition to the phrase “suspension of disbelief.”

The inexplicably crazy Lil’ Ash

Sorry, I was wrong – the best part of the Lil’ Ashes scene is the fact that, after Big Ash breaks out of his Gulliver’s Travels-esque binding, one lone Ash on the floor looks up at Ash, turns to the camera, and then for no fucking reason whatsoever, begins to scream his lungs out. His hands positioned in his head, he screams loudly and without pause for a few seconds until two more Lil’ Ashes run in and drag him away.

This is never explained in any capacity whatsoever, and is therefore absolutely hilarious.

Necro-bite

Perhaps I’m biased, but this is the first scene I ever saw from Army of Darkness and to me, it sticks out as one of the greatest. Upon reaching three different versions of the Necronomicon (“Hold on…nobody said anything about three books”), Ash tries each one of them, in order. Upon opening the first book, he is sucked down into a bottomless abyss and has to climb his way out.

The buildup to the second book is what makes the payoff so great: after the pain in the ass the first book was, Ash considers skipping to the end and trying the third book first. But he pauses – maybe that’s what they think I’ll do. He chuckles to himself, and moves to pick up the second book when it COMES ALIVE AND BITES HIM IN THE FUCKING HAND.

Terrified and in pain, Ash spends the next minute or so futilely trying to stop the sentient book’s attacks (at one point, he futilely bats it away two or three times whilst grunting like a little kid), until it finally gets bored and turns stationary again.

Ash forgets the sacred words

What makes Ash such an endearingly awesome character is that, for all his badass catchphrases and his ingenuity in fighting the undead…he’s still sort of a dumbshit.

In fact, the main conflict of the film comes about solely due to the fact that Ash is a total dumbshit: after being warned no fewer than three times that he must speak “Klaatu, veratta, nicto” before taking the Necronomicon, Ash makes it aaaaaaaall the way to the cursed graveyard and then forgets the last goddamned word.

While I’ll admit that a lot of scenes in the film are funny in a corny sort of way, the scene where Ash painfully tries to remember the word “nicto” is genuinely hilarious pretty much everytime I watch it: as he guesses more and more (“Necktie…nectar…nickel”) he gets more and more manic (“IT WAS DEFINITELY AN N-WORD”) until he comes up with the seemingly-ingenious plan of speaking aloud, “Klaatu…veratta…nicCOUGHCOUGHCOUGH.”

It doesn’t work out, of course, but even his sudden protest once the graveyard begins to collapse (“I said the words! I did!”) is pretty funny, considering he’s not really talking to anyone specific.

Stop-motion skeletons

If there’s one special effect holdover from the 90’s that I really, really miss, it’s stop-motion. Sure, Aardman gives us stuff like Chicken Run or Wallace and Gromit every decade or so, but gone are the days when stop motion could be used (and taken moderately seriously) in a live action film. This is really rather tragic, as motion capture has a certain charm and personality to it that CGI will never be able to hold a candle to.

Granted, I almost always complain about how old special effects are better than modern ones in these “Real Men Love” articles, but the point (as unsurprising as it may sound at this moment) still stands. The stop-motion skeletons in the film are a direct reference to the films of Ray Harryhausen, the guy behind Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans.  Apart from just working well on their own (say, when there are only skeletons, and no live actors on screen), they also contribute to some fun action sequences.

For example, during the big fight in the film, Arthur stabs a (live-action) deadite, dodges another one, and kicks the air (before the stop-motion skeleton is put in). In post-production, a skeleton’s head is put in the exact spot where Arthur kicks the air and its animation is timed to perfectly coincide with Arthur’s kick – as a result, the final product looks like a seamless sequence where Arthur stabs, dodges, and knocks a third stop-motion skeleton’s head off. The best thing about this special effect isn’t the fact that it is totally convincing or realistic-looking, because it isn’t – the great thing about the effect is how obvious it is. Anyone, no matter how ignorant they may be about film or special effects, can watch the scenes where live actors interact with stop-motion ones, and will immediately know how they were done.

In any other film, this would take the viewer out of the story and kill the pace: in Army of Darkness, it fits perfectly.

The Three Stooges, but minus two stooges and with a hell of a lot more skeletons

The three stooges eye-poking gag has been ripped off and parodied by pretty much every physical comedy film of the last fifty years. Leave it to Army of Darkness to find a new, funnier way of doing it.

After failing to speak the sacred words, Ash runs through the cursed graveyard and is tripped up as dozens of skeletal arms pop out of the ground and grasp at his ankles. He falls on his face, and then engages in the single best scene of physical comedy in the film: first, Ash gets slapped around, then he gets his head slammed into the ground a few times, and is then almost knocked unconscious as a dozen goddamn skeleton arms simultaneously appear from all edges of the frame and, in unison, punch him in the face.

From there, it’s straight to Stooge territory: Ash blocks an arm that tries to poke him in the eyes, but when he sticks out his tongue in mockery, another arm grabs it, and when he tries to block the next poking arm, two other arms appear from either side and poke each one of his eyes individually.

It’s not exactly Oscar Wilde, but it gets laughs.

Deathcoaster montage

The “getting ready for battle” montage used in Army of Darkness works pretty well thanks to its kickass music. As Joseph LoDuca’s score for “Building the Deathcoaster” plays, we see Ash using an almost uncharacteristic amount of brains, for someone who used to work at a department store: he learns how to make gunpowder, he teaches the primitive screwheads how to fight, and he turns his car into a weapon (more on that later).

Again, the best part of this montage is the music, which transitions from triumphant to thoughtful to mysterious to “haha the wiseman almost lit the sack of gunpowder on fire and killed everyone in the room,” then back to triumphant. It’s an oddly positive and straight-faced piece of music – were anyone to walk in on the movie at this point, they’d probably assume that they were watching a serious action film.

Skeletons go boom

How often does one get the opportunity to see an army of walking skeletons destroyed by explosive arrows? Honestly.

If nothing else, Army of Darkness is the film made to scratch the itch shared by dozens and dozens of preteen boys who have not yet discovered their sexual desires and want nothing more than to see an army of cadavers getting their shit rocked by bombs and explosions.

The main battle scene of Army of Darkness involves roughly two dozen skeletons getting blown up by Ash’s newly-made gunpowder arrows and catapulted bombs, and, as a kid watching the film for the first time, it was nothing short of orgasmic.

There’s something indescribably satisfying in watching the humans finally stand up for themselves and make some serious headway in the fight against the deadites, and – when you think about it – how else could the fight scene have possibly worked? If the deadites had been vulnerable to simple, non-explosive arrows the scene would have been utterly boring, and if they were impossible to kill by conventional means, the fight would be nowhere near as satisfying as it is. As it stands, the battle scene is perfect: the explosions and skeletons are done practically (again, no CGI whatsoever), both sides suffer an acceptable number of casualties, and the good guys look like they’re about to win right before they get the metaphorical rug pulled out from under their feet.

The Deathcoaster

FUCK YES.

Just when the deadites have broken into Arthur’s castle and all seems lost, Ash unleashes his greatest weapon: the Deathcoaster. His souped-up Oldsmobile has not only turned into a steam-powered, anachronistic artifact from the future, but Ash has also attached spikes to the sides and an enormous, spinning blade to the front.

“Say hello to the twenty-first century,” Ash says, and then proceeds to goddamn annihilate any and every skeleton in his way.

Incidentally, the budget only allowed for two live actors to get their shit wrecked by the Deathcoaster (once the blades get within a certain distance of the actors, a loud “THWUMP” sound effect is heard and the stuntmen get violently yanked back by a bungee cord), the rest of the skeletons that die at the blades of the Deathcoaster do so with no movement whatsoever. After the first few kills it begins to look like Ash is just running over a bunch of stationary models of skeletons (which he is), but the obviousness of the special effect by no means lessens its badassity.

The sword duel

Exploding skeletons, a sedan-turned-death-machine, and Bruce Cambpbell – what’s the only thing this movie is missing?

Why, an Errol Flynn-esque swordfight between Bruce Campbell and an evil, zombie version of Bruce Campbell, of course.

After the Deathcoaster explodes, Ash and Evil Ash square off in a no holds barred fight to the undeath. What starts off as a simple brawl quickly turns comic (Ash runs at Evil Ash with a spear, which is immediately chopped to bits), then turns gleefully classic as Ash fights his evil twin with one sword, then two, then none, and then a torch. The fight scene is typical, in every sense of the word – and I mean that in a good way. In much the same way that the stop-motion harkens back to the days of Harryhausen, the rehearsed-looking swordfights seem like something out of an old Errol Flynn swashbuckler.

Apart from the impalements and the cursing, anyway.

The Raimi-Cam

If there’s one camera shot Sam Raimi will always be known for, it is – perhaps unsurprisingly – a rig colloquially known as the Raimi-cam. A Raimi-cam shot involves mounting the camera onto a stationary object (in the pictured instance, a spear) and then setting the object into motion. The resulting shot looks like something out of a comic book: the camera becomes the object in the scene, whether it be a flying eyeball, a recently-shot arrow, or a spear in the hands of a She-Bitch. He even uses the shot in his most serious film, A Simple Plan, by mounting the camera behind a crow. It doesn’t work in the context of a Bill Paxton neo-noir, of course, but the Raimi-cam shot is most definitely suited to the mad, cartoony brilliance of the Evil Dead films. Raimi loves it so much, in fact, that he uses it twice in Army of Darkness alone: not only in the above spear scene, but also near the beginning of the film when Arthur shoots an escaping convict with a crossbow.

Ted Raimi, man of many faces

The man seen above is Ted Raimi, brother of director Sam Raimi, and perhaps better known as Joxer from Hercules and Xena.

All things considered, he almost has as much screen time as Bruce Campbell.

Ted plays, in order: Cowardly Soldier, Brave Blacksmith, and Douchebaggy S-Mart Employee. There’s something to be said for a film whose budget is so charmingly low that the director has no qualms whatsoever about casting his brother in three different  speaking roles, either for the purposes of saving money or purely because such incredibly obvious multi-casting totally fits the tone of the film (see also: From Dusk Till Dawn).

What’s even funnier about Ted’s cameos is that each of them has a drastically different speaking voice: the Cowardly Soldier sounds like a ninety year old woman (“Yes, yes, the mountains! We must FLEE!”), the Douchebaggy S-Mart Employee sounds like an arrogant nerd, and the Brave Blacksmith – in addition to having what may be the worst fake beard in the history of fake beards – is inexplicably gifted with a loud, unnecessary Scottish accent. As he raises his torch to Ash at the end of his inspirational speech and cries, “Yoo cahn count on my shteel,” it’s pretty hard not to crack an involuntary smile. Assuming you don’t have one already, that is.

The S-Mart ending

While purists (and the filmmakers) will always assert that the original, dystopian ending where Ash drinks too much of the magic potion and ends up alone in a post-apocalyptic wasteland is the superior one, I have to disagree. The new, studio-sanctioned ending where Ash makes it back to his own time but accidentally brings the evil with him makes for a hilarious, entertaining, perfectly tongue-in-cheek way to end the series.

Upon returning to his own time (and meeting Ted Raimi’s final incarnation), Ash fights a modern deadite in the halls of the S-Mart, saves his hot, redhead co-worker from death by cash register, and spouts off a catchphrase that Duke Nukem would shamelessly take for his own a few years later. Granted, this ending might not be as dramatic, shocking, or depressing as the one where Ash strands himself in a dead future, but hey – it’s a hell of a lot more fun, which is what Army of Darkness is all about.