Army of Darkness - S-mart's Top of the Line

Army of Darkness

Director: Sam Raimi

Well hello, Mr. Fancypants. I've got news for you, pal; you ain't leading but two things now: jack and shit. And jack left town. –Ash

Yo, She-bitch. Let's go. –Ash

Give me some sugar, baby. –Ash

Are all men from the future loud-mouth braggarts? –Wiseman

Say hello to the 21^st century. –Ash

I may be bad. But I feel… goooood. –Sheila

Honey, you got real ugly. –Ash

This movie is a cult classic. You only need to see the first 10 minutes to realize that. It was made in 1992 but feels older; it's chock- full of idiotic, though quite repeatable, one-liners; and it stars Bruce Campbell. Here's the Netflix description:

Bound in human flesh and inked in blood, the ancient Necronomicon, or Book of the Dead, transports department store clerk Ash and his 1973 Oldsmobile into the Dark Ages. There, he faces legions of undead beasts in a battle for his life.

To me, the movie seemed one part Three Stooges, one part Monty Python and one part Tales from the Crypt. There was slapstick, there were bad jokes, there were lots of creepy undead things. I shouldn't have liked this movie. But, for some reason, I did. It's one of those so-bad-it's-good movies that The Ice Cream Man strove to be (and failed miserably).

One of my favorite parts of this movie – aside from the cheesy lines, which I honestly couldn't stop writing down! – are the skeletons. They are brilliant: from the skeleton band, with their leg-bone flutes and skull snare drums, to the skeleton battering ram crew, with their resourcefulness and determination. There are skeletons shooting arrows, skeletons wielding swords and shields, skeletons catching fire and getting their heads knocked off. And even the Big Bad becomes a skeleton and continues to fight our hero.

One scene that served no real purpose to me, other than entertainment value and time-fill, is the scene where Ash's multiple reflections in shards of broken mirror come to life outside the glass. They wreak havoc à la the three stooges, and one of them heads into Ash's mouth, only to reappear as an eyeball on his shoulder, which then grows into a full-sized replica (though with both hands in tact) and then splits from his doppelgänger. It does force you to face the question: if I were staring at the "bad" version of myself, would I be able to shoot it with my boomstick? I guess I won't really know until I'm faced with it…

My takeaway: The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend; especially if that enemy of my enemy is an army of deadites, in which case my enemy is really my friend. And when told to remember a trio of magic words, I will be sure to repeat them correctly, or mayhem is bound to ensue.