And then there is Army of Darkness. This movie has quite a huge cult following.
Basically, we get a 5-minute recap early, and Ash is now in the 1300s. He needs to find the book. Well, this kingdom wants him dead, so they push him into a pit. He triumphs over evil, then talks lots and lots of shit and frees the prisoners of the feuding kingdom. Ash basically takes control because he has his boomstick, and that is more powerful than their archaic swords and armor. So the wise old man says that Ash needs to get the book and bring it back if he wants to be sent back to his time period.
He goes on this epic journey that has mini versions of him, basically straight out of Gulliver’s Travels, and he deals with skeletons grabbing at him, and his evil doppelganger. There is probably a better word to describe it. Anyway, Ash really didn’t say the 3 words properly when he gets the book, so he basically fucked everything up. Ash had a bitch, she got taken by Evil Ash, and now she is evil, and he hair is outrageous.
So Evil Ash leads his army of skeletons to retrieve the book. Ash is like, we will get help from the prisoners we released. So we have this big fight, sorta how I imagine Season 7 of Game of Thrones will be like. The guys finally make the save, and they vanquish the evil. Ash gets to age and wakes up to see that society is just fucked, and it was all just a bummer.
There is a ton of slapstick comedy and not much on the horror. This movie is very funny, and ridiculous. This was kinda shitty for a sequel though. I know, that’s blasphemy for some. When I get attached to a horror franchise, you can stray a little, but keep the idea going. Why did Nightmare on Elm Street 2 suck? Lack of good dream deaths. They changed that and became good again. Why did Halloween 3 fail? Because they changed everything up. Why did Friday the 13th suck? Because it was Tommy. I know that sometimes things grow stale, and you want to try something new. Sometimes it pays off, but if you stick close to what brought you success, that is usually your best bet. You know, the exact opposite of Blair Witch 2.
So I don’t know how to properly rate this. I excuse how dated it looks, it adds to its charm. It hits a bad lull for me though in the middle. On top of that, they go too over the top for my tastes. Moments of it is fine. Large chunks of it don’t work for me, comedy or horror. This film lucked out because Bruce Campbell is so good that you can’t stay mad at some of the bad shit. At the end of the day, people typically love this or hate it. As a comedy, it’s probably a 6.5-7.0 range, but for horror, it’s maybe a 2.0-3.0. Yeah, that low. This film wasn’t trying to be horror, BUT would you accept Star Wars if Episode 7 is a romantic comedy, or if Indiana Jones becomes sci-fi epic? No, you wouldn’t. That’s my issue. I have seen this probably 5-6 times, and so I have to go over 5, but not by much. It’s not what I was looking for after seeing the first 2, yet as it’s own stand-alone film, it works. So if you consider the end of a trilogy, it’s not good. If it is just a stand alone, it is funny and good. I hope that makes sense.
End Film
Final rating: 6.0 because I have to deduct point for straying from the core values, and not being horror in almost any way.
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Dino De Laurentiis Company (as Dino De Laurentiis Communications)
- Renaissance Pictures
- Universal Pictures
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