Army of Darkness
Directed by	Sam Raimi
Written by	Sam Raimi Ivan Raimi
Produced by	Dino De Laurentiis Sam Raimi Bruce Campbell
Starring	Bruce Campbell Embeth Davidtz Bridget Fonda Marcus Gilbert
Music by	Danny Elfman Joe DoLuca
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	February 19, 1993 (USA)
Running time	81 min.
Language	English
Budget	$11,000,000

Army of Darkness (also known as The Medieval Dead, Bruce Campbell vs. the Army of Darkness, and The Ultimate Experience in Medieval Terror) is an American horror film, released in 1993. The film is a sequel to Evil Dead II, which was itself a sequel to The Evil Dead. The film was directed by Sam Raimi, and stars Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams. It was intended when initially scripted to be "Evil Dead II", but producer Dino De Laurentiis balked at the budget it would require at the time.

The movie had a considerably higher budget than the prior two Evil Dead films. The budget was estimated to be around $11 million; Evil Dead II had a budget of $3.5 million and The Evil Dead a budget of $350,000. At the box office, the film was not a big success, only grossing $11,501,093 domestically. After its video release, however, it has obtained an ever-growing cult following, along with the other two films in the trilogy.

Template:Spoiler The protagonist, Ash (Campbell), who discovered the Necronomicon ex Mortis, or "Book of the Dead" that unleashed demonic forces in the previous films The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, is sucked into a time vortex with his Oldsmobile, an event caused by reading the spell to defeat the demons. He ends up in England in AD 1300, where he is believed to be the "Hero From The Sky," the man destined to deliver mankind to salvation from the "Deadites," or the undead, as is told at the end of Evil Dead II. The plot, though, alters somewhat between the ending of Evil Dead II and the beginning of Army of Darkness.

Instead of being praised, he is believed to be 'One of King Henry's men' - a people at war with those finding Ash and taking him to their castle. Ash is enslaved, and his gun and chainsaw removed. A priest keeps Ash's weapons, believing him to be a redeemer foretold in prophecy to be the one who shall deliver mankind from the terror of the deadites. Ash is thrown in a pit where he fights off a deadite, regains his weapons, and frightens the inhabitants of the kingdom into helping him return to his own time. Specifically, he terrorizes them with his "boomstick" (his shotgun).

The only way to return to his time and stop the Deadites, according to the priest who gave Ash back his weapons, is to retrieve the Necronomicon^[1] - which contains both spells. While preparing for this, Ash becomes romantically involved with a local woman, Sheila (Embeth Davidtz).

Ash then journeys for the Necronomicon. When unable to recall the precise magic words needed to safely retrieve the Necronomicon, he inadvertently unleashes the forces of the Deadites - who are led by an evil clone of Ash.

Despite causing the predicament faced by the humans, Ash initially demands to be returned to his own time. When Sheila is captured by a flying Deadite, he becomes determined to lead the humans against the Deadite army. Reluctantly, the people agree to join Ash.

Using scientific knowledge from the future from chemistry and engineering books in the trunk of his Oldsmobile, Ash successfully leads the humans to defeat the Deadites and save Sheila. Subsequently, he is sent back to the present, but once again he is unable to recall the correct words used for the incantation. This allows a Deadite to follow Ash through time and a final duel ensues in the modern age. The ultimate conclusion is that Ash finally defeats the Deadites. Template:Spoiler-end

Plans to make a third Evil Dead film had been circulating for a variety of years, even prior to the production of Darkman was made. Raimi drew from a variety of sources including literature with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels and films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and, of course, The Three Stooges. Evil Dead II, according to Bruce Campbell as quoted in Bill Warren's book, The Evil Dead Companion, "was originally designed to go back into the past to 1300, but we couldn't muster it at the time, so we decided to make an interim version, not knowing if the 1300 story would ever get made." Promotional drawings were created and published in Variety during the casting process before the budget was deemed too little for the plot. The working title for the project was Evil Dead II: Army of Darkness.^[2] The title "Army of Darkness" came from an idea by Irvin Shapiro, during the production of Evil Dead II.^[3]

The screenplay was mostly written in 1988 but then Raimi made Darkman and once that was done the director took the script out and worked on it with his brother Ivan who he had enjoyed collaborating with on Darkman and Easy Wheels. Raimi says that Ivan, "has a good sense of character," and that he brought more comedy into the script.^[4] Campbell remembers, "We all decided, 'Get him out of the cabin.' There were earlier drafts where part three still took place there, but we thought, 'Well, we all know that cabin, it's time to move on.' The three of us decided to keep it in 1300, because it's more interesting."

Evil Dead II made enough money internationally that Dino De Laurentiis was willing to finance a sequel. Raimi had been disappointed by his dealings with Universal Pictures during the production of Darkman. The initial budget was $8 million but during pre-production it became obvious that this wasn't going to be enough. Darkman was also a financial success and so Universal decided to contribute half of the film's $12 million budget. However, the film's ambitious scope and its extensive effects work forced Campbell, Raimi and Tapert to put up $1 million of their collective salaries to shoot a new ending and a scene where a possessed woman pushes down some giant pillars.

Principal photography took place between soundstage and on location work. Army of Darkness was filmed in Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks Nation Park. The interior shots were filmed on an Introvision stage in Hollywood. Raimi's use of the Introvision process was a tribute to the stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen. Introvision uses front projected images with live actors instead of the traditional rear projection that Harryhausen and others used. Introvision blended components with more realistic-looking results. Raimi explained its benefits in an American Cinematographer article: "the incredible amount of interaction between the background, which doesn't exist, and the foreground, which is usually your character."

The shooting began in mid-1991, and it lasted for about 100 days.^[5] It was a mid-summer shoot and while on location on a huge castle set that was built near Acton, California on the edge of the Mojave Desert, cast and crew endured very hot conditions during the day and very cold temperatures at night. It was a tough shoot for Campbell who had to learn elaborate choreography for the battle scenes that involved him remembering a number system because the actor was often fighting opponents that weren't really there. Mesa remembers in John Kenneth Muir's book, The Unseen Forces: The Films of Sam Raimi, "Bruce was cussing and swearing some of the time because you had to work on the number system. Sam would tell us to make it as complicated and hard for Bruce as possible. 'Make him go through torture!' So we'd come up with these shots that were really, really difficult, and sometimes they would take thirty-seven takes."

After the shooting was completed, the film's score was composed by Joseph LoDuca, though the theme was written by Danny Elfman.

While De Laurentiis gave Raimi and his crew freedom to shoot the movie the way they wanted, Universal took over during post-production and was not happy with Raimi's cut. The studio hated Raimi's original ending for the movie, feeling that it was "negative" and made the director change it. So, a more upbeat ending was shot a month after they made the movie. It was shot in a lumber store in Malibu over three or four nights. Then, two months after Army of Darkness was finished, a round of reshoots began in Santa Monica and involved Ash in the windmill and the scenes with Bridget Fonda done for very little money.

In addition, Raimi needed $3 million to finish his movie but Universal wasn't willing to give him the money and delayed its release because they were upset that De Laurentiis would not give them the rights to the Hannibal Lecter character so that they could film a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The matter was finally resolved but Army of Darkness' release date had been pushed back from its original summer of 1992 release to February 1993.

Raimi ran into further troubles with the MPAA over the film's rating. They gave it an R. Universal wanted a PG-13 rating so Raimi made a few cuts and was still stuck with an R. So, the studio turned the film over to outside film editors who cut the movie to 81 minutes in length and another version running 87 minutes that was eventually released in theaters. It ended up with an R rating anyway.

The movie has two distinct endings, both of which appear on the DVD version of the movie. The theatrical release picks up after Ash has returned to the present, in which he stages one final confrontation with the "she-bitch" in the S-Mart Housewares Department.

The alternate ending, which was favored by director Sam Raimi, depicts Ash as he sits in his Oldsmobile in a cave. As he drinks the magic potion he is distracted by a falling rock and takes one drop too many. He sleeps well beyond his time and awakens in a post-apocalyptic London. This ending was cut after critics showed their displeasure with the juxtaposition of such a quirky movie with a morbid ending.

• The Evil Dead Companion, Bill Warren. ISBN 0-312-27501-3
• If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell. ISBN 0-312-29145-0

• Army of Darkness at IMDb
• Army of Darkness Retrospective
• Army of Darkness RPG from Eden Studios.