Army of Darkness (1992)

It's unusual for me to watch a threequel (well, third entry, anyway) before either of its predecessors. Perhaps I was tempted by the title, which suggests a big departure from the unappealingly named The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. I've mentioned my concerns that director Sam Raimi tends toward more grotesque violence than I like, but I heard that this outing was relatively comedic.

What I had missed was the setting. Apparently, tampering with the mysterious forces associated with the Necronomicon tome not only arouses the wrath of the undead; it can open a time portal. Protagonist Ash (Bruce Campbell) gives us a brief synopsis of his past troubles to explain how he came to be chained up in the Middle Ages. Fortunately, his modern technology, knowledge, and general badassery get him out of immediate trouble and into good graces. Unfortunately, he's not quite sharp enough to reuse the tome properly. Soon he brings danger to the castle of one Lord Arthur (not necessarily the king; Ash estimates the year 1300) and must decide whether he cares enough, particularly for one Lady Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), to help rather than flee.

In case you're wondering, there's no language barrier. The medieval people use a few well-known archaisms like "thou," but if you ever read Chaucer, you know that there were bigger differences in reality. Even when Ash uses modern slang or goes into detail about his "boomstick," everyone gets the gist.

I think I did well to avoid the unrated director's cut. The 15-minutes-shorter R-rated cut is not half the grindhouse fare I feared, partly because one-handed Ash doesn't use his prosthetic chainsaw very much (kinda overuses his shotgun if you ask me) and partly because most of his foes are mere skeletons. Sure, the army's leader has just enough flesh to look hideous, but it also looks too fake to gross me out. The special effects don't convince me any better.

I think of it less as a horror comedy and more as a Gothic fantasy adventure comedy. How am I to fear skeletons whose first attacks appear lifted from the Three Stooges? Heck, the very term "Deadites" sounds like a joke. Between slapstick and wisecracks, the movie approaches a cartoon.

This is not to say that the action and humor are always sufficiently tasteful. I'd rather not think hard on what happens to Sheila. It's not the notorious tree rape scene from the first entry in the series, but knowing that some of the same people were involved should give you some idea.

Apart from a few moments of innovation, AoD strikes me as a mix of cliches. If I didn't know better, I'd peg the year around 1985, the most '90s thing about it being how much of an antihero Ash is. OK, a more generous interpretation is yet another tribute to multiple movies. It even co-opts the magic words from The Day the Earth Stood Still. At the same time, I'm pretty sure I've seen references to AoD without introduction in later works, so I may have a hard time sorting out how much of it was derivative then and how much only looks that way today.

Whether you go by the theatrical ending or the original unhappy ending (or consider both canon, one before the other), it's more upbeat than my last several Halloween-type viewings. Still not exactly "for" me, but the 72 minutes passed swiftly. Nice to know I can slightly enjoy my time with Raimi even in this genre.