Army of Darkness

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For the wrestling stable, see The Army of Darkness.

Army of Darkness
Directed by	Sam Raimi
Produced by	Dino De Laurentiis Sam Raimi Bruce Campbell
Written by	Sam Raimi Ivan Raimi
Starring	Bruce Campbell Embeth Davidtz Bridget Fonda Marcus Gilbert
Music by	Danny Elfman Joe LoDuca
Editing by	Bob Murawski
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	February 19, 1993 (USA)
Running time	81 min.
Language	English
Budget	$11,000,000
Preceded by	Evil Dead II
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Army of Darkness (also known as The Medieval Dead, Bruce Campbell vs. the Army of Darkness, Captain Supermarket (in Japan only), and The Ultimate Experience in Medieval Terror) is a comedic American horror / adventure film, released in 1993. The film is a sequel to Evil Dead II, which in turn was a sequel to The Evil Dead. The film was directed by Sam Raimi, written by Raimi and his brother Ivan, produced by Rob Tapert, and starred Bruce Campbell as protagonist Ash Williams.

The movie had a considerably higher budget than the prior two Evil Dead films. The budget was estimated to be around $11 million; Evil Dead II had a budget of $3.5 million and The Evil Dead a budget of $350,000. At the box office, the film was not a big success, only grossing $11,501,093 domestically. After its video release, however, it has obtained an ever-growing cult following, along with the other two films in the trilogy.

Taglines:

• Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas.
• They move. They breathe. They suck.
• Sound the trumpets, raise the drawbridge, and drop the Oldsmobile.
• In an age of darkness. At a time of evil. When the world needed a hero. What it got was him.
• 1 Man, 1 Million dead, The odds are just about even.
• How can you destroy an army that's already dead?

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production 2.1 Post-production 3 Director's Cut 4 Trivia 5 References 5.1 Footnotes 6 External links

[edit] Plot

The protagonist, Ash (Campbell), who discovered the Necronomicon ex Mortis, or "Book of the Dead" that unleashed demonic forces in the previous films The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, is sucked into a time vortex with his Oldsmobile, an event caused by reading the spell to defeat the demons. He ends up in England in 1300 AD, where he is believed to be the "Hero From The Sky," the man destined to deliver salvation to mankind from the "Deadites," or the undead, as is told at the end of Evil Dead II. The plot, though, alters somewhat between the ending of Evil Dead II and the beginning of Army of Darkness.

Instead of being praised, he is believed to be 'One of King Henry's men' - a people at war with those finding Ash and taking him to their castle. Ash is enslaved, and his gun and chainsaw confiscated. A priest keeps Ash's weapons, believing the "strange one" to be a redeemer, foretold in prophecy to be the one who shall deliver mankind from the terror of the deadites. Ash is thrown in a pit where he fights off a deadite, regains his weapons, and uses his "boomstick" to frighten the inhabitants of the kingdom into helping him return to his own time.

The only way to return to his time and stop the Deadites, according to the priest who gave Ash back his weapons, is to retrieve the Necronomicon ^[1] - which contains both spells. While preparing for this, Ash becomes romantically involved with a local woman, Sheila (Embeth Davidtz).

Ash then journeys for the Necronomicon. When Ash arrives at the book's location, he sees three books instead of one. After a painful experience with the two fake books, Ash finds the real one. Ash attempts to say the words, but realizes he forgot them. He tries to trick the book by mumbling, but ends up rereleasing the Evil Dead.

Despite causing the predicament faced by the humans, Ash initially demands to be returned to his own time. When Sheila is captured by a flying Deadite, he becomes determined to lead the humans against the Deadite army. Reluctantly, the people agree to join Ash.

Using scientific knowledge from the future, from chemistry and engineering books in the trunk of his Oldsmobile, Ash successfully leads the humans to defeat the Deadites and save Sheila. Subsequently, he is sent back to the present, but finds a Deadite terrorizing shoppers at 'S-Mart' where he works. Ash defeats the Deadite in his classic style, and the film ends with Ash saying, "Hail to the king, baby." and kissing a coworker.

[edit] Production

Plans to make a third Evil Dead film had been circulating for a number of years, even prior to the production of Darkman. Raimi drew from a variety of sources including literature with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels and films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and, of course, The Three Stooges. Evil Dead II, according to Bruce Campbell as quoted in Bill Warren's book, The Evil Dead Companion, "was originally designed to go back into the past to 1300, but we couldn't muster it at the time, so we decided to make an interim version, not knowing if the 1300 story would ever get made." Promotional drawings were created and published in Variety during the casting process before the budget was deemed too little for the plot. The working title for the project was Evil Dead II: Army of Darkness.^[2] The title "Army of Darkness" came from an idea by Irvin Shapiro, during the production of Evil Dead II.^[3]

The screenplay was mostly written in 1988 but then Raimi made Darkman and once that was done the director took the script out and worked on it with his brother Ivan who he had enjoyed collaborating with on Darkman and Easy Wheels. Raimi says that Ivan, "has a good sense of character," and that he brought more comedy into the script.^[4] Campbell remembers, "We all decided, 'Get him out of the cabin.' There were earlier drafts where part three still took place there, but we thought, 'Well, we all know that cabin, it's time to move on.' The three of us decided to keep it in 1300, because it's more interesting."

Evil Dead II made enough money internationally that Dino De Laurentiis was willing to finance a sequel. Raimi had been disappointed by his dealings with Universal Pictures during the production of Darkman. The initial budget was $8 million but during pre-production it became obvious that this wasn't going to be enough. Darkman was also a financial success and so Universal decided to contribute half of the film's $12 million budget. However, the film's ambitious scope and its extensive effects work forced Campbell, Raimi and Tapert to put up $1 million of their collective salaries to shoot a new ending and a scene where a possessed woman pushes down some giant pillars.

Principal photography took place between soundstage and on location work. Army of Darkness was filmed in Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks Nation Park. The interior shots were filmed on an Introvision stage in Hollywood. Raimi's use of the Introvision process was a tribute to the stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen. Introvision uses front projected images with live actors instead of the traditional rear projection that Harryhausen and others used. Introvision blended components with more realistic-looking results. Raimi explained its benefits in an American Cinematographer article: "the incredible amount of interaction between the background, which doesn't exist, and the foreground, which is usually your character."

The shooting began in mid-1991, and it lasted for about 100 days.^[5] It was a mid-summer shoot and while on location on a huge castle set that was built near Acton, California on the edge of the Mojave Desert, cast and crew endured very hot conditions during the day and very cold temperatures at night. It was a tough shoot for Campbell who had to learn elaborate choreography for the battle scenes that involved him remembering a number system because the actor was often fighting opponents that weren't really there. Mesa remembers in John Kenneth Muir's book, The Unseen Forces: The Films of Sam Raimi, "Bruce was cussing and swearing some of the time because you had to work on the number system. Sam would tell us to make it as complicated and hard for Bruce as possible. 'Make him go through torture!' So we'd come up with these shots that were really, really difficult, and sometimes they would take thirty-seven takes."

After the shooting was completed, the film's score was composed by Joseph LoDuca, though the theme was written by Danny Elfman.

[edit] Post-production

While De Laurentiis gave Raimi and his crew freedom to shoot the movie the way they wanted, Universal took over during post-production and was not happy with Raimi's cut. The studio hated Raimi's original ending for the movie, feeling that it was "negative" and made the director change it. So, a more upbeat ending was shot a month after they made the movie. It was shot in a lumber store in Malibu over three or four nights. Then, two months after Army of Darkness was finished, a round of reshoots began in Santa Monica and involved Ash in the windmill and the scenes with Bridget Fonda done for very little money.

In addition, Raimi needed $3 million to finish his movie but Universal wasn't willing to give him the money and delayed its release because they were upset that De Laurentiis would not give them the rights to the Hannibal Lecter character so that they could film a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The matter was finally resolved but Army of Darkness' release date had been pushed back from its original summer of 1992 release to February 1993.

Raimi ran into further troubles with the MPAA over the film's rating. They gave it an NC-17 for a shot of a female deadite being decapitated early on in the film. Universal wanted a PG-13 rating so Raimi made a few cuts and was still stuck with an undesirable R-rating. So, the studio turned the film over to outside film editors who cut the movie to 81 minutes in length and another version running 87 minutes that was eventually released in theaters. It ended up with an R rating anyway.

[edit] Director's Cut

A Director's Cut exists in various DVD releases. Although not officially Sam Raimi's Director's Cut of the film, it is actually the International Cut of the film that was released around the world. It runs at 93 minutes compared to the theatrical 81 minutes, and includes numerous new scenes and extensions. Among the changes are more violence in the pit, a tasteful love scene between Ash and Sheila, an extended windmill scene, different dialogue between Good and Bad Ash, an extended speech on the castle roof, and a vastly different ending.

The theatrical release picks up after Ash has returned to the present, in which he stages one final confrontation with the "she-bitch" in the S-Mart Housewares Department. The alternate ending, which was favored by Raimi and Campbell, depicts Ash as he sits in his Oldsmobile in a cave, the entrance caved in by some of the black powder he made earlier. As he drinks the magic potion (given to him by a person that may or may not be Merlin - the king's name being "Arthur"), he is distracted by a falling rock and takes one drop too many. He sleeps well beyond his time, not aging but growing a very large beard, and shouts "I'VE SLEPT TOO LOOOOONG!!" after awakening in a post-apocalyptic England.

When test audiences didn't approve of Raimi's original cut, he cut the film down to the International cut that now exists on DVD. When it was again rejected by Universal, Raimi was forced to edit it again to the US Theatrical version. The original cut had an opening that was more in tune with the Evil Dead series (included as a deleted scene on Anchor Bay's Director's Cut DVD)^[6].

The MGM Hong Kong Region 3 DVD edits together the US Theatrical, European and Director's cuts into a final, 96-minute cut of the film. The film is digitally remastered, compiled from original source prints (not from VHS sources as the Anchor Bay Entertainment releases are).^[7]

[edit] Trivia

• In March, 2007 Marvel Comics will be releasing the first issue of Marvel Zombies/Army of Darkness. ^[8]

[edit] References

• The Evil Dead Companion, Bill Warren. ISBN 0-312-27501-3
• If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell. ISBN 0-312-29145-0

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Army of Darkness at the Internet Movie Database
• Army of Darkness Retrospective
• Army of Darkness RPG from Eden Studios.

Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series
Films: The Evil Dead | Evil Dead II | Army of Darkness
Video games: The Evil Dead | Evil Dead: Hail to the King | Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick | Evil Dead: Regeneration
Comic books: Army of Darkness: Ashes to Ashes | Army of Darkness: Shop Till You Drop Dead
Other topics: Ash Williams | Within the Woods | Bruce Campbell | Robert Tapert