Army of Darkness (1992)

Hail to the king, baby...

If the difference in tone was significant between the original Evil Dead and its sequel, then be prepared to enter a different universe with Army of Darkness. In fact, I have to agree with the fans who say this shouldn't even be counted as an Evil Dead movie. It's not. Bruce Campbell isn't even acting here. He's not Ash...he's fucking BRUCE CAMPBELL. The opening even says, "Bruce Campbell vs. The Army of Darkness."

Sure, we get one outing with the Evil-cam but all the original horror elements have vanished here (including the over-the-top gore), replaced with ridiculous slapstick comedy (Ash vs. tiny Ash clones and then Ash vs. skeleton mannequins) and one-liners spit out by a hardcore action hero equipped with a chainsaw and his trademark, "boomstick."

There's a reason Army of Darkness is a cult classic...mainly because it's FUCKING AWESOME! This movie kicks the shit out of basically every movie made between the years 2000 - 2010. At no point was this trying to be anything but campy action fun featuring Bruce Campbell. I don't even think this movie was made to make money (an impossible feat by today's standards). It just seems like a movie where a bunch of buddies got together with millions of dollars and said, "Let's make a movie that kicks ass about Bruce fighting a bunch of skeleton dummies and throw in some cheap claymation." And you know what? They succeeded.

No one can watch this movie and not have fun. I watched this movie with my wife (who is a big fan of another Raimi project, Xena: Warrior Slut) and even she enjoyed it. Of course, that could have something to do with her being wet for Bruce Campbell, but, in all fairness, who ISN'T wet for Bruce Campbell? Fuck, I'm wet for Bruce Campbell. Groovy...

Why It's Awesome: Two Words...Bruce Campbell.

Best Quotes (Here we go...):

"You see this? This is my BOOMSTICK!"

"Shop smart...shop S-Mart."

"You ain't leadin' but two things right now: Jack and shit...and Jack left town."

"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."

"Honey, you got real ugly."

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

Groovy...

Wow. Talk about a major difference in tone! The first Evil Dead was a straight up B horror flick (with a tree raping scene). Evil Dead II, however, is such an odd blend of horror and humor that there's literally no movie it can be compared to. Evil Dead is essentially its own genre.

I will say that The Three Stooges inspired most of this movie's humor, BUT...(wait for it)...the comedic scenes were my LEAST favorite parts of the movie. In fact, I found the first forty minutes of the film difficult to watch. We get a fast-forward retelling of the original movie in the first five minutes and then the next half hour is Ash's one man show (Ash trying to escape, Ash fighting a head, Ash fighting a headless body, Ash fighting his own hand, etc.)

The major gripe I have with the first act of the film is that it has absolutely NO direction. A story is almost non-existent until we see Annie and her brother traveling to the cabin. Ash doesn't seem to have any plan for escaping the cabin or surviving the Deadite invasion. In fact, the FIRST time the movie feels like it has any objective is when Ash and Annie need to descend into the cellar to retrieve the pages from the Book of the Dead and that's 20 minutes before the end of the movie.

Of course, this flick is a classic for a reason. The character of Ash has evolved, ladies and gentleman. We no longer have the sopping wet pussy from the first film. No, sir, Ash is a hardcore badass by the time the credits roll at the end of the second movie and yes, I will admit that when Ash attached that chainsaw to his hand and sawed off the barrel of that shotgun, I did sprout a groovy boner right there on the spot. The camera work is still mind-blowing, especially the scene where the Evil chases Ash through the cabin...another boner-inducing moment. And the gore, yes, the gore is absolutely insane. When Jake gets sucked down into the fruit cellar and a torrential spray of blood erupts from the cellar door like he's being shoved into a giant paper shredder, that was an EPIC WIN for horror gore-fans everywhere.

And the ending left me thirsty for Army of Darkness and the conclusion of the series. Hail to the king, baby!

Why It's Awesome: If you tell me to picture the most hardcore badass I could possibly imagine, it's a man with a chainsaw for a hand and armed with a sawed-off shotgun and that's exactly what we get in this movie.

Best Quote: Although I love "Groovy," I'm going to have to go with...

Henrietta: Someone's in my fruit cellar! Someone with a fresh sooooooul!

Evil Dead (1981)

This is what a low-budget horror movie should be.

I've never seen the Evil Dead trilogy in its entirety so I decided to make it my mission to watch Bruce Campbell's magna opus. Obviously the first film of the trilogy is the rawest of the bunch, encumbered with a low budget, poor acting, and limited locales, but, God, what Sam Raimi does well, he does very well. Some people seem to forget that before all the over-the-top violence and Ash's ascension to campy action hero, The Evil Dead was just another horror flick working on a limited budget and Ash was kind of a bitch.

Some of this movie's obvious weaknesses (the most obvious being the low budget) are also its greatest strengths. The fact that the Evil Force is nothing more than a shaky camera creates a real sense of horror in this film, most likely because Raimi is such a master behind the camera. The effects are cheesy and the gore is over the top, but the movie rides the line between horror and comedy so well that it all works perfectly.

And then there's Bruce Campbell. Really, ignoring his legacy, through the first half of this film, Campbell is painfully average until he's the last man standing and everyone else is a creepy, flesh-eating psycho. And that's when he steps up his game to LEGENDARY status because you can tell he's working his ASS OFF to make this film work in spite of all its shortcomings. At no point does he come off as anything but a complete pussy during the course of this film and yet, you're still rooting for him to make it. He gets his ass handed to him by every zombie teen in the movie until he's drenched in blood and he just keeps on ticking. Once you add in the funny one-liners, there won't be anything to stop him...

Oh, and then there's the tree raping scene. How could this not become a classic?

Why It's Awesome: The beginning of the Bruce Campbell legend, complete with a book made of human skin, tree-raping, ankles being stabbed with pencils, and dismemberment. And it only gets better from here...

Best Quote: Nope...not quite yet. We'll fill this section quite a bit with the next installment...