Terrific stuff, action, humour and horror all in one

Rating: 8/10 (5 June 2013)

It's an incredibly interesting process to watch the Evil Dead series evolve over time. The first starts out ultra low budget and one of the 'video nasties' that the press was so outraged by in the early 80s. The second is very different in tone, less of a straight horror film than an action comedy. Nowadays considering some of the gorno you do get I think Evil Dead 2 would probably get away with a 15 rating. Personally I'm one who can't be bothered with Evil Dead but think Evil Dead 2 is bloody wonderful. Army of Darkness takes it one step further, really it should have gone all out to be a PG film complete with action figures but you were never going to get that in a film with blood fountains, demon rape and a central character who has a chainsaw instead of one of his hands (famously Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the most censored film in history because every single scene of a character wielding a set of nunchukas was edited out). Also you would have lost all the hard core horror fans from the first 2 films.
Once again a terrific performance from Bruce Campbell, some killer lines and brilliant spectacle, I wonder what Ray Harryhausen thought of it all?
As for the ambiguity of the ending I figure that Ash miscounts the drops and ends up in the future but eventually overcomes the deadites there and is able to return to his job at S-Mart in the present day, hence the apocalypse ending just precedes the S-mart ending (presumably Ash is too embarrassed to tell the truth).
So part 4? Hmmm, I'd prefer to see maybe another story in the present time with Ash coming to the rescue but we'll see.