The Madness Ends with Army of Darkness

"You are the leader of Jack and shit, and Jack just left town"

So says our beloved hero, Ash, to Duke Henry... just before Ash gets tossed into a deep hole to fight a frightful creature that first raises her hand thru the murky water in a tribute to Excalibur. This pretty much begins the adventure in Army of Darkness, the third of the Evil Dead trilogy by genious Sam Raimi.

Spoiler Warning: This review gives away the ending to Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn.

As you will recall from the previous two Evil Dead movies, Ash takes a small party to a cabin in the woods, finds the dreaded book, Necronomicon, and ends up chopping everyone to bits after they turn demonic. In the Evil Dead 2, he then uses the book to open a portal to banish the evil spirits and gets sucked in to this portal himself... along with his car. Ash ends up smack in the Middle Ages, replete with King Arthur and cohorts. Historically accurate? It didn't even try to be. Massively fun? You bet your longsword it is!

"This here is my Boom Stick!�"

The basic gist is that Ash must now recover the book in order to get back to his own time period... and to save the kingdom. He is warned that he must recite exactly three words before he grabs the book... He forgets the words and sets off the raising of the Army of Darkness, which is an obvious tribute to Ray Harryhausen. The skeletons are fantastic!

Indeed, throughout this one you will catch numerous allusions to other movies, which is most of the fun of watching Army of Darkness. In one scene Ash is fighting a gaggle of mini-Ashes, which end up tying him down... and if you don't get the Gulliver's Travels reference then you really need to get out more.

Now there are some scenes where the special effects splice is horrendous... so excrutiatingly obvious. But ya know what? That may have been intentional. This is, after all, a schlock fest... and this time Raimi knew it from the get-go and used that well.

"Gimme some sugar Baby!"

This time we have a much bigger budget, so we have a much bigger cast... some even worth mentioning. Hooya!