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ARMY OF DARKNESS – Joseph Lo Duca
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Army of Darkness is the third instalment of director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, and is a direct continuation of the story of 1987’s Evil Dead II. The plot of that film saw its protagonist, Ash, inadvertently summon a demon after reading passages from an ancient ‘book of the dead’. His girlfriend Linda is possessed by the demon, and attacks him, and in the ensuing battle he has his hand severed at the wrist with a chainsaw. Eventually Ash is able to defeat the demon, but in doing so he accidentally opens a temporal vortex to the Middle Ages, through which he and his car are transported. Army of Darkness follows the story from that point on, as Ash enlists the help of a medieval lord, falls in love with the lord’s daughter, and has to search for another version of the ‘book of the dead’ that will allow him to return home – all while battling more demonic ‘deadites’. The film starred Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, and Marcus Gilbert, and was a moderate commercial success, but unfortunately was not well-liked by critics, many of whom were disappointed with its campier, less horrific tone. It ultimately ended the Evil Dead franchise for more than 20 years, until it was resurrected and rebooted by director Fede Álvarez in 2013. Read more…
EVIL DEAD 2 – Joseph Lo Duca
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the wake of the unexpected success of the low-budget horror movie The Evil Dead in 1981, writer/director Sam Raimi was given $3.5 million by producer Dino Di Laurentiis to make a bigger-budget sequel, which both re-made the original film with better special effects and more professional production values, and continued the story. The result is 1987’s Evil Dead 2, in which the hapless hero Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) continues to do battle with the terrifying ‘deadites,’ re-animated corpses possessed by the evil power of an ancient book who prevent him from escaping the ‘cabin in the woods’ and returning to civilization with all his extremities intact. With it’s spectacularly gory blood-splattered special effects, overblown humor, and frenetic visual style, Evil Dead 2 quickly became a cult hit, almost doubling its budget at the box office, and initiating a franchise that continues to this day. The film co-starred Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Kassie Wesley, and Richard Domeier, and had an original score by Michigan-born composer Joseph Lo Duca. Read more…
EVIL DEAD – Roque Baños
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The original Evil Dead was a groundbreaking and convention-shattering horror movie when it was first released in 1981; it launched the career of director Sam Raimi as a new and exciting voice in genre cinema, and the film itself became notorious as a bloody, darkly funny, brilliant assault on the senses – so much so that, in the UK, it became the poster child of the ‘video nasty’ campaign initiated by the self-appointed monitor of British morals, Mary Whitehouse, and was banned on VHS in England for quite some time. 35-year-old Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez’s new version of the film takes what is essentially the same story – a group of friends make their way to an isolated cabin in the woods, and inadvertently release a terrifying demon into the world by way of an ancient book – but dispenses with much of the original film’s gallows humor, while simultaneously increasing the gore content exponentially for jaded new millennium audiences. Blood, guts, vomit, and other assorted entrails splatter the screen for 92 stomach churning minutes, but somehow the film feels less satisfying than the original, taking itself a little too seriously, and in no way living up to its hyperbolic publicity tagline of being “the most terrifying film you will ever experience”. The film stars Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore, and is produced by Raimi and the original film’s star, Bruce Campbell. Read more…
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