Fun and frolics in fantasyland

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2001)

Poor old Bruce Campbell. He just can't catch a break. Once again, he's everybody's favourite punchbag, but at least he gets to deliver some cracking dumb-but-funny macho misogynist lines.
The film starts slowly and patchily, and it's no longer even pretending to be horror, or a gore fest - it's a slapstick comedy "Cult of Ash" vehicle, pure and simple. That's not necessarily a criticism, and things picks up when the titular Army of Darkness appears - a dodgily animated but genuinely charismatic skeleton horde that are actually better actors than the generic mediaeval live action rabble!
The plot is painfully thin, and the whole film is basically a series of vignettes leading to excuses for a one liner or a quote (or, bizarelly, a *misquote* of Henry V). Really, the only thing worth watching is Bruce Campbell as the various incarnations of Ash, but he is *very* watchable. Indeed, when Raimi and Robert Tapert went on to develop this "psuedo historical slapstick action" concept into the Herculese and Xena shows, it's amazing that Bruce was only given an occasional guest role.
All that said, Army of Darkness isn't something I could watch a lot. There's only really half a good film in there, plus some rather lame padding. The thought occurs that it could probably be edited right down to a quality 1 hour TV special and not lose anything significant.