Army of Darkness

Army of Darkness should have been many things, especially in the eyes of fans of the preceding films of the Evil Dead franchise, but also partly from the perspective of the filmmakers, which is reflected in, among other things, the existence of four different versions of the film. In the end, the version released to cinemas remains the best, as it condenses the essence of the film and of Raimi’s style. The result is the most comic-bookish film not based on a comic book and the best animated movie in a live-action format. Raimi makes Ash a dime-a-dozen hero along the lines of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, or rather Tommy Monaghan or even Jérôme Moucherot, who keeps finding himself in all kinds of goofy adventures in various genre settings. In addition to that, he gives his previously completely unexplored hero an appropriately absurd background, or even an origin story. But he also endows him with a distinct personality for the first time in a parody of tough-guy comic-book heroes, thus making him not only ultra-macho, but peculiarly also a ridiculous simpleton, asshole and buffoon. Contingent on a contractual commitment to the studio, Raimi conceived this sequel to the Evil Dead franchise as a pure provocation in which he unrestrainedly piles up frantic fantasy premises and joyfully plays around with special effects. Thanks to the fantasy framework, he was able to paraphrase and elaborate on his favourite special-effects sequences from Gulliver's Travels and Jason and the Argonauts in his own style. On top of that, he had at his disposal both an adequate budget to execute a range of delightfully handmade and honestly primitive tricks, and mainly the living visual effect that is Bruce Campbell. Army of Darkness definitively established Campbell’s persona as an actor, which many of his later roles would paraphrase (and which is fundamentally different from his actual nature). We could even say that this stylised Campbell is the film’s main character, as indicated by “Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness” in the opening credits. Raimi self-indulgently counters the character traits described above by making the actor the live-action equivalent of animated slapstick characters. In Evil Dead II, he let Campbell’s slapstick acting shine spectacularly, for the purpose of he again creates entirely gratuitous but enchantingly entertaining sequences interspersed with other visual effects. Raimi works with Campbell as he would with an animated figure that he can deform in all possible ways, multiply and, mainly, expose to bizarrely painful but, at the same time, non-injurious hardships. We can also find parallels with the expressive means of animation rather than live-action film in other formalistic aspects of Army of Darkness. Raimi thus variously combines action with live actors and stop-motion animation and finds ingenious ways to handle the shots of the army of the dead by combining the background with actors in costume with puppet animation in the foreground. Of the myriad imaginatively shot sequences with toy-like qualities, I’ll highlight the fight with the witch, where Raimi uses various techniques to enhance the impression of fast and wild action. In addition to slow motion and leaving out frames, we can find here another method used exclusively by animators of slapstick films, who do not draw anatomically accurate phases of movement in individual frames, but instead deliberately draw them in a deformed or exaggerated manner in order to make a more spectacular impression. In the shot where Campbell throws a roundhouse kick at the witch, Raimi added the sole of the protagonist’s shoe to one frame in post-production. The viewer barely notices this while watching, but our senses register and evaluate the perception with the appropriately enhanced effect. (11/18/2022) (less) (more)