Sam Raimi’s breakthrough feature The Evil Dead and its sequel comfortably count among the finest efforts the horror genre has ever had to offer. While they weren’t without a chuckle or two, the comedy was more of a jet-black and situational variety, which made it all the more jaw-dropping when threequel Army of Darkness went full-bore into all-out laughs among the bloody carnage.
The filmmaker and star Bruce Campbell weren’t exactly churning out new adventures for Ash on the regular, with the three-film arc taking 11 years to draw to a close, and it also makes sense that Army of Darkness fared the worst of the trio among critics. Not everyone was entirely sold on such a jarring tonal shift, but all you need to do is ask someone for their opinion on the film 30 years later to get an instant feeling for how deeply its wormed the way into the hearts of Deadite diehards everywhere.
That’s extended onto the post-Halloween streaming charts, too, with FlixPatrol revealing that Army of Darkness has become one of the Top 10 most-watched titles among iTunes subscribers in the United Kingdom, a well-deserved return to form or a madcap historical adventure that throws absolutely everything at the wall in the hopes that most of it will stick – which it does.
Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Army of Darkness finds the iconic protagonist finds himself transported to medieval times with chainsaw in tow, where he ends up setting off to recover the infernal Book of the Dead. Of course, Ash is about as sick and tired of the Necronomicon as you’d expect him to be given his previous dalliances with the tome, leading to a genre-bending dash through the past to get the job done in spectacular fashion.