Transcript

Ash (Army of Darkness)

All right, you primitive screw heads, listen up. See this? This is my boomstick. It's a 12 gauge double barreled Remington. S Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right. This sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about 109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel and a hair trigger. That's right, Shop smart, Shop S Mart. You got that? Now I swear the next one of you primates even touches me. Now let's talk about how I get back home.

Steve

It's two Dads one Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged dads sit around and shoot the about the movies of the 80s and 90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

I'm Nic.

Steve

And today we are Talking about the 1992 horror comedy Action classic, army of Darkness.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Yeah, I'll lay it all out. This is one of my favorite movies of all time. This is so much fun. It is a movie that is both a sequel and not. It's sort of a standalone. You know, it obviously is the third movie in the Evil Dead franchise from Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell after Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. But there's a reason they didn't call this Evil Dead 3, army of Darkness. They just, they just called it army of Darkness. It really stands on its own. Nic, what's your history with army of Darkness?

Nic

I think I first saw this high school, maybe like junior sophomore year of high school. And again, VHS classic. This is definitely one of those movies that someone would say, hey man, you.

Steve

Got to see this movie. Yes. Yeah. This was the kind of the word.

Nic

Of mouth for it.

Steve

This was the kind of movie that like, we didn't have social media back then, but this was the kind of thing everybody learned about from like some friend who like, knew someone with an older brother. Right, Exactly. It was like, this is. It would just spread like wildfire. So even us, you know, maybe like 14 and 15 year olds were like, we got to see this movie, you know?

Nic

Yeah. And it checks so many boxes for a good movie of that era. It's very short.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

Very quotable, very high action value. There's not a downside. There's not any downtime really in the movie. And man, it was one where you could dip in at any time. And it was fun to quote back and forth with your friends and everything. I remember we even Had a high school, some kind of project where we had to write a fictional something, and we had used army of Darkness as the base for it. And I can't remember the class it was, but we basically use this story to apply to our school project one time. So, yeah, this one. One is great. And I was really. I had a really close relationship with this for a long time, but I haven't seen it in forever.

Steve

Oh, my gosh.

Nic

And kind of forgotten a lot about it. So I'm really excited to talk about this one today. How about you? When did you get into this one?

Steve

Yeah, this would have been high school at some point, I think. I. So back in high school, when I was like, a sophomore, I joined like, an upper. A drama program with a bunch of upperclassmen. So I got. I kind of got to know a bunch of juniors and seniors that year, and they introduced me to a ton of movies I probably was too young to really see at the time. Reservoir Dogs, this movie, a handful of others. And. Yeah, so it was something that I just saw because it was the kind of thing that I think gathered a lot of different kinds of nerds. You know, there were like, horror nerds. There were like, theater nerds. There were like, you know, action movie nerds. And then we'd all like. Everybody loved army of Darkness. Like, it really ticks. It tick the boxes for almost everybody. Yeah, it's just one that. That has always been, you know, part of. Of my sort of personal pop culture lexicon. Right. Like, it's definitely like Ash Williams and Bruce Campbell. Bruce Campbell in general is sort of something of a hero of mine. He, you know, is also one of the major stars of the USA action thriller series, which is one of my favorite things of all time.

Nic

Steve's USA series of the week.

Steve

Yeah, so good. But, yeah, so it's fantastic. I'm gonna run down a handful of facts on army of Darkness. It was released on February 19, 1992, with an R rating. It has a running time of 81 minutes, was directed by Sam Raimi, and it was written by Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan Raimi. The star is Bruce Campbell. He not only plays the protagonist, he plays the main villain as well. So this is a Bruce Campbell movie. The scores on this one, 68% rotten tomatoes. I think that's a little low with you. I think that that is a lot of critics with a stick up their ass who weren't into the sort of campiness and really into what Raimy and Campbell were doing with the plot. And the script and the characters. Yeah, but that's okay. The IMDb score much, much more accurate in my opinion, as far as, like, where it really fits with a 7.4. I think anytime you get something over 7 on IMDb, that is the audience really saying, this is a movie we love. We really do. If you can get over eight, that's when you've got the absolute, you know, kind of best movies of all time. It won several awards. This movie won best horror film at the 1994 Saturn Awards, which we've mentioned. The Saturn Awards.

Nic

That's right.

Steve

Or horror, sci fi, fantasy. I think Groundhog Day featured an award win at the Saturn Awards. Might have even been the 94 ones. Potentially.

Nic

So potentially this year for the Saturn Awards.

Steve

But the Thingoria chainsaw awards in 1994, this movie was nominated for six awards and swept won all six. Best actor for Bruce Campbell. Best supporting actress for Forgive Me, I Forget Her Name, but the woman who plays she, the the sort of romantic lead won best supporting actress. Best soundtrack for Danny Elfman. It was Danny Elfman and another composer. But very good, crazy good soundtrack. Best makeup effects, that's not a surprise. And Best wide release Film because apparently the Fangori Awards does denote between wide release films and more independent films to give those those a shot. But basically Best Picture, their version of best picture.

Nic

And what kind of horror movies were we getting at this time? I mean, I feel like we were in a weird spot for horror because we were getting a lot of kind of like fourth and fifth installments of the Freddy and Jason type movies.

Steve

A lot of people. So I love horror movies. I'm kind of a student of horror movies. And not that I necessarily agree with it. A lot of people feel like the 90s was a bit of a low point for horror movies. Like, there's a lot of sort of belief, I think, among horror fans that we're kind of right now in the middle of a horror renaissance today.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

If you go back to about 2015 to now, there have been just some of the most amazing horror films released of all time.

Nic

Like the get out era, all the.

Steve

Jordan Peele stuff, all the James Wan stuff, all, you know, everything from like conjuring all the stuff, all the Ari Aster and Robert Eggers stories of the witch, the Lighthouse, Hereditary, Midsommar, you know, these are fantastic, creative movies. And the 80s obviously gave us the birth of the slasher. That was the heyday of Wes Craven, John Carpenter, you know, folks like that. And the 90s were kind of not as Much. So, yeah, we had, we had a.

Nic

Lot of Stephen King adaptation.

Steve

Stephen King adaptations. So there were things like Misery that, you know, was obviously fantastic and in that style. There were a lot of slashers, but they were, yeah, they were the, you know, Friday 13th part six and, and Nightmare on Elm street five and Halloween part seven or whatever. Right, all those things. And then there were, there were gems. There were gems like this. There were. There. Obviously Scream comes out in the mid-90s and is fantastic, but yeah, this was a little bit of a time where horror was not, you know, not at its height, I guess we'll say. And this movie's not a pure horror film anyway. I mean, it certainly is a genre film and it fits into the genre, but it is at least as much a comedy as it was a horror. And. But like horror movies, you know, it did not do great at the box office on an eleven million dollar budget, which I gotta be honest, I can't believe they did what they did on just $11 million. Like the, the special effects, the puppetry, the stop motion animation, all the stuff that goes into this movie, all of the practical effects. It's incredible that they were able to do what they could. It did only pull in about 21 and a half million, so just under twice its budget at the theater, which is, you know, kind of a disappointment. Certainly not a hit movie as far as the box office goes. But, you know, this is the kind of movie that a shit. It didn't do well at the box office. It was huge in VHS sales, it was huge in DVD sales. And it's become something of a cultural touchpoint.

Nic

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, being the sequel, I think it probably helped their performance of this movie maybe by not calling it Evil Dead 3 just because the stigma that tends to be attached with these sequels, with what we just talked about, if you're in this horror, horror era and you're dealing with Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 and shit like that, you don't want to deal with Evil Dead 3.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So good move then. But it does stand alone. So getting into the movie.

Steve

Let's do it.

Nic

If you have not seen Evil Dead 1 or 2, you're fine.

Steve

Yep.

Nic

Because they do such a good job at the beginning of this movie to kind of bring us to where we are.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And they're breaking down. There's a little bit of animation in the intro. A lot of thought kind of put into this intro.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And we have Ash and he's telling the story of this evil force. You could probably tell it a little better because you.

Steve

Yeah, no, certainly it's. It's three minutes long and yet it gives us the entire plot of Evil Dead 2, like, really from Soup the Nuts and. Because this movie does pick up literally from the moment that Evil Dead 2 ends. And the last thing that happens in Evil Dead 2, basically, is that he's pulled into this portal and sent back in time and is, you know, sort of there. That's it. That's what it ends. So we start off and he is in shackles, he's in stocks being, you know, brought along with a bunch of other people in old medieval garb. And literally the first line, I love this as a first line of a movie. Like, my name's Ash and I'm a slave. It's just like, you know, and then he starts explaining everything that happened in the woods, in the cabin with his girlfriend and Evil Dead 2 and. And how he had to lop his hand off. And, you know, he basically fashions himself a little chainsaw hand, which is fantastic. But, yeah, so now he is in third, you know, as best as he can tell, 1300 AD, give or take. Right. About 600 years ago is where he goes. And he has been captured by these people in, like, armor and knights, like, whatever they are, they've got swords. He doesn't have weapons with him, and he has his chainsaw, but it, like, falls off as he comes through the portal. He doesn't seem to have a shotgun at this point, so he's immediately in mortal danger. Like, we don't pull punches. We don't do setup. Like, the first three minutes goes, here's what happened in Evil Dead 2. Here's where we are. And Ash is about to be marched to his death.

Nic

Right.

Steve

That's it. That's how we starting. That's how we meet our hero.

Nic

Yeah, which is great. He's. He's a prisoner. He's facing execution. Even even though he just landed in this place chock full of, you know, technology from this time and his chainsaw and all this stuff, you think, oh, he'd do pretty well. And it's great that the first thing that happens to him is he's immediately surrounded, taken prisoner, and about to be sent to his death because he's suspected of being a member of this rival.

Steve

Yeah, there's army. There's sort of two armies at play here. So there's Lord Arthur's army, or the White army, because they all wear white uniforms, whatever. And then there is Duke Henry's army, or The Red army, they all have red, and he's called Duke Henry the Red. And so clearly Lord Arthur's army has captured a bunch of Duke Henry's people, including Duke Henry himself. And for whatever reason, that makes literally no sense whatsoever, but okay, Lord Arthur decides he's one of Henry's men, and they take Ash into custody essentially, and march him along with Henry's men, which, you know, gives us our. One of our first great Ash Williams. Isms. That's a terrible word. I won't use that again. But, you know, he has so many great lines in this that when, you know, they're standing there before being sent to the pit, which is this, you know, torture chamber or something, we're not sure. 100. But it's where they're going to die. And, you know, Duke Henry looks at me, says, oh, you know, you're not one of my men. You know, it's like, oh, who the hell are you? He's like, I am Duke Henry. You know, I'm a leader of his peoples of the north or whatever. And he goes, well, hello, Mr. Fancy Pants. I only see you leading two things, pal. Jack and Shit Jack left town. And it's just such a. I feel like I'm watching the embodiment of like a independent comic book from, you know, the early 80s or like the late 70s that has a very sort of like post war cop talk feel, you know, and it's. It's just so. It's so much fun.

Nic

Yeah. And I think that that that's your first glimpse, if you hadn't seen previous films with him.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Just into the kind of unique effect that Bruce Campbell can have on a movie because he just. The way he reacts to things, the lines that he says, it just takes it a little out of the character that just makes it so perfect and so enjoyable. But I love that it's his opening line. He's not saying, I'm scared. How do we get out of there? His first instinct is, I got to make fun of this guy.

Steve

I got to knock you down a peg, Duke Henry. But yeah, so they're at this. They're in this courtyard of this castle, Lord Arthur's castle. And there is this like, very fancy looking, like, mechanical metal. I don't know how this exists in, in 1300 AD in England, but whatever. This covering over this hole, and it's the pit, and, and it looks just like a black abyss, like there's no sight. And another one of Henry's men gets tossed into it. Right. And so he goes falling down. And all the people cheer and they're looking down, but it's. There's not. Not much happens until we start hearing that guy scream. And then the most cartoonish volume of bright red fake blood just comes erupting out of this pit in the like. Again, just the most cartoonish way, in a way I love. I mean, I'm saying all this very positively and not derogatory. It's fantastic. An absolute geyser of more blood than can possibly be in a human's body erupts out of this thing and just covers entire parts of the courtyard. And it's like, oh, well, this is bad. We don't want to be here.

Nic

Yeah. And in the pit as a device is so good. Maybe we can do a side episode sometime on our favorite pits, right? From different movies.

Steve

Sarlacc, the rancor pit, just to name two from Return of the Jedi.

Nic

So, yeah, it was perfect because you don't know what's going on in there. You just know it's bad. You hear silence. Then you hear this person just screaming for his life. And then a geyser of blood. And it's just a perfect thing for Ash to be like, okay, so I'm next here. So he's up next, and they're pushing. And I think first he implores Henry to say, hey, tell him I'm not with you.

Steve

Because they just had the conversation. Who are you? You're not one of my men. Hey, man, tell him. Tell him. He's like, I don't think they'll listen. I don't think they'll believe me.

Nic

So the crowd has a thirst for blood, and they're pushing him towards the pit. He gets pegged in the head, right? The woman throws a rock at his head. Who's the. What's the character's name again?

Steve

Sheila.

Nic

Sheila. I think that Sheila is the teacher in the movie. Matilda.

Steve

Oh, my God. Ms. Honey, I've never seen Matilda.

Nic

Your daughter gets a little older. That might be a big one for her, but that's always a big one in my house. So that was pointed out to me by my wife as we watched this. Ash falls into the pit. I love this. This part because he falls in there. So now we're finally seeing what's in the pit. What kind of horrible thing is down there that just basically blended this previous person up and erupted his blood up. And it was kind of a creepy horror movie, almost like a. Like the child in the Exorcist type looking character. Woman who just Starts punching him in the face.

Steve

Real hard. Yeah, real hard.

Nic

And it is just great that there's no kind of supernatural anything. It's. You're gonna keep getting punched in the face and then at one point, punch, punch, punch, does the little wind up thing and then punches him again. Just the little cartoon elements that are thrown throughout this movie that make it so beautiful.

Steve

So.

Nic

But yeah, so he's in the ashes in the pit now he's getting the crappy.

Steve

Right. And it's interesting too. I think this is one of the first places I want to point out like this movie definitely has flaws. Like, I'm not going to claim that this is like a perfect film, but one of the things I did think was a little bit of like weird is like, okay, so a moment ago we're looking, we're literally get to look down into it and it is just black, it's just abyss. But then once Ash is in it, it looks like it's maybe 15ft up. Yeah, right, we there, everybody's watching him fight. They're reacting to how the fight is going. He can look up and see people looking down. At which point, you know, so he's kind of getting his butt kicked, but he's also given a little bit. But then the, the wise man, the basically the Merlin kind of character to Lord Arthur yells, you know, strange one, and he's got his chainsaw and he throws the chainsaw into the pit and Ash jumps up with his stump of a right hand and just perfect, you know, click. Like just, just nails it. And of course it's gassed up and ready to go. So he just goes and pulls a rip cord and it's ready, you know, and he's now able to fight off this sort of witch like character with his chainsaw. So he, he's gonna be fine. But then Lord Arthur has other plans in mind. So there's spike wall spikes or something that can start closing. So these are closing in on him while he's fighting. Except I noticed at the beginning of him being in the pit, he walked around looking to find what's there to fight or what's gonna happen. And he's clearly gotten to a point of the cave where the spikes don't touch. He could have just walked about 10ft in front of himself and now that might have closed up the, the path out, I don't know. But he wouldn't have died. Like it would have been, he would have been fine, you know.

Nic

Right.

Steve

But yeah, so he fights off that creature and then another Sort of very rubber mask looking creature comes out of a wall and starts attacking him and he has to fight that person, that creature off while the spikes continue to close. And he, you know, it's again, it's so cartoonish and wonderful, but he uses his belt and just, you know, sort of flinging it up to this chain that's going up as the, as the spikes close, is able to sort of ride the chain going up to get back up out. And so now he's out of the pit. He has now defeated two monsters from the pit. He's, you know, covered in like what looks like kind of like soot or mud or whatever. He's very dirty. And he goes up to Lord Arthur, who by the way, has the worst bangs I've ever seen on a man. The guy's haircut.

Nic

That's self ludicrous. Yeah. The barber technology in the 1300s was no good.

Steve

But he walks up to him, he goes, shoelaces are untied. At which point, this man has never heard of shoelaces. He's never seen a shoelace. He's never seen a shoe that laces. Like I don't know when shoelaces are invented. So maybe I'm wrong, but it just seemed like a very modern thing. But of course Lord Arthur looks down and Ash gives him the uppercut and knocks him on his ass.

Nic

It's really good that he's still, he's just not fully serious. He's still. There's an immaturity about Ash that makes him such a great character.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So. So he punches him out and he has his stuff back now.

Steve

Right. Somehow he gets the shotgun. It's not really clear where it came from, but it's in his holster or something. One point and he pulls it out because something else. I don't know if it's the same thing that he was fighting or some other creature.

Nic

It crawled back out of the pit, it looked like. Yeah.

Steve

So. But again, I don't know if it was a third one or if it was just the one he was fighting, so. But either way, another creature falls back or climbs out of the pit and he's able to blow it away with his shotgun, which of course shocks all these people because they have. Definitely have. I mean, shoelaces might have been invented in 1300s, but like guns certainly hadn't. So these folks have no idea what they're talking about. Which of course then leads to maybe the most famous exchange or maybe most famous line in the movie, which is, you know, okay, you Primitive. Primitive numbskulls or something. This is my bone stick. You know, it's like. It's just a classic, but. Yeah. So he's now exerting technological authority essentially over the people around him. Like, he is. I don't know if they consider him magical or, like, what it is, but.

Nic

Right.

Steve

He is not of this world. They all now know.

Nic

And he's just giving the. The pitch.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

About the shotgun.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

That they're probably told to tell customers at Smart, where he works. Which is very funny, the way he's laying out the details and the walnut finish and the retail price.

Steve

1 095. Oh, man. So good.

Nic

He is. Yeah.

Steve

So much in this. In the spirit of this movie's relentless pace. The last movie we talked about a couple weeks ago is the Fugitive, which we talked about having a very fast pace and constantly giving us interesting things. Army of Darkness's pace is almost frenetic. Like, it is so fast and there's so much happening all the time. With one exception. We'll get to a little later. There's one scene I felt dragged a bit, but at this point now. Now Ash is seen as someone to be revered. Right. The wise man says he's the chosen one who's going to save them from the Necro, from the Deadites by retrieving the Necronomicon. So now he's, you know, an important person. So he's in, you know, a lounge chair and he's being fed grapes by wenches and, like, whatever. And a Deadite, one of these demonic creatures shows up and is, like, telling how you'll never find the Necronomicon, whatever. But somehow sort of faints or passes out on his own. On her own. To which Lord Arthur creeps up to her to check it out until Ash stops him. Is like. It's a trick. Get an axe. And sure enough, she pops up and another fight has to ensue. I mean, this guy just spends so much time spin kicking and shotgunning demons.

Nic

He does. And spitting out the most efficient catchphrases of all time.

Steve

Time.

Nic

It's a trick. Get an ax is just so good. Even the scene of Arthur walking up towards this Deadite that's on the ground, and you see her there with her eyes shut, but then you see the eyes pop open and she kind of.

Steve

Smirks, you know, it's clear, man, she's gonna. She's gonna get him.

Nic

Oh, man. Ash is able to dispatch this creature. And then there's a very cool scene where I Get to figure out something about my stump here. And quickly, in a great montage, with the help of some blacksmith.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

He whips up a perfectly working mechanical hand. We've got so far two missing arm, guys. Back to back movies didn't even think of that.

Steve

That's right. Yes. The one armed man from Fugitive and now Ash.

Nic

We're really. I think there's a little chain that links all this stuff.

Steve

There's an element with our podcast, Nic, where we are really committing the. This sort of volcano, Dante's Peak, deep impact, Armageddon, sort of sin of like doubling up on stuff. We've had too many. Too many movies in a row where there's some weird connection between them, but that's okay. But yes, I simply want to say let's not ask questions about how the mechanical prosthetic hand works and just enjoy the movie because it was clear, you know, since Bruce Campbell himself has a right hand, it was clear that while he was. Had a stump, you know, that arm then looked way too long. Right. You know, because it had to be covered up. His hand at the end, he could hold a fist or something. So giving him a hand to use was a pretty. Pretty good choice, I think, at that point.

Nic

And it almost seemed like. Was it a little bit of a wink at the audience? Like, because the way he looked at his stump, it did seem like. I can't film an entire movie like this.

Steve

Or carrying the chainsaw around.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

At all times and having that on horseback or whatever. Right. That would have been a pretty big pain in the ass. So, yes, now he can look balanced between his two arms. And we don't need to get into the technical details. No.

Nic

But he tests. Another great line from Ash. Tests his hand out, picks up a metal cup, squeezes it, just crushes it and then. Groovy.

Steve

Groovy. Yeah.

Nic

Stuff so great.

Steve

So now he has to go on this quest. He has to go find the Necronomicon. And this, of course, is the Book of the Dead, I believe the intro told us that it is bound in human flesh and inked in blood. And it is both, conveniently, the book that can send, you know, has passages or whatever that can send him back to his time. But it's also the book that Lord Arthur and his wise men need to fight off the Deadites. So this is an important thing to do. They teach him, you know, they. They go a certain way with him and then say, this is as far as we can go. You gotta. You keep following this path. You'll get to the graveyard where the book is. But before you pick up the book, you need to say the magic words. And he says, the wise men, as far as I can tell, says Klaatu virata niktu. And so Ash repeats it like a couple times, but then he's like, I got your words, it's fine. So real quick, Klaatu burada Nikto was from the movie the Day the Earth Stood still. And it was a command given by an alien named Klaatu to start an attack, I think on earthlings or something like that. So I've never seen they stood still. I just looked this up. So I don't know if the mispronunciation, if it was deliberately pronounced slightly differently because I feel like there's definitely a V. Like Verrata was clearly like in this one. And so I don't know if that was an intentional thing to make it different from the Day the Year Stood still or if that was just sort of like as they got into it, that's how it was said and they just ran with it. I don't know. But that was meant to be a reference to a 1951 sci fi film.

Nic

Nice. Yeah, nice. Do you think if you know the Necronomicon being bound in human skin and written in blood, so if you had it on your Kindle, you probably couldn't do a lot of spells, right?

Steve

I feel like. I feel like without certain plugins for the Kindle device itself to maybe some kind of the blood font phlebotomy. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it would work the same way. You'd have to plug. You'd have to have some kind of a blood capsule with a USB C port on it. Yeah, plug that into your Kindle.

Nic

So. So Ash is. He's now going kind of through the. The evil woods, which show up in so many movies. And there's just the evil forces chasing him where it's show camera pursuing him very quickly. Bruce Campbell once again reacting in a way that a person would react to that, where he's like, what's going on? This is what makes him so great. He's not an unshakable, brave hero. He has human reactions to things and overreactions to things. And it was very funny watching him run away, especially he gets off of his horse and then there's a scene where he's running and then a quick scene where he's clearly just running in place in real life and being hit with kind of strands of wheat in the Head to indicate that he's running through a field. And he ends up at this big kind of windmill house.

Steve

It's a windmill situation. And I think this is where a few things about that scene and the way he's running through it seems like at one point there's some stuff that was filmed on the location somewhere in an actual woods. Right. Where he was being chased by the camera through the woods. But you're right. Then there's parts where, yeah, he's clearly kind of running and place because there's so much of this movie that was done on soundstages, even a lot of the quote, you know, outdoor scenes. And most of the stuff surrounding the windmill is exactly that you can really see. There's a moon the size of the entire screen or whatever in the backdrop and then a handful of foreground sort of plants, whatever, and this windmill. But like that's clearly a soundstage. Like. Right. That's definitely just like classic practical movie making effects. And it's definitely a lot of fun. And I think that they deal with those limit the limitations brought on by that I think in fairly creative ways. Like. Yeah. Sort of like throwing branches sort of, you know, towards his face to make it look like he's running.

Nic

It looks really funny. Yeah. And then so he's in the windmill and he's. He closes the door just in time. And the evil spirits, which have no existence in our dimension somehow are getting stuck on the door and smashing the.

Steve

Doors through the door.

Nic

They can't just Alex Mack their way through.

Steve

Just not that special demons.

Nic

And he thinks he's good.

Steve

Right.

Nic

But the evil spirits are in there.

Steve

Right. Well, so the funny part is I always love the moment where he. I don't know if he starts the fire or there's a fire going already in the fireplace. And he warms both his hands of the fire, including the fake metal one. Right. It's very important to keep those warm because he shatters a mirror and he sees his own reflection in the shattered pieces of the mirror. And as he walks away, his reflections don't. And they all sort climb out of these little mirrors and it's little mini ashes. And this is one of the places where, look, the effects don't really hold up to today's standards. They're clearly. You know, there's like a lot of like blue screen going on and, and some of this stuff, but it still works. Like it absolutely works. But there are moments in this, especially when the. The little ashes have captured him. After they fight back, he kills A bunch of them. He's like. There was a fork at one, like a dart and you know, oh, I love one of them. So they capture him. He gets knocked out and he gets sort of Gulliver's Travels and he's got the like ropes over him holding him down. And two of the little ashes are like holding it. Push his nose closed and another one dives about and at that point the blue screen doesn't really work very well. That's definitely a moment where it's like, okay, this looks a little ridiculous. But then he jumps in and he decides he needs to kill the one that's now jumped into his belly by pouring a boiling water, like a tea kettle of boiling water down like in his face, all over his mouth and down his thr. Like he's made of, of. Of sterner stuff than a human being I've ever seen.

Nic

Like he really is really incredible before. Then he, his head gets knocked and he, his face is up against a stove, a wood stove that's turned on so his face is kind of cooking on the side of it. And you see his hand searching around and then reaches and grabs a spatula and kind of does an extra. Holds it up for a beat in front of the camera just to show.

Steve

Got it? Yeah.

Nic

And then he spatulizes his face off of there, which I was really good.

Steve

If you've ever, you know, tried to do hamburgers or something like that on a flat top grill and they've been. And they've stuck and you've really had to like dig, you know what those look like when you flip them over. Yeah, he, he should have had half his face gone, right? Oh yeah. If there was that hard to like get them off there, then all that skin has just melted to whatever this surface is. But of course it doesn't because our Ash is a handsome fellow and we're want to keep them that way.

Nic

Right.

Steve

This is the scene though. If the movie has a weak point to me it's that this battle with the little ashes goes on too long. There is there, there is a lot that happens, but none of it really matters until one gets inside him. Because that's when, you know, he, he's. He tries to boil it away with the boiling water, but it's still there. And it starts, you know, he gets an eyeball on his shoulder and it starts coming out right ahead. Comes out. And this is another great thing with great effects because there are times when both of the heads, because it's a super tight close up, they're both actually Bruce Campbell in, like, a split screen, you know, talking to each other, interacting. Other times. One of his heads, like, the Good Ash head, is really Bruce Campbell, and the other one is a prosthetic that's, like, attached to him but moving around a bunch. So it's sort of still. Because as he runs, he's sort of shaking it a lot and it looks like it's nodding or yelling or something. Really great stuff. And it's a combination of, obviously, the practical effects, the special effects folks on the movie being amazing and rightfully award winning. But so much of that is Bruce Campbell's acting and the way he sells it. And he sells it so well because.

Nic

He can make ridiculous faces that make the fake version of his head look more real. Because the real Bruce Campbell makes crazy faces and. And doesn't. You don't know what he's gonna do next. Yeah, really funny scene with the twin growing out of him real quick to go back to the mini ones, because I thought. Thought this was kind of funny. He's. He's stomping after him and he's about to step on it and he's saying, london Bridge is falling down. He's singing it. And the little guy puts a nail up his footsteps through the nail and he slips and falls. Which is a very Marv from Home Alone. So I don't know if that was a subtle nod to Sam Raimi's favorite movie, Home Alone. But. Yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah, he has an evil twin now.

Steve

Yes. Yeah, we'll be. And so he.

Nic

He.

Steve

There's this Bad Ash and Good Ash. That's how I refer to them for the rest of the movie. Right. So Good Ash is the hero we've been following. The twin that sort of comes out of him is Bad Ash. Even said, you're Good Ash, I'm Bad Ash. But, you know, Good Ash has shit to do. Like, he's got this book to go get. So he basically just pulls the shotgun out and blasts Bad Ash in the face and makes him fly back, you know, 20ft, maybe. He hits a tree, which wobbles as if it is. Because it probably was hollow part of the set. Whatever. It really wobbles way too much for a tree, but I'll forgive that. But, you know, it didn't even look like he was. That his face wasn't that blown away. But Good Ash has to get on with his life. So he decides to chop Bad Ash up into a bunch of pieces, throw him in a burlap sack and bury Him.

Nic

Right. And before that, he does drop the line when Bad Ash is saying, you know, I'm Bad Ash, you're Good Ash. And he shoots him. He says, good, Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.

Steve

Exactly. He goes and he finds the graveyard. So now, instead of there being one Necronomicon, like, he assumed he'd never been told anything different. There are three books. And so he's, you know, he says, do I pick one book? Do I take all books? What do I do? So he reaches for the first one, and I think it's the first one that opens up, and it's like a.

Nic

Black hole sucking in the end.

Steve

Exactly. He gets sucked in. There's a lot. Again, more great practical effects, like makeup effects of making his face look incredibly stretched long as he tries climbing back out. But all of his body is. Yeah, getting, like, pulled. And it's just none of this is cgi. Like, all of this is practical effects, and they look fantastic. And he has to, like, shake his head several times to, you know, sequentially shrink everything back. Even though Bruce Campbell already has an enormous chin, obviously. But, yeah, it's very, very funny kind.

Nic

Of moment when he first comes upon the three books. His reaction once again, where he's like, three books? Nobody said anything about three books.

Steve

Yes. And then the third book just, like, bites him. There's sort of a face on the Necronomicon, I guess that's part of the human flesh that it was bound in was somebody's face. But that part bites him and ch. On him, and he's able to sort of throw it away. So he goes to pick up the third book, which is hopefully the right one, and he stops himself because he remembers that he has to say the magic words. So he says, klaatu varata. Necktie. Neptune. I don't know. So he tries to sort of do it right, but he says, klaatu varata. Okay, I said the words.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

But of course, he hasn't.

Nic

Another great scene. Well, that's it, I guess. I said the words.

Steve

So as he takes the book, not having said the words, an earthquake starts. The dead start climbing out of the graves. He's in a graveyard, Right. So he's now getting attacked by, you know, skeletal hands coming out of everywhere. And, of course, the freshly buried Badash is restored and also apparently started decomposing within minutes of being put in the ground. Because what he looked like when he was cut apart and what he looks like when he comes back, very different sort of, you know, visual Effects, very different makeup on the actor to do this. He looks terrible.

Nic

He's very tough to look at on a big TV screen up close. That's a rough face. When Ash is running through the graveyard and all the skeleton hands are coming up and grabbing at him and they pull him down. Such a great scene of him laying there on the ground, kind of getting punched and poked and pulled in various ways by these skeleton hands. So he's getting very Three Stooges. Getting his cheek pulled out and his nostril pulled out and punched in the face. Then there's no hands for a second and it shows his face. He's like, oh, no. Oh, no.

Steve

Oh, no.

Nic

And then there's just like 20 fists, skeleton fists that come from different directions to punch him in the face. Some Three Stooges. The thing where he blocks the two fingers coming to poke his eye out, and then they come on either side.

Steve

Two different hands, then a second time. Yep.

Nic

I. It just. There's so much appreciation in this movie for that real cartoon slapstick and the Three Stooges and it shines in this scene. And again, Bruce Campbell's the one who can make this work because then he can also be the hero, but he can do that goofy stuff and it doesn't seem too off. He's just really, really good at it, 100%.

Steve

He's super animated. You know, you said, you've mentioned his facial expressions. Different. Different faces he makes are great. This movie really does feel in so many ways like it's, you know, part movie, part cartoon, part comic book, part video game. Like, there's so much about it that is. That is, you know, ridiculous. Sure. If you just think about it as like, well, this is like a horror movie. Yeah. But it's so much more than that. And it's so much more interesting because they lean into the campiness and the sort of comic book ness of it, giving him these just, you know. Yeah. Ridiculous sort of catchphrases and one liners and is all why it works. Yeah. In fact. So he. He retrieves the book. He goes back to the castle, to Lord Arthur's castle, and the wise man quizzes him, like, hey, did you. Did you say the words? Like, I. I mostly said him. It's like, did you say them? Exactly. I didn't get every single syllable. You know, you've doomed us. Like, you're. We're screwed now. They're gonna. That you've raised the army of the dead. They're gonna come. And he's like, well, you Got to send me back home. Anyway, that was the deal. And he kind of, this is the point where it's like, oh, Ash, dude, really, like, you know, you, you didn't live up to your side, really, you're going to ditch, you know.

Nic

But he still has kind of nothing but contempt for those people. True. Not long ago he was about to be put to his death.

Steve

That's a good point. He still thinks they're primates and he's not entirely wrong. But he is called out by, by Sheila, with whom he's had a tryst, you know, before he goes on the quest about, you know, hey, are you, are you really going to leave? You're really going to leave us? What about all the things you said? And he goes, well, that's just what we call pillow talk, baby. Like, it's so ridiculous. Oh man.

Nic

When they, when the army of the dead was kind of digging up their other skeletons, there's just a lot of good gags, good details hidden there. One that I thought was very funny is they dig up a grave and they open the coffin and up sits a very dusty skeleton who then coughs and has the dust come out of their mouth. And then later on it shows a skeleton playing a flute that's made out of a, a femur or something. And then bagpipes, lungless creatures were just, just.

Steve

Well, and one of the bagpiping skeletons of course had a beard. Had like a red haired beard. Like he was a Scottish guy, which maybe he was. No, I think this is the, the army of Darkness's march on the castle is a fairly like long sequence. There's like lots of bits so they're digging them up. They cut back and forth a bit between the, the, because Ash has decided to, to stick around and, and, and you know, so they're preparing for the arrival and the army is marching. And I love the use. This is one of Sam Raimi's like triumphs in this movie in my opinion. The use of puppets in the foreground and costumed extras in the background is so great because we get the detail that these are skeletons, not people in costume because we can see through like their neck area and their jaws because they're puppets. But we don't have to see them walking. Right, which would be very difficult to do because they're so close in the foreground. But then beyond that in the background are just lumbering sort of people in various skeletal costumes. And I thought it was like, perfect. Give, give us the puppets up front, you know, give us that Detail. Let us see that. But then make this look much, much larger by having all these extras do this. And, and in the entire, the last half hour of the movie, basically, or at least 25 minutes, is this, is this battle right, right at the castle. The army of darkness has arrived. And Lord Arthur has and Ash have to fight off the army. The way that they cut between puppets, stop motion animation, actors in costume, rubber masks, makeup effects, like all the, just intertwined all throughout it is amazing. And really, I think you get the best of every kind of battle. There's a point where the skeletons are trying to bring a battering ram up and ram through the front door of the castle, the gate of the castle. And at a distance, when we're looking at all of them running right from a distance, it's stop motion because that way they could actually have the skeletons feet.

Nic

Right.

Steve

But anytime we get a close up of them, they're back to puppets where it's like the big jaw kind of flaps. They almost look like skeletal Muppets.

Nic

Right? Yeah.

Steve

And it's, it's just, I really. It's one of my most favorite things about this movie is the way that Raimi blended those different, you know, creative efforts to give us this very complete picture of the army of Darkness.

Nic

Yeah. And there's so much figuring out to be done. So if you envision this in, in your head, you can, you can write some prose that could really describe exactly what's going on or you can create a painting or a comic book or something. But you're limited by the media and, and have in your budget.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And how do we make this work? And I agree they did so many things that were just creative to perfectly hide the limitations of this type of effect while able to highlight the benefits of this other type of effect. And it was so great. Good. Ash is, he's given a hard time and, and he says, okay, well I'm gonna stay and fight. And there's a little bit of a, a Jerry Maguire who's coming with me type scene. And he gets everybody on his side. I think it is Arthur who asks, are all men from the future loudmouth braggarts? And he says, just me, baby, just me.

Steve

Which is clearly not true. But he's maybe the most loud. Right.

Nic

But Ash is gonna stay. Oh, and Sheila was captured by.

Steve

Oh, that's right.

Nic

A very hideous looking flying with breasts.

Steve

Yeah. Very strange.

Nic

Really, really off putting labyrinth, I guess. Type dark crystal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's gone. So he, he realizes maybe I care a little bit about this person, and I'm gonna stick around. And then he's got to get them ready, which gets into our second little montage of the film. It's so good we're getting the car back. What's useful in the car? I got a beginning chemistry book which is going to tell us exactly how to make gunpowder from scratch. And they're going through. They're making some weapons and they're training. They're doing a little. Some moves.

Steve

He's a spearmaster. He's training everybody how to use the spears, which is cool.

Nic

So he's there, so he's ready to roll. And now the skeleton army, the army of the dead, is on their way up to the gates of the castle.

Steve

Yeah. So they. They basically text. So now Sheila has been corrupted by Bad Ash as well. She's sort of with him, looks weird. She's very, you know, her hair's blown out. Her. She's got very white makeup on her face and she just looks kind of sickly and weird and no accent anymore. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. She speaks differently. So she. The. The two. Bad Ash and Sheila. Bad Sheila, I guess, are there overseeing this battle. And there's a great moment as the. The army of Darkness starts charging towards the castle. And Ash has helped the archers of Lord Arthur's army have. They have arrows with explosive, like gunpowder packets and little wicks, little fuses. And so they, you know, like, what is the whole thing, right? Like, knock, you know, draw, you know, like they're getting ready to fire these arrows, but they have to have, you know, torch boy, and the guy has to come and light all of these fuses. But then Ash is like, we gotta wait. We gotta make sure we wait till the right time. We gotta maximize the effectiveness here. So he's asking them to hold, and you're seeing all these archers just start to sweat as the little fuse is going away. And they may not fully understand what's on their thing, but they know it's supposed to explode and be bad. And so they're. But sure enough, Ash lets them loose the arrows with enough time that none of them are, you know, hit by friendly fire. And it's really impressive. Just every time an arrow hits a skeleton or one of their shields or whatever, it just is making everything explode. It's a great source of initial effort that shows Bad Ash and, you know, his army is not going to just walk through the front door. This is a battle that's going to. That's going to have some losses. Yeah.

Nic

A lot of very satisfying. The amount of dusty explosions they showed, because it wasn't just a couple shots to show that now we have this weapon. They were like, hey, we built all these puppets. We got to also blow them up because it's not going to be fun if we don't do it.

Steve

Handful of stuntmen jumping and diving away from explosions is always good, too.

Nic

And again, very effective use of the cross between the different things, the. The costumed actors and the puppets and the really, really good. So this. It was able to squeeze so much action. And like you said, this goes on basically until the end of the movie. So we have the scene where the skeleton army's coming up. They're getting blown up and everything. So.

Steve

Yeah, but then they have a second, you know, like a second group or whatever is attacking from the south. And that's the one with the battering ram. So. So, you know, Ash and Lord Arthur try to get his men to, like, angle different.

Nic

Wait, did you know it was the south or did you just say that?

Steve

No, that's. They. They said that.

Nic

I was gonna say, damn, he's a north south guy. I don't ever know that.

Steve

So they said it out loud. Oh, there's west wall to the south. You know, they move guys from one side to another, right? And so they do get in. They. They actually, they're battering them. They're able to bust through the doors. So now that the army of darkness is inside the castle courtyard, and I love. There's a couple of. Of stuntmen in the initial attack, right, who come to come pouring through. And they've got the most ninja moves with their swords just like flinging them back and forth and just cut. And I'm like, damn, these guys are good. Like, skeletons don't usually move that nice. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so now the battle has been taken inside so bad. Ash is in. In the courtyard, Sheila's in the courtyard. There's this battle taken back, and they're trying to get to the Necronomicon, which is stored sort of like upstairs and inner keep or whatever behind a second wall. But they're getting close and Ash comes.

Nic

Out in the modified vehicle, which his car has now been modified and armored and reinforced and is some kind of a killing, like, propeller vehicle, which is a really cool setup. And again, we get such a satisfying number of skeletons just chopped apart by that. I think that's a decision by the director. Like, look, we paid to do all these. They're all making it in the movie. Just make sure they're all really good.

Steve

Yeah. Huge, like, helicopter blades that are. That are knocking people. And then also an enormous, like, cow catcher, like the front of a train, to just make sure that anything that's fallen on the ground also gets destroyed.

Nic

Right, right. And he's cruising through and he's taking everyone out. And the thing that stops him is he sees Sheila.

Steve

That's right. And he has to dive off of the thing and, you know, send the car off so he doesn't hurt her because she looks like good Sheila. She looks like previous Sheila in that moment. So she's somehow able to change her appearance at will.

Nic

And now Bad Ash is getting closer and closer to the book.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And they're in there. There's some really, really good sword fighting. Yeah, surprisingly. I mean, I know a lot of actors, they train and sword fighting and stuff, but I was. I was very impressed by what they were able to do in the creative ways they were able to make this fight scene work.

Steve

Yeah, it really reminded me a little bit, honestly, in the moment. Princess Bride.

Nic

Yeah, I was thinking that too.

Steve

Inigo and the man in black fighting their sword fight, which is a great scene, but it really did feel that sort of caliber. Yeah. And, you know, in this moment, I mean, Bruce Campbell officially plays Bad Ash. Like. Like, he is in the. The makeup and stuff for. For a lot of any of the scenes where he's talking, but obviously there was another, you know, stunt actor somebody fighting him during this thing. I do love. There's a moment where another Deadite gets into the fight on the stairs and Badass just runs him through. Get out of here. Like, he's in his way. You know, it's like, you're not helping. Go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I do love when the car comes busting out of the blacksmith's, you know, shop or whatever it is. One of the skeletons yells, it's the one in the car we want. Get him. I'm like, this is a dead creature from 1300. So they died long before that. What the hell did they know is a car? Like, how would that word be part of their vocabulary? It's super weird, but that's.

Nic

Yeah, we'll be contacting Sam Raimi directly about that.

Steve

Talk to him about that. So Ash and Bad Ash are fighting. Ashes ends up. Ends up fighting with, like, a wall sconce. He's got, like, a torch that's like a metal torch, and he's able to just push it right into Bad Ash's face and just start to burn him away at which point? He falls and actually I don't remember exactly where he falls. He fall into the pit or does he just fall?

Nic

I think he just falls. It's Sheila, I think, ends up in the pit at some point. Yeah. So he falls and it seems like. Okay, well, he. He's in pretty bad shape.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

But it just, it just burned the flesh off him. All of still good.

Steve

Really clean now because now he's a stop motion or puppet. Right. He's now no longer a human in a costume. And so his stop motion version is what we're seeing Ash fight for the most part. And then every once in a while in close ups, it's a puppet, but it really is really crazy. He's got human eyeballs inside his skeleton head, which is super creepy and weird. But I. Sorry, no, go ahead.

Nic

In the fight scene where, you know, he'll punch it, punch the skeleton and the head spins around a bunch of times. Another time where the eyeballs roll kind.

Steve

Of slot machine style.

Nic

Again, not missing an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that we're not dealing with real people. Let's have some fun with this. Let's make it as enjoyable as possible. So that was a really good fight with Ash and Bad Ash.

Steve

And it ends with. With Ash gets knocked off the parapet, down into the courtyard right next to a catapult that's been loaded with one of the bags full of gunpowder. And so. And then for whatever reason, Badash jumps off of the parapet that he was on and lands on that and sort of, you know, oh, you're dead now. I've got. He's got the book in his hand. You've got. I've got the book. You're dead. But I. The. The torch that Ash had has had lit the fuse for the, for the bag. And he goes and he cuts the hand off of Bad Ash, so he's got the book. And then he cuts the rope of the catapult which sends the bag of explosives and Bad Ash up into the sky, into the most beautiful set of fireworks. Yep, he's gone. And.

Nic

And before he sends him up, before he cuts the rope, he goes, buckle up, Bonehead.

Steve

So good. So, yeah, so that. And that is like they. They've won. I think we missed a part in there. The. The tide was turning against Lord Arthur's.

Nic

Army and towards your darkness.

Steve

And then finally Duke Henry the Red and his men do show up and start fighting. But I mean, they're fighting for a minute and a half. I mean, it really was the very end yeah. But it did turn the tide. It helped help them win. And they ended up, you know, winning this battle against the army of Darkness. The big bad guy has been blown to smithereens, which I guess maybe that's like, you know, shooting a werewolf with a silver bullet. There you go. You've blown up the skeleton. He won't come back. Initially, Lord Arthur's men are all cheering on the arrival of Duke Henry's men. But then after the battle is basically done, they're back to like, oh, wait a minute, you're different. We don't like you. Until Lord Arthur and Duke Henry themselves walk up and big bro hug, you know, and every. Everything's fine.

Nic

Nothing better than two. Two guys in basically suits of armor having that kind of really triumphant. Really triumphant there.

Steve

So at this point, I want to hear what the movie was like for you.

Nic

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm glad we're getting into this. So. So what I watched.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

They decide, okay, we're gonna send Ash home.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

Like in the deal.

Steve

Like in the deal.

Nic

And. And they. They don't really make a huge deal about how that's gonna work. He's just all of a sudden back working it as Marty Ben somehow. Very funny that he's just boring a coworker with one of his stories. And you could tell this guy is just like, oh, my God, like, what it. We've all had co workers like that.

Steve

Before.

Nic

And all of a sudden he's pricing a bunch of toasters, and the. The evil spirits are back at it because he didn't send. Because he kind of. The guy says, well, did you say the words right this time? When he's telling him his story, he's like, I didn't say every single little tiny syllable. Right. But basically I said him. So of course, there's another fight scene with Ash. And one great thing that he does is. Is she goes flying across the room. He throws his shotgun up in the air. He smashes a case, takes a shotgun out, like. And it's making the sound like a boomerang. And then he jumps on the slowest moving cart in the world, and his shotgun comes back down into his hands, and he fires about 500 shots out of this shotgun without having to reload. Very entertaining. So he dispatches this creature, and then his co worker, the hot girl that works with him, is like, oh, I love your stories. And I think the last thing that he does is he has her on his arm as he's standing there with his shotgun kind of in triumph over this creature. And he goes, hail to the king, baby. And then, you know, dips her to kiss her at the end. So that was the ending that I get. And I thought that was a very good, satisfying ending. And. Yeah, but I heard that that might not be the only ending.

Steve

What do you know about that? That's the ending I'd always seen through the years, watching dvd, watching vhs, whatever. That's how I remember the movie ending. I had a copy or a version of this that I didn't realize I was watching, like, a UK release version this time. So I was expecting that. But instead, after the battle, what happened in my version, which, as I've learned since it was the original intended version that was scrapped for focus groups that wanted a happier ending. Because what happened in mine is Ash goes to meet the wise men. He's got given him the book, everything. And the wise man hat a potion in a bottle and says what? The book tells us, each drop that you take of this potion will let you sleep for a hundred years. So if you take six drops, you'll go back to your time. He goes, okay, cool. So he says goodbye to Sheila, rides off into, you know, the. The wilderness or whatever again. Basically finds a cave. He's got his car with him. Like, they help him get his car there, go into a cave. They've rigged the outside of the cave to explode so he can seal himself in. Okay. So he does that, that. And he goes and he starts counting as he's sitting in the car. The. The. The cave is sealed. And he takes this dropper out of the bottle. He goes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then there's this sound outside the cave. And he looks over like somebody is, like, maybe trying to get through it or whatever. Nothing else happens. And he comes back to the dropper. He goes, five, six. So he actually took seven drops. Okay, okay. So then it shows him falling asleep. And there's this, like, mini montage of just kind of looking at him as his, like, hair starts growing and his beard starts growing and he turns like this kind of Rip Van Winkle thing, right? So then. So then he wakes up and he's all excited because he's like, oh, I'm back to my time. This is so great. So he starts pulling the rubble away from the front of the cave so he can get out. And initially he's super excited because there's a bunch of, like, garbage and stuff outside. But it's all like, oh, it's manufactured good. There's plastic. Oh, I Did it, you know, whatever. But then he kind of comes over this ridge and he realizes that it's. It's England, it's London. Right. But it's like Big Ben and London Bridge, everything. It's all destroyed. It's all like, post apocalyptic. Just like the end of the world has happened. And literally the end of the movie is him going, I slept too long. And then that's how it cuts. So that's the original ending. I actually prefer it to the S Smart ending. Although the S. Smart ending is great, too. But. So apparently that was the original intended ending by Sam and Ivan Raimi. And then they must have done some kind of either focus group or test audience or something. And people were like, ugh, that's how he needs to win. Yeah. So they basically whipped up real quick and reshot the S. Smart ending, not explaining how he got back to his own time, just that he did and that he ends up, you know, winning, getting the girl. I mean, literally at the end is him with the girl and the shotgun and another catchphrase. So. But yeah, so the original ending, sometimes referred to by army of Darkness Evil Dead fans as the Rip Van Winkle ending because of his sort of long beard and hair and the sleeping for 700 years. But, yeah, so I thought that was interesting. That's the version that I own now. So that's cool.

Nic

That's awesome. That's great. I'll have to check that out somehow. Time. I. Yeah, I like both. I think that it's funny. A movie that's this off the wall, you still have to fucking focus group it.

Steve

I know, right?

Nic

Like looking in retrospect where you're just like, you know, what we should have said back then, Let Sam Raimi cook.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Let Bruce Campbell cook. But instead we have someone who's like, yeah. As somebody who would never watch this movie in the first place, let me give you some pointers on it.

Steve

Like, I hate your movie, but I signed your $11 million check. Check. So I'm going to need to, you know, weigh in on this one here. Yeah, but no, both of them are fantastic endings. The movie's fantastic. I'll go ahead and kick off sort of, you know, final thoughts, reading. Whatever. For me, you know, like, I said, this. This movie isn't perfect, but it is, you know, a very, very good example of when a movie doesn't take itself too seriously, gives us a ton of fun. The pacing is tight. It's the right length at only 81 minutes. For me, this is a four. And a half. This is an easy four and a half. It's not quite a five for me, but that's okay. There's just a few. There's enough parts that either don't quite hold up visually or they're a little kind of like. They definitely take some. Some creative license with things that are like a little kind of okay, guys, but four and a half, Fantastic movie. Love it. Absolutely happy with. With watching army of Darkness again after a few years.

Nic

Yeah. Yeah, this was a great one. I'm gonna give my rating then. I have a question for you. The idea of somebody kind of going back in time and ending up in medieval times is really funny and just so ripe for. For jokes and everything. This movie did it. I. I don't like to get into, like, art movies too much, but a few years later, I think the concept was actually perfected in Martin Lawrence's the Black Knight in that both of them.

Steve

Borrow heavily from a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's court. Yes.

Nic

What are you gonna do? But I really. I enjoyed this movie. It took me back to every reason why I liked it. I was not incorrect to like it back then. Like you said, some of the effects had just become a little tougher with time to watch, but given what they had to work with, it's really an incredible feat to pull this off. I'm also going to give this movie a four and a half. This was really, really solid for me. My question to you, Bruce Campbell is. Is one of the more criminally underappreciated actors of our time.

Steve

I'm a huge fan.

Nic

Would he have been helped coming around like 15 years later? Like, would the world have been more ready? Would he have been like, in Deadpool or something? Like, you know, like, I feel like there's a place for him and his sense of humor is kind of what led to the way a lot of stuff can be now.

Steve

Right.

Nic

But it wasn't big budget stuff back when he was doing.

Steve

True. And I think that, yeah, if. If, you know, if you were. Yeah, maybe 15 or 20 years younger. So he was sort of in that, you know, the age. Age or maybe even 30 years. That's when he's getting up there. But I think that he was really a product of his time and place and that. And that being in the really early. Active in sort of the late 80s and into. In through the 90s was really important. And I think there's a lot. A lot of the sort of Ryan Reynolds, like Deadpool, you mentioned that kind of stuff. Those attitudes a Lot of stuff that's even happens in the Marvel movies. Whatever. A lot of it is based off the fact that I think Bruce Campbell led the way on a lot of these kinds of, of this attitude of like, be the, be the action hero, be the badass, but like, don't take yourself seriously. Let it all kind of, you know, this is the kind of thing we mentioned, you know, Steven Seagal at the beginning of a previous movie, we talked about the Fugitive because of the director of that movie being involved with Seagal for a couple movies. And it's like that's a guy who clearly has never not taken himself seriously. Yes, right. He has no sense of humor about himself whatsoever.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

I'm glad he's not a star at this point or whatever. I think Campbell is still considered. I mean, look, he's not obviously doing a ton right now. You know, he's sort of like if he's not done acting, he's near the end of his career. Totally makes sense. But I think that he is viewed so favorably because he's so willing to be kooky and be kind of goofy. And while I think he would have fit in well in like today's or even kind of maybe like the mid aughts and you know, the early teens and some of the movies that were made in those times, if you were more of that age, I don't think that that would have been that that sort of milieu of cinema would have been the same way it is without Bruce Campbell being who he was when he was.

Nic

Yeah, that makes sense.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

I guess I just wish we had maybe like three more like this for him, you know, because it's, it's fewer and far between and I know he was in other shows and he also.

Steve

Briscoe county and whatever. Right. So.

Nic

So he had a couple of those network shows. Jack of all trades. Was that another one. He had like short lived shows that just the way that, that works in the business is sometimes you're tied up and my contract is with NBC and I'm not allowed to do shit for two years even though my show didn't get picked up.

Steve

Right, right.

Nic

You know, kind of like you see it would happen at different musical artists because they have a beef with their label and like we never heard another Rakim album because whatever, that kind of stuff. So I wonder if he was a.

Steve

Victim of that a little bit famously, sort of the way Pierce Brosnan. Right. Couldn't get Bond when he won. Wanted Bond because he was on Remington Steele on tv and so they went with Timothy Dalton instead. They ended up going back to Brosnan later. But there was a thought that when Brosnan was going to be the one to follow Moore in that franchise, and of course, he didn't, so. And it was because he was on a TV show where it was like, no, we're going to renew this for another year. So, no, you can't go play James Bond because it's almost the same character as Remington Steele. You need to stick with this. Yeah. But, yeah, so, okay, I think that kind of covers it.

Nic

Yeah, this was a great one.

Steve

It was so much fun.

Nic

Super fun. And. And I. Like I said, I watched it with my wife, who had never seen it. She really enjoyed it. She liked the goofiness of it. One other influence of army of Darkness that I definitely saw a few years later was in the Mummy with Brendan Fraser. There's a lot of scenes in that where he's battling kind of mummies and skeleton type things that have come up, but there's a little bit of the comedic element to the way that those battles happen, which heavily borrowed from army of Darkness.

Steve

That makes a lot of sense. That movie definitely walked that line between being sort of serious as an adventure action movie and going ahead and just being goofy and campy and fun.

Nic

Yeah, for sure. For sure. This was a great one. Great choice. And now we're. We're looking down to the next episode, and I think it's. It's my choice here.

Steve

Yes, it is.

Nic

So what we've done so far is we've gotten, you know, some of the greats. We've gotten Bill Murray, we've gotten Harrison Ford. You know, we've had Bruce Campbell. And it's time to focus maybe on an elite actress.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

And this is somebody who is. Has built an incredible career for herself. And I think that choosing this movie, the movie that I feel really put her on the map, is very appropriate for our podcast. And what I'm talking about, obviously, is Meryl Streep in 1994's the River Wild.

Steve

Okay. Really? The River Wild?

Nic

Absolutely. Okay.

Steve

All right.

Nic

We got Kevin Bacon. We got Meryl Streep. We got David Straythearn.

Steve

Oh, I love David Strother.

Nic

Yeah, it's incredible. John C. Reilly. There's a lot of reason. I think this is definitely going to be more of a Pacific Heights than a fugitive, but those are fun convos to have, so I'm looking forward to this one.

Steve

I have never seen the River Wilds. All right, Another new one for me, which is great. Great. That's always a lot of fun. Cool. All right. Well, yeah, this has been army of Darkness. Next up will be the River Wild. If you wouldn't mind, if you like what you're hearing, you could go to Spotify and follow us. You can go to Apple Podcasts and follow us. You can drop us a five star review. We'd appreciate it. Helps people find the show. You can also, you can also send us an email@theshowdads1movie.com. That's the number two and the number one. Let us know how we're doing. Let us know how we're not doing. Well, let us know what you want to hear. I don't care, whatever. Just reach out. It's great. Thank you all so much for listening. And this has been 2 dads one movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And we will be back next time watching the River Wild. Thanks so much.

Nic

Thanks everyone.