Army of Darkness

The third film in the Evil Dead series is so far from the first that it would be hard to tell they're even related except for the presence of Bruce Campbell, who carries the movie the whole way. Any horror elements have been limited to the grotesque appearance of the bad guys, as it's a mix of a slapstick comedy and a fantasy epic for the most part. Ash has been transported back in time, and must recover the Book of the Dead in order to save a small kingdom from the Deadites as well as return himself to his own time. It's a lot shorter and lower in budget than most films of its attempted scope, but succeeds because of its limitations as much as the quality of the humor and action. It's kind of funny to see how Sam Raimi squeezed every single drop of potential out of what he had to work with less than a decade before he took on one of the highest budgeted film series ever.

The film might have been built up a bit too much for me over the years, because I enjoyed it, but not as much as the first two movies. It's fun, but doesn't quite have the same edge. The gore is mostly gone, and the detour in the windmill where he gets terrorized by his own doppelgangers seemed to hurt the momentum, even if it was fairly entertaining. I did like the crazy contraptions Ash helped come up with to fight off the evil hordes near the end though, and while it's relatively tame, any time he uses his "boomstick" with authority is a good one. They've gone over the edge this time, as the gun only takes two shells but he can fire it like eight times in a row without reloading. He has enough one-liners and moments of badassness that you can never go too long without remembering that he's awesome. There's been talk for a while about possibly doing a fourth film sometime, and that's something I wouldn't mind seeing.