Director; Sam Raimi (USA). Year of Release: 1992
Outside, “around 1300 years after Christ”. A voiceover tells us “my name is Ash and I am a slave”. We see a line of men in chains – captives of King Arthur. One of them is a tall pretty man with a dimpled chin. Like the others, his hands are fastened to a block of wood above his head – well they would be if one of his hands weren’t missing. The others are soldiers loyal to Arthur’s rival Henry the Red. Arthur dispatches his enemies to battle with beasts in a subterranean pit.
The first man who plunges into the pit soon emerges as a pool of blood, as if a whale were spouting red paint from within. Ash is next. In the pit, he fights off demons, and manages to climb out just as the spikes at each side are closing in on him. After this experience, he decides that it’s time to stop pissing around, and draws out his boomstick – a shotgun which he carries on his back, and uses to shoot into the crowd when they get too near.
Just as we’re getting started, we’re provided with a whole heap of exposition. Apparently Army of Darkness is the second sequel to The Evil Dead, and I presume we’re being shown the plots to the Evil Dead I and II (somehow missed them when they came out). This involves fighting corpses, Ash losing his hand to a chainsaw, and replacing it with a metallic gripping object. For reasons of Plot, Ash loses his girlfriend and travels back in time, accompanied by his car and the shotgun.
Ash now has a mission – to return to the 20th Century, for which he needs to find the Necromicon, a Book of the Dead, which is bound in human flesh and written in blood. All he needs to do is utter the magic words and he is home. But Ash stumbles of the words and summons up the forces of darkness, led by his evil twin. It’s an easy mistake to make. Most of the rest of the film involves Ash and Arthur holding off an army of the undead, who by their nature are difficult to kill off.
This evening’s performance ended with a round of applause. Looking at IMDB, I have rarely seen a film with more 10/10 user reviews. And most critics seem to be equally enraptured. Even the ambiguous reviews say things like “No matter what your opinion is of the movie, you’re unlikely to be bored”. Well I’m sorry for not conforming to expectations, but I was bored rigid from beginning to end. I think I saw why people laughed, but that didn’t make it funny.
Army of Darkness is obviously a parody, both of horror films and of swords and sandals epics. The joke appears to be that it parodies how shit most films in this genre are by, well being a bit shit itself. Which is not a good way of keeping us entertained. But the more I read the ecstatic reviews, I realise that this is not the joke at all. Army of Darkness is loved by people who say that the films it is parodying are shit, but have paid a level of attention to these films which betrays a deep fanship.
For those of us who find endless scenes of men in chain metal armour hitting each other to be deeply boring, there is nothing exciting about watching just that. It looks like the people who love Army of Darkness have seen one of these films, and then watched another and another and another. Their appreciation of this film is one that admires the way in which it sticks closely to the genre rules, no matter how dumb these films are.
Army of Darkness tries to be silly, which is not a bad thing in itself, but as Nigel Tufnell will tell you, there’s a whole lot of difference between silly and stupid. It wants to give the impression of a carefree film which is just playing around, one in which some 14th century peasants could create an internal combustion engine from an old Chemistry book. But it just tries too hard to show an internal logic, which makes the scenes which don’t just make sense just look bewildering.
I realise that there’s no accounting for a sense of humour. There are some things that some people just find funny and others don’t. Many reviews have compared Army of Darkness to the Three Stooges (comedians who I never fully got) and Wile E Coyote (who displays in 5 seconds more wit and ingenuity than anything on offer here). But if I find repeated scenes of big men hitting each other to be just not funny, and you think they’re hilarious, there is just little room for debate.
Understanding this, let me tentatively raise a serious point. Army of Darkness treats its female character (there’s only really one) absolutely abominably. It fails the Bechdel test with spades, as Sheila, the one serious female character, is only there to be a love or hate interest for Ash. She barely says a word, but Ash is allowed at different moments, call her a bitch and a witch, or come on to her, saying “Gimme some sugar baby”.
So many reviews have mentioned this final quote that it’s obviously not just supposed to be funny – many critics see it as one of the best lines in the film. Maybe me objecting to its presence merely shows my limited sense of humour, and I should just lighten up and laugh along. And maybe if I found the rest of the film funny, this would be easier to do. You might argue that the film is making fun of Ash’s macho shortcomings. Or perhaps it has been written without women in mind.
Army of Darkness seems to have been written for 14 year old boys, and I guess that even 14-year old boys deserve something to have been written just for them (though I can think of other groups which have been less well served by Hollywood). And I realise that me moaning because I don’t understand a film which other people love adds little to the debate. Except maybe to say, if you did see it and you don’t see what all the fuss is about – it’s ok, you’re not alone.
CinePhil 