It’s so great when the Things I Fear Community writes posts so I don’t have to! In all seriousness though, thank you for this great submission! If you have an idea for a future post or have too much time on your hands and can write your own, please do! There are so many ways to connect with Things I Fear!
This particular submission comes from Tyler who is part of the Arts Union Science. You might be familiar with their work already, but if you are not, definitely check them out! In fact, you can listen to my voice as it was featured on a recent episode about Horror Movies but more specifically Evil Dead. We had a great time recording it together and I suspect it won’t be the last collaboration we do. As long as the cheque clears. Let’s dive into this Army of Darkness Community Submission Review, courtesy of Dr. Tyler Vance. Oh no wait it’s Tyler D.R. Vance.
Prologue: Two Misshapen Peas in a Strangely Accommodating Pod
“Well, I’ve got news for you, pal, you ain’t leadin’ but two things right now: jack and shit… and jack left town.”
The odd couple is a beloved trope in moviedom. Says who, you ask? Says me! Think about it. How many times have you seen two ill-suited individuals on screen together, bickering and mucking things up through a three-act, four-quadrant tent-pole blockbuster before they find their way to common ground and become forever friends just in time for the credits to roll? Too many times to count, I would guess. And why shouldn’t it feature prominently on the silver screen? We all have that beloved friendship that makes absolutely no sense from the outside and yet just seems to work. Perhaps yours is an old pal from high school, or a colleague from several jobs back, or some random dude you really hit it off with in an S-Mart parking lot. But I’m not here to talk about your odd couple pairing. Heck, I don’t even know which of the hundreds of potential readers throughout time you are. No, I’m here to talk about my current favourite odd couple in the film industry: Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi.
There’s a good chance that you haven’t seen them on screen together, but there’s an even gooder [sic] chance that you’ve seen the results of this odd coupling of actor (Campbell) and director (Raimi) before. The two met in a Michigan high school, the former a good-natured, good-looking goofball with a jawline chiseled from marble, the latter a precocious prankster with a caustic wit and devilish intentions. Remarkably different from the outside, sure, but they were brought together by a joint love of watching and making movies. In fact, this particular iteration of yin and yang would go on to make The Evil Dead, the lo-fi horror film about some college kids spending a rather tumultuous night in a demon-infested cabin. At this point, you’re probably thinking that I’ve found my long and winding way to the subject of this here movie review… and if you were in the hands of a more boring (i.e. capable) writer, you’d be correct.
But you ain’t – on either front – and we’ve got some more winding to do before we hit our subject.
See, during a recent discussion I had with some dude on the Internet (no reason to put him on blast, so let’s just call him Bleven Blarvey) it was implied that The Evil Dead was brought down in the world’s estimation by the existence of its sequel. Well, not its direct sequel, which is Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, but rather its sequel’s sequel, its… trequel? Triquel? Tripiquel? Huh. Anyway, the one that came after its sequel: Army of Darkness. And, yes, we have now hit on our subject, for after hearing Mr. Blarvey’s slanderous remarks I knew I had to don my Defender of the Derided cape and spring into all of the action that my potato body would allow. Army of Darkness is not a blight on The Evil Dead; on the contrary, Army of Darkness is an earnest yet parodic affair that shows how much its star and its director have grown in their craft. So, let’s take a look at Army of Darkness and show Bleven Blarvey – hater of fun who I think said something bad about your mother at one point – what’s what when it comes to the odd couple of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi.
Chapter 1: Mixing Character and Slapstick
“Are all men from the future loud-mouthed braggarts?”
A staple of the Evil Dead movies – and it’s a load-bearing staple – has been the tormenting of the main character, Ash Williams, by the powers of evil. Strangely, there is a real-world comparison here in that Bruce Campbell (i.e. Ash) is often the good-natured victim of harsh filming conditions thanks to his ol’ buddy Sam Raimi (i.e. the powers of evil). There’s a great story from the filming of Evil Dead II, where a proverbial shitload of fake blood was about to be poured on Campbell’s face and Raimi walked over to offer some friendly advice. Something along the lines of, “Okay, so if you start to feel like you’re drowning, just flail your arms about and scream.” To which Campbell responded, “But isn’t that what I’ll be doing in the scene anyway?” A beat – then Raimi came back with, “Huh, I guess you’re right. Anyway, roll cameras!” Brilliant.
Army of Darkness has some of the best Ash-gets-beat-up stuff in the series, with an especially fantastic sequence in a windmill where our swaggering hero is taken down a few pegs by a gaggle of tiny versions of himself. Question my status as a decent human being all you want, but I’ll never get tired of the face Campbell makes when a mini-him stabs him in the foot. But unlike past entries in this franchise that just used Ash’s pain for laughs, Army of Darkness absolutely requires it. Why? ’Cause Ash is a real ASH-hole [sic] in this movie. It’s true what the wise ones say: “All fighting the hordes of the undead and no respite makes you an unpleasant boy”… or something like that. Gone is our bashful beta from the first movie; bid farewell to our reluctant hero with a heart of gold and a chin of marble. For we now have Ash “Strange One” Williams, a man who has been beaten and broken so many times that he has a hard time caring for anything or anyone that isn’t likely to get him out of this mess.
So, let’s say you’re the brains behind this here cinematic operation. The question becomes: how can you get the audience to continue empathizing with this character even as he throws the weight of his bloated ego around, spits out sexist comments like they’re going out of style, and messes up pretty much everything he does? Easy. You beat the shit out of him – a lot. You punch him in the face in a dank pit; you get a great host of skeletal hands to accost his eyeballs; you give him a doppelganger that grows out of his shoulder and then bullies him; you chase him through the woods with a camera for multiple minutes of screen time. You do whatever it takes to make us feel sorry for him again, resulting in his repressed rage and fear boiling up and out in boastful shows of macho stupidity, which circles back to him getting beat up again – yadda yadda – the pattern continues.
Now, am I going to stand here and tell you that this endless waltz of pain-empathy-asshole-repeat is some brilliant way to entrench the stooge-esque slapstick beloved by both Campbell and Raimi into an honest-to-goodness character arc, turning what would otherwise be an inconsistent tool of the plot into a 3-dimensional person? Yes. Yes, I am.
CHAPTER 2: The Art of Camp
“This… is my BOOMSTICK!”
If you’ll allow me a small tangent with a purpose, I must query: have y’all seen these think pieces on social media championing the Joel Schumacher Batman films (i.e. Batman Forever and Batman & Robin) as misunderstood diamonds in the ever-expanding rough that is superhero cinema? Moreover, have you seen the rancorous comments and counter essays that endeavour to prove not only that those films are derided for good reason, but that the people who suggest otherwise are – indeed – miscreants and ne’er-do-wells intent on robbing us of what sense we have left in this world? Well, I have. I’ve seen the banners of these two great houses snapping to attention in the morning breeze and thought, “Huh.” Look, I’m not here to say which side is sane and which side is batty (pun intended) because, honestly, I’m already halfway through defending another derided entry in an ongoing franchise and this spud of a body can only take so much. Rather, I’m here to get at what the heart of the disagreement is: campiness.
Schumacher’s films are campy; they are absurdly exaggerated and comedically artificial, and people have lots of feelings about that. Some absolutely adore campiness – an essential part of a balanced cinematic breakfast, they say. Others are deathly allergic to it, needing all their media to be grounded in reality lest their belief be over-suspended. And now you should be able to see where I’m going with this, for the Evil Dead movies – and especially Army of Darkness – are also incredibly campy. How campy? Well, Army of Darkness is a film where a man fixes his overstretched face by shaking it a bunch, where stop-motion skeletons make bone puns as they march to the tune of a femur flute, and where the lead villain is defeated by being catapulted into the sky with a bag of lit gunpowder attached to his bottom. For God’s sake, the love interest’s introduction in this medieval-set movie is accompanied by whimsical pan flute. Pan flute, I say! Certainly, we are not dealing with subtlety here; we are dealing with absurdity, exaggeration, and camp.
I haven’t always been a fan of camp. Even now, I am often hesitant to praise or even try films that hit the ol’ schnoz with too strong a resemblance to cheese or ham. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if our good friend Bleven Blarvey’s refusal to watch Army of Darkness even once is the result of a similar sensitivity to cinematic dairy. Far be it from me to disagree with the combined nasal tidings of both Mr. Blarvey and myself, but I gotta say that I quite enjoy the campiness in Army of Darkness, mainly because of its sincerity. “Sincerity” is a weird word to use in the context of a medieval parody film; perhaps “earnestness” is more fitting? For this is not a half-assed attempt at medieval camp. There are expansive sets that perfectly recreate not the dark ages, per se, but the sound stages with which cinema of yore used to showcase the dark ages. There’s armour and swords and shields and torches and real damn horses (no coconuts here). Not to mention the score, which is a loving recreation of every vaguely medieval theme you’ve ever heard.
Perhaps that last sentence has serendipitously struck on the concept best with its use of the word “loving”. There is so much detail and attention paid to the campy elements of this parodic film that one can’t help but feel the love the filmmakers have for it. Certainly, this has been a consistent trait throughout the Evil Dead movies, as even back in the days of The Evil Dead I – when Campbell and Raimi were accompanied by less than a dozen crewmates, none having much in the way of feature-length film experience – the campy effects and premise still gushed love in all its crimson, corn-syrupy glory. Not to get all Anne-Hathaway-in-Interstellar on you, but love is the one thing we are able to perceive that transcends exaggerated effects and absurd concepts. It shines through, and its absence is what separates fun-and-fancy-free camp (à la Army of Darkness) from oh-God-oh-God-shut-it-off camp (à la [title redacted to avoid being dragged into the Great Bat Nipples War]).
Chapter 3: Masters of Craft
“Hail to the king, baby.”
I have been warned by my beleaguered legal team (my be-legal-ed team, if you will) that the saccharine nature of last chapter’s main conceit (i.e. love is good) might send a good chunk of my readers into some form of diabetic coma, for which I would be culpable. Therefore, let’s chase down that big wad of sugar with some good ol’ talk about craft. For while I stand by my statement that love for the material can make or break campy films, that only really applies if you’re a good enough filmmaker to render that love on screen in a way that is at least legible.
I should hope that I don’t have to convince anyone that Sam Raimi is a good filmmaker. Ron Bergan – biographer to the Coen brothers and flippant Raimi rejector extraordinaire – might be a lost cause, but the rest of the thinking public should be able to look back over a filmography that includes everything from The Evil Dead (one of the most beloved B movies ever) to Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man (the superhero franchise of a generation) and think, “Hey, that Sam kid is all right at making pictures.” On the other hand, I might have to convince you that Army of Darkness showcased just how much Raimi’s craft as a director had improved since the first in the franchise and acted as a promissory note of the success that was to come. Admittedly, it may be hard to see the craft through the dense foliage of schlock, but trust me when I say that it is there.
After all, directing a movie like Army of Darkness is a hefty task, especially when compared to the first Evil Dead movie. Don’t get me wrong, shooting The Evil Dead was no walk in the park either (the production has been readily compared to Vietnam by many of those involved), but back in those days Raimi managed an aforementioned dirty dozen for his cast/crew, enjoyed relative freedom from investors, and had a single – albeit temperamental – shooting location. Army of Darkness, on the other hand, had multiple shooting locations in deserts and forests, constant studio oversight/interference, and a massive cast of extras bursting with knights, horses, puppets, and stop-motion skeletons. A step up in intensity, no doubt, and one that would likely serve Raimi well when he would step even more up for Spider-Man ten years later.
Despite this obvious increase in directing responsibilities on a macro level (i.e. managing a production), the things that make Raimi a great director on a micro level (i.e. shooting scenes) remained intact. A casual glance at any of the action, comedy, or horror scenes within Army of Darkness reveals a deft hand in the dark arts of framing, composition, and timing. There’s one shot I particularly love that takes place just after Ash has escaped The Pit and its ghoulish inhabitants, where Raimi is able to fit practically the entire extended cast’s reactions of awe into a single dolly shot by having them perfectly slide in from out of frame as the camera pulls back. It’s a great shot that does a lot of work while going effectively unnoticed – ’cept by me, ’cause I’m weird like that.
But Raimi isn’t the only one swinging for the fences in this flick; after all, we can’t forget about his ol’ buddy Campbell, who has plenty of opportunities at bat and makes the most of them all. You can see him swinging with an intensity hitherto undreamt of at the horror pitches, where his screams, grunts, and unhinged laughter sell even the most ridiculous of concepts. You can hear the unmistakable thwack of bat-meets-ball for every action pitch sent his way, whether it be the mental game of playing a man being attacked by many smaller versions of himself, or the intricacies of faking a battle with stop-motion combatants that aren’t even present. Oh, and how could we forget that grand slam of oration where Ash lectures a motley crew of peasants and knights alike on the values of shopping at S-Mart in a speech that rivals the likes of Charlie Chaplin at the end of The Dictator (in terms of verve, not content).
Yet sprinkled amongst all the deltoid-tearing bat flinging, there are a few softer moments where Campbell ties up Ash’s usually free-to-roam tongue and swallows it for good measure. One of these moments is at Ash’s lowest point when he is getting chewed out by his love interest, and another is near the very end when Ash is being hit on by a girl (who, interestingly, would later go on to not marry Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer). In both scenes, Campbell decides to let a little bit of that shy, sappy kid from the first Evil Dead movie back into the performance, dropping his eyes to the ground and his volume below that of a whisper as he retreats into a past version of himself. It’s a beautiful feather in Campbell’s already laden cap that he can pull off that reversion.
Do all of the swings taken by Campbell and Raimi make contact in Army of Darkness? No – I mean, obviously not. But man, when they hit…
Epilogue: ONE Last Ride IN the Oldsmobile
“Lady, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the store.”
After all that singing, praising, and singing whilst praising, I fear that I may be misconstrued in my intentions. To be clear, Army of Darkness is not better than the previous Evil Dead films. The first film is iconic and original in a way that few horror films can claim, and the second is a pitch-perfect tuning of the supposedly dissonant tones of comedy and horror. Instead, I hope my ramblings prove that Army of Darkness is a worthy addition to its predecessors, one that provides a satisfying conclusion to the otherwise discordant character arc of the main character, continues the series’ proud tradition of infusing love into hilarious camp, and showcases some of the best craft from its defining odd couple of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi.
Speaking of which, what makes Army of Darkness all the more potent is that it represents the last time that Raimi and Campbell worked together in such an all-encompassing way. Sure, Campbell shows up for cameos in almost every one of Raimi’s films that followed (including all three Spider-Man films and the Dr. Strange sequel), and the two have worked together in television many a time (remember those Hercules and Xena shows that were all the rage in the ’90s?). But Campbell has never again been a leading man in a Sam Raimi feature-length film – at least, not yet. Personally, I would pay good money to see these two reunite for one last kick at the proverbial can. In fact, there’s supposed to be a new Evil Dead movie coming out sometime in 2023 (likely titled The Deadites Take Manhattan or something). At the moment, both Campbell and Raimi are signed on as producers only, but if I learned anything from the Snyder Cut it’s that a group of annoying people with money to burn can convince Hollywood to move mountains, even if those mountains should have stayed where they were.
So, I say to you, my fellow fans of the odd couple known as Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, the time to act is now. We shall stockpile an arsenal of flutes, be them femur or pan. We shall march through the darker parts of realms both real and digital. We shall rain aggravating communiqués upon the heads of every studio from Disney to A24. We shall push and prod until we are given a feature-length Campbell and Raimi reunion, be it in the Evil Dead universe or another of their choosing. Now… who’s with me?
…
Oh right, call and response doesn’t really work in this kind of medium. In that case, feel free to send your agreement to be part of the Campbell and Raimi Reunion Army to the Things I Fear contact email, attention of Bleven Blarvey. I am sure he will be happy to receive them!
