31 Days of Horror: Army of Darkness

Bruce Campbell shows us his boom stick in Army of Darkness.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 29: Army of Darkness (1992)

Bold, charismatic leaders may not win wars, but they lead great armies. By the time Army of Darkness, the third film in the Evil Dead trilogy, rolls around to its epic conclusion, Bruce Campbell’s Ashley J. Williams has completed the metamorphosis that began in Evil Dead II. He is a leader of men, ready to take his troops into battle against a strong, superior, and supernatural enemy.

Onscreen evolution is easy to chart: We see actions translated either as cowardice or bravery, and we see competence translated as either success or failure. What is more difficult to appreciate is the evolution of the leader behind the camera, and like his heroic creation, director Sam Raimi is a bold, charismatic leader of men and women.

By the third film in his legacy-making trilogy, Raimi has gone from clearly talented novice to impossible-to-deny master of the craft. Army of Darkness is Raimi’s fifth feature film and would be the last time the horror maestro would tackle the genre for nearly two decades until his near-perfect Drag Me to Hell. For the lead into a 17-year horror hiatus, he threw everything at the wall, including a couple kitchen sinks. What he and his highly qualified cast and crew produced is a glorious exercise in excess, an over-the-top, genre-bending mash-up of everything Raimi holds dear.

Ash has been transported back to medieval times along with his car, his chainsaw, and his shotgun.  These accessories – which by this point, in ways both literal and figurative, are as much a part of Ash as his good hand – make him virtually a god in this mostly in-the-dark society. The first impression he makes is to kill a couple of the un-killable Deadites, an act which is now so commonplace as to almost be beneath him.

There is no denying that even at a rapid-fire 81 minutes, the plot gets convoluted, and it gets there quickly. To vanquish the Deadites for good, Ash must find the “Necronomicon,” which you may recognize as the book that got him into all this trouble in the first place. Along the way, there are wenches and women, wizards, magic, an army of tiny Ash’s, and the evil version of our intrepid hero –named Badash, no doubt with a wink and a nod.

Raimi’s influences are as much the Three Stooges and Jason and the Argonauts as anything from the first two films in the series. The comedy and old-school effects come flying from moment one, and coming from someone who has loved just about everything Raimi has done, I have to say this film feels the most like the one he was born to make. He clearly relishes the vastly increased budget – going from about $350,000 on The Evil Dead to $13 million on this picture – and puts every dollar on screen.

If some of the effects look hokey to modern eyes, well, they looked that way to viewers in 1992, as well. It is a purposeful effect, and if you are on Raimi’s wavelength – which you must be if you have made it this far in the series – you will love it. This is a director who showed enough talent and achieved enough success to warrant this kind of investment from a studio, and he used it to make the kind of movie he would have made for free in his parents’ backyard with even a few of the same actors.

The reason Army of Darkness hold up after all these years and what makes it worthy of rewatching is the do-it-yourself spirit of the cast and crew. Raimi went on to make some of the biggest, most expensive movies of the new century with the Spider-man series and Oz: The Great and Powerful, and there are wonderful thing about those movies, but when I really want to enjoy myself and be reminded why movies are fun, I will take Army of Darkness and the brilliant glow of a guy making a movie with his friends.

Tomorrow, for the penultimate entry in our series, we go straight to the top. We have explored the bloodiest, the most violent, the craziest, the darkest, and my personal favorite, but on Day 30, we are just looking at the best. I know we said this is not a best-of list, and it is not, but the month would not be complete without a superlative exclamation point somewhere.

31 Days of Horror: Evil Dead II

Bruce Campbell is groovy ... and a little insane in Evil Dead II.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 28: Evil Dead II (1987)

Groovy.

It would be hard to own a word as thoroughly as Bruce Campbell owns the word “groovy.” The man just radiates groove. For crying out loud, his Twitter handle is actually @GroovyBruce. The screening I attended last year of Fede Alvarez’s fantastic remake, Evil Dead, was a raucous, jubilant affair with a packed house of people who knew what they wanted and got it. They cheered, cringed, and laughed their way through the whole movie – and I was right there with them – but the biggest cheer of the night came in the three-second after-credits moment when Campbell appears in near silhouette as Ashley J. Williams and says, “Groovy.”

The transformation of Campbell from Bruce Campbell Actor into Bruce Campbell Ambassador of All Things Groovy took place right here in Evil Dead II. Director Sam Raimi has always taken a perverse delight in tormenting longtime friend and collaborator Campbell. This is egged on by the fact that Raimi has not just a little contempt for his and Campbell’s most famous creation, going so far as to call Ash the equivalent of a clueless moron.

To be fair, the Ash who shows up at the cabin in The Evil Dead is a bit of a bumbling fool, but what can any of us say we would do when faced with an ancient and unstoppable evil? Evil Dead II is a direct sequel to The Evil Dead, though some confusion is created by its opening 10 minutes, which play like the events of the first movie told as a short film. This was necessitated by Raimi’s desire to recap the first picture for the audience coupled with an inability to obtain the rights to the footage from The Evil Dead.

As it is, for the uninitiated, it could read as though Ash is returning with a new girl to the cabin of his previous torture. To Raimi, the distinction makes little difference, a view he addresses on the DVD commentary, saying that people have asked if Ash would be so stupid as to return to the cabin. In Raimi’s view – yes, yes he would. So, sequel, remake, unrelated standalone film, it does not matter. Ash is at the cabin, and the dead are on the loose.

However, this is not the old Ash. Whether you want to say he has evolved from the events of the first movie or this is a reimagined take on the character, this Ash has gone from apprentice to master in the art of killing Deadites. The Ash of Evil Dead II is resourceful, cunning, brave, a little crazy, and just a bit sexy, if that is your thing. When fans get their Evil Dead tattoos, this is the version of the character they get. He is beaten and bloodied. His shirt his torn. He has lost a hand and replaced it with a chainsaw, and his good hand carries a shotgun. To put it briefly, Ash has got his groove back.

Campbell carries the first half of the movie basically on his own. It takes a long time for the supporting characters to show up, and by the time they do, the audience really could care less about any of them. All we want to know is the fate of our hero. Campbell gets knocked in some corners for being a B-movie actor – a moniker he has embraced if we go by the title of his autobiography – but the quality of his film projects has no bearing on the quality of his performances. I will take an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink performance from Campbell any day over some of the stuffed-shirt performances so often heralded.

In one of my favorite scenes in film history, the inanimate objects of the cabin come to life and shriek with laughter at Ash’s predicament. By this point, we can forgive Ash for having gone a touch insane, and he returns their shrieking with a maniacal burst of laughter of his own. What I remember is a rocking chair, a mounted deer head, a particularly sinister lamp, and an unhinged, all-or-nothing performance from Campbell.

It is hard for me to discuss Campbell without sounding like a gushing fan, but I embrace it. I have been a fan since before I knew who he was. He lends his voice to the main character from one of my favorite video games as a child – “Pitfall 3D.” To me, Pitfall Harry was as cool as Indiana Jones, and Campbell is Pitfall Harry. Then I saw Evil Dead II. I was too young to understand everything I was seeing, but the visceral thrills and unmitigated joy I felt watching that movie could not be matched by anything else.

For all intents and purposes, Evil Dead II is a horror-comedy, a genre changeup from The Evil Dead. It features Raimi’s love of Three Stooges-style slapstick and the kind of wild pratfalls of which Campbell is a master. It is a near-perfect exercise in genre blending that is sometimes regarded as superior to their first effort. I cannot go that far because the first time is always the best, but this gets damn close, and as experiences go, Evil Dead II is damn groovy.

Tomorrow, we bring the Evil Dead series to a close with yet another genre switch and a hell of a lot of medieval insanity.

31 Days of Horror: The Evil Dead

Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, realizes something evil is afoot, possibly the dead, in The Evil Dead.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 27: The Evil Dead (1981)

For a brief period of time a couple years back, I adopted a stray, gray kitten. There was only one thing I could call her: Ashley J. Williams. Yes, I was one of those people whose cat had a full human name, and she was affectionately known as Ash. She was unequivocally named for Bruce Campbell’s character in The Evil Dead. This is my favorite horror film and one of my top 20 favorite films of any kind.

If you do not know the story of The Evil Dead or the story behind the story, there are about a dozen books and numerous fan sites and short documentaries chronicling the history of this film. I recommend Campbell’s autobiography, “If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor.” If you are at all interested in how films get made or in the everyday life of an actor, it is essential reading. I had to sell or give away most of my books when I moved to New York from California, but “If Chins Could Kill” is not going anywhere except with me.

This is the feature directing debut of Sam Raimi, now known for his mega-blockbusters such as the Toby Maguire-led Spider-man films and Oz: The Great and Powerful. The Evil Dead is about a million miles removed from those later pictures, but in many ways, everything about the director Raimi would become is right here in bloody red and oozing white. The effects, the energy, the angles, the humor, it all starts with this little micro-budget cabin-in-the-woods picture.

The shortest version of the making-of story is thus: A group of mostly untrained filmmakers and actors from Michigan went out into the woods of Tennessee intent on making a horror movie. They physically and emotionally beat the hell out of themselves and each other for months on end in grueling conditions and with no conceivable light at the end of the tunnel. What they walked out of those woods with was an invigorating and innovative masterpiece that more than three decades later still inspires nearly every independent filmmaker who picks up a camera.

When I think about this movie, I still get chills down my spine and goose bumps on my arms. It can be split roughly into two halves – beginning with about 30 to 35 minutes of low-key characterization and ominous mood setting and concluding with nearly 45 minutes of envelope-pushing mayhem. A relentless assault of gore and guts, each new element and every successive sequence tests the limits of what an audience is willing to endure. When you are in the hands of a master filmmaker like Raimi, the answer is: a hell of a lot.

The plot is as simple as plots get. Ash and several of his friends drive out to a remote cabin and discover a tape recorder that plays passages from the famous book of the dead the “Necronomicon.” Against all better judgment and common sense, they allow these passages to be read allow, which summons a horde of demons and evil spirits. One by one, the friends are all either killed or possessed or run through the ringer of never-ending torment.

Some of the shots Raimi gets to achieve his vision still boggle the mind, and on the fly, the crew invented a number of low-tech rigs to accomplish each new demand of their fearless leader. The so-called “ram-o-cam” gives us the demonic point of view you may recognize from nearly every evil-spirit movie since. As much as it is a thrilling entertainment, The Evil Dead is a true filmmakers’ film, the kind of showcase anyone with aspirations to make a movie should study.

For the same reasons, this is not my favorite horror film just because it is a genuinely good movie. It is my favorite because the story of its existence inspires me every day to pursue my dreams and to achieve the goals I have set for myself. I am not sure I could ask any more of a movie than that.

You will notice I did not spend much space discussing Campbell’s performance. Tomorrow, we rectify that as the character of Ashley J. Williams comes into his own and goes from in too deep to icon.