medieval mayhem: army of darkness

Time is already a tenuous construct as it is, and after shotgunning a ton of movies this month it’s even less of a factor in my life. With that said, at some point this month I watched Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness on my friend’s projector, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing it for the first time probably since it first hit home video. It’s not quite at the level of Evil Dead 2 for me as far as this series goes, but there are a few things I forgot about that are even more entertaining to me today.

First of all, rewatching this 1993 entry just a few weeks after watching (almost all of) Ash vs. Evil Dead was a trip. Bruce Campbell is so young in these movies, and pulls off an amazing combination of effortlessly cool and colossally stupid. I actually forgot just how Looney Tunes Army of Darkness gets at times, which is never on display more boldly than during the extended battle against Ash’s tiny doppelgangers.

That second act sequence is just the starting point for when this movie goes completely bonkers. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated that or the stop-motion skeleton hijinks more than I did during this viewing, and I don’t doubt that I’ll be watching it again sooner rather than later.

This time around I watched the director’s cut, which was a tough choice to make. I like both endings equally, but now I want to go back and check out the theatrical cut again. There are some other cuts on Scream Factory’s excellent collector’s edition Blu-ray set, which I highly recommend picking up. As many times as they’ve reissued this movie, I can’t imagine there being a more definitive version down the line as we enjoy what will likely be the last major physical media format.