The film that has what HARRY POTTER so desperately needed, a central character to blow everyone else out of the water!

Rating: Null/10 (8 December 2001)

Perhaps my personal all-time most cherished flick, ARMY OF DARKNESS is easily the most ENTERTAINING film ever made. Following on seamlessly from the first two tales in the trilogy, its way bigger budget shows. EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN was a classic in its own right (will anyone, and I mean ANYONE ever top the plate-smashing sequence?) but this is another level up again!
Unless you are dead, one-dimensional, humorless or just straight-out contrary, you could not fail to be dragged along here for a riotous and action-orientated laugh-fest.
After Ash and his beat-up Chev are sucked into the vortex in 2, they are spewed out in medieval times...none too gently either! It is the very mix of impossibly conflicting worlds that sets this film up for so much good-natured (and scripted) idiocy. A send up of every schlocky horror made, including itself, Ash battles the armies of the evil dead after he fails to retrieve the Necronomican without uttering syllable for syllable the immortal words "Klaatu Barada Nicto." Playing multiple roles here (check it out, if you didn't know already), Ash is the bravest knight of them all, wielding one-liners as dextrously as his broadsword and chainsaw.
This is fun with a capital "H." Amazing fx and Danny Elfman's stirring score is as good as anything he has ever done. It is NOT a film to analyse and critically disassemble, it is one to ride and kick-ass with! Perhaps the absolute highlight of the flick is the very last scene in the supermarket - "Gimme some sugar baby." No film to my knowledge has come up with any more inspired an ending.
Bruce Campbell is so perfectly cast as Ash...he can never escape the role - nor would any of us ever want him too. For all that Brando, De Niro, Pacino, Davis (Bette), etc, have achieved, Campbell has topped them all as far as screen "immortality" is concerned. Who will ever forget, "Well maybe not EVERY little syllable!"
Much as I would like to see Sean Connery do one more Bond, I would prefer to see EVIL DEAD 4!