The setup: This thread is the first of many that I'll be putting out over the next couple of years celebrating the films of the TPE 100, which I threw together back in February 2023 as a response to some terrible movie list, possibly by Rolling Stone, that we all hated. .
The whole conceit of this thread is a 99.9% ripoff of the marvelous Bill Simmons / The Ringer podcast series "The Rewatchables" in which Bill, guests, and friends sit around talking about a movie each week that they all love. I'm going to rip off a lot of Bill's categories and try to encourage as much fun discussion as possible.
A lot of these films are insanely stupid and illogical. I love them all. The aim is to do 1 a week. I'll kick off the new thread with my connection to the movie, some general information, categories to discuss, and we'll go from there. I hope you enjoy discussing these movies as much as I've enjoyed finally putting this thing together.
Note: This isn't the thread for telling everyone why you DON'T like this movie or why you don't like me. If you haven't seen the movie or thought it was stupid, there's literally no reason to be here, and even less reason to post here.
Film #2: Army of Darkness
Released: February 19, 1993
Original trailer:
Stream it on: Apple TV, Prime Video, others
My history with this film
The year was 1993 and I had been hired to be a stringer for the sports desk at The Battalion. That meant I was mostly going to cover golf, tennis, and volleyball for the fall semester while the older guys watched our (then) good football team terrorize the SWC. The first time I walked into the Batt office in the basement of Reed McDonald (shoutout room 013) I saw a bizarre sight on the wall of the sports desk. A movie poster featuring a ripped man with a chainsaw for an arm. "What is that?" I asked my new boss, who 31 years later is still a friend. He stared at me increduously, "You've never seen Army of Darkness?"
I had not. But I remedied it that weekend at the first of many, many, many Batt parties that encompassed pretty much every one of my weekends for the next 3 years. And as a 19-year-old smart ass, as I was in 1993, there are few things more glorious than watching smart-ass Bruce Campbell embody the sort of dialogue and cockiness that we all imagine we'd all be capable of in a similar situation.
It was the third installment of the Sam Raimi / Campbell Evil Dead series. Considerably more light-hearted than the other two, but for a newcomer like me, so preposterously cool and ridiculous that it became an instant rewatchable.
Why? Well it's about 50% just Bruce Campbell's take on John Wayne, chewing up the dialogue and being the most incompetent bad-ass since, well, maybe Jack Burton. Raimi does a whole lot with a whole little, and you can see a lot of his signature moves in this film, the crazy point of view stuff, the gross-outs, the best makeup design on monsters that are gone in 1 minute. It's got great nods to Jason of the Argonauts, which terrified me with its stop-motion skeletons as a young boy, to an oddball version of the legend of King Arthur, to The Day the Earth Stood Still, and to deadpan humor that Campbell has made his own in dozens of films ever since.
But mostly it's about a guy with a shotgun for an arm dispensing justice in medieval times. And there's a lot of joy in that idea alone.
Roger Ebert's Review (2 stars out of 4)
Sam Raimi's "Army of Darkness" is a goofy, hyperventilated send-up of horror films and medieval warfare, so action-packed it sometimes seems less like a movie than like a cardiovascular workout for its stars. It makes the dubious claim of being a sequel to Raimi's "Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn" (1987), on the basis of a tenuous link: A cursed Book of the Dead found by the hero in that movie has sent him hurtling back through time to the Middle Ages, where this movie takes place. Uh-huh.
Campbell plays Ash, who in real life works in a discount supermarket, but finds himself and his car deposited on a medieval battlefield, where before long Ash assumes leadership and leads his knights in warfare against an army of the dead. (There are more animated skeletons here than in any film since "Jason and the Argonauts.") The method of the film is simple. As many action and horror cliches as possible are trashed; the film does for medieval mythology and horror what "The Naked Gun" did for cops. Ash, you will recall, lost his left forearm in an earlier film, and has had the stump modified to act as a mounting for a chainsaw. He fires a shotgun with his right hand, and in case you're wondering how anyone could load a shotgun with a chainsaw, the answer is: It's not necessary, because the shotgun never needs loading.
The special effects in "Army of Darkness" are ingenious and a lot of fun. The makeup is state of the art. So are the severed limbs, geysers of blood, etc. The movie isn't as funny or entertaining as "Evil Dead II," however, maybe because the comic approach seems recycled. Then again, the movie seems aimed at an audience of 14-year olds, who would have been 8 when "Evil Dead II" came out, so maybe this will all seem breathtakingly original.
Box office: Made $11.5 million in the great "comedy horror" genre. Finishing 106th in the US that year. Ironically two other fantastic movies finished right ahead of it - True Romance at #104 and So I Married an Axe murderer at #105.
The Categories
Most Rewatchable Scene:
Ash introduces his Boomstick to the medieval crowd
Yo, she-*****. Let's go.
Ash can't remember the words
Hail to the King, Baby
Best Quote:
The Tony Barone Overacting Award: Nobody overacts like Bruce Campbell. This award gets the week off.
The One-Night Stand Award (hottest chick): Embeth Davidtz as Sheila - who is almost the only woman in the movie - is still smoking hot in 2024 at age 58. Shoutout to Bridget Fonda as Linda in the scene in the department store near the end.
The That Guy Award for the actor in the movie that you've seen a bunch of places but you don't know who they are: Ian Abercrombie as the Wiseman who sets Ash on his journey. If you're like me, you recognize him as Elaine's boss , Mr. Pitt, from Seinfeld. He also voiced Palpatine/ Darth Sidious in most of the Clone Wars cartoons and video games.
Half-Assed Internet Research:
[ol]
"Klaatu Verata Nictu" is a very close homage to the words famously said in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and then used as three alien species names in Return of the Jedi. Known as "Captain Supermarket" in Japan. When they dropped Ash's Oldsmobile into the movie from the sky, the first time there was a malfunction and the 80-ton crane holding the car fell over the edge of a cliff with the driver jumping out at the last second. S-Mart really exists in Mexico. Bruce Campbell said "Gimme some sugar, baby" is the dumbest line he's ever heard but Raimi insisted. Traci Lords auditioned for the role of Sheila. If you don't know who Traci Lords is, open your privacy browser before you look her up. The same years she was in Army of Darkness, Embeth Davitz was in Schindler's List Bruce Campbell's dad and brother are both extras in the movie. [/ol]
What Happened the Next Day?
There's an alternate ending when Ash takes too many drops of the magic potion, oversleeps, and wakes up in a nuclear wasteland.
Unanswerable Questions:
[ol]
How does Ash reload the shotgun when his other arm is a chainsaw? Why can't we get back to the 1980s/1990s genre of random nudity in a movie? There is a female slave in this movie for 3 seconds who does nothing but walk by the camera naked. [/ol]
Who Won the Movie? A 100% slam dunk victory for Campbell as Ash, Bad Ash, and the mini-Ashes as well. Good? Bad? He's the guy with the gun.
Previous Rewatchable Entry
#1 Big Trouble in Little China
The whole conceit of this thread is a 99.9% ripoff of the marvelous Bill Simmons / The Ringer podcast series "The Rewatchables" in which Bill, guests, and friends sit around talking about a movie each week that they all love. I'm going to rip off a lot of Bill's categories and try to encourage as much fun discussion as possible.
A lot of these films are insanely stupid and illogical. I love them all. The aim is to do 1 a week. I'll kick off the new thread with my connection to the movie, some general information, categories to discuss, and we'll go from there. I hope you enjoy discussing these movies as much as I've enjoyed finally putting this thing together.
Note: This isn't the thread for telling everyone why you DON'T like this movie or why you don't like me. If you haven't seen the movie or thought it was stupid, there's literally no reason to be here, and even less reason to post here.
Film #2: Army of Darkness
Released: February 19, 1993
Original trailer:
Stream it on: Apple TV, Prime Video, others
My history with this film
The year was 1993 and I had been hired to be a stringer for the sports desk at The Battalion. That meant I was mostly going to cover golf, tennis, and volleyball for the fall semester while the older guys watched our (then) good football team terrorize the SWC. The first time I walked into the Batt office in the basement of Reed McDonald (shoutout room 013) I saw a bizarre sight on the wall of the sports desk. A movie poster featuring a ripped man with a chainsaw for an arm. "What is that?" I asked my new boss, who 31 years later is still a friend. He stared at me increduously, "You've never seen Army of Darkness?"
I had not. But I remedied it that weekend at the first of many, many, many Batt parties that encompassed pretty much every one of my weekends for the next 3 years. And as a 19-year-old smart ass, as I was in 1993, there are few things more glorious than watching smart-ass Bruce Campbell embody the sort of dialogue and cockiness that we all imagine we'd all be capable of in a similar situation.
It was the third installment of the Sam Raimi / Campbell Evil Dead series. Considerably more light-hearted than the other two, but for a newcomer like me, so preposterously cool and ridiculous that it became an instant rewatchable.
Why? Well it's about 50% just Bruce Campbell's take on John Wayne, chewing up the dialogue and being the most incompetent bad-ass since, well, maybe Jack Burton. Raimi does a whole lot with a whole little, and you can see a lot of his signature moves in this film, the crazy point of view stuff, the gross-outs, the best makeup design on monsters that are gone in 1 minute. It's got great nods to Jason of the Argonauts, which terrified me with its stop-motion skeletons as a young boy, to an oddball version of the legend of King Arthur, to The Day the Earth Stood Still, and to deadpan humor that Campbell has made his own in dozens of films ever since.
But mostly it's about a guy with a shotgun for an arm dispensing justice in medieval times. And there's a lot of joy in that idea alone.
Roger Ebert's Review (2 stars out of 4)
Sam Raimi's "Army of Darkness" is a goofy, hyperventilated send-up of horror films and medieval warfare, so action-packed it sometimes seems less like a movie than like a cardiovascular workout for its stars. It makes the dubious claim of being a sequel to Raimi's "Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn" (1987), on the basis of a tenuous link: A cursed Book of the Dead found by the hero in that movie has sent him hurtling back through time to the Middle Ages, where this movie takes place. Uh-huh.
Campbell plays Ash, who in real life works in a discount supermarket, but finds himself and his car deposited on a medieval battlefield, where before long Ash assumes leadership and leads his knights in warfare against an army of the dead. (There are more animated skeletons here than in any film since "Jason and the Argonauts.") The method of the film is simple. As many action and horror cliches as possible are trashed; the film does for medieval mythology and horror what "The Naked Gun" did for cops. Ash, you will recall, lost his left forearm in an earlier film, and has had the stump modified to act as a mounting for a chainsaw. He fires a shotgun with his right hand, and in case you're wondering how anyone could load a shotgun with a chainsaw, the answer is: It's not necessary, because the shotgun never needs loading.
The special effects in "Army of Darkness" are ingenious and a lot of fun. The makeup is state of the art. So are the severed limbs, geysers of blood, etc. The movie isn't as funny or entertaining as "Evil Dead II," however, maybe because the comic approach seems recycled. Then again, the movie seems aimed at an audience of 14-year olds, who would have been 8 when "Evil Dead II" came out, so maybe this will all seem breathtakingly original.
Box office: Made $11.5 million in the great "comedy horror" genre. Finishing 106th in the US that year. Ironically two other fantastic movies finished right ahead of it - True Romance at #104 and So I Married an Axe murderer at #105.
The Categories
Most Rewatchable Scene:
Ash introduces his Boomstick to the medieval crowd
Yo, she-*****. Let's go.
Ash can't remember the words
Hail to the King, Baby
Best Quote:
- Ash: Yeah!
- [after shooting King Arthur's sword in half]
- Ash: Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my BOOMSTICK! The twelve-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 a hundred and nine, ninety five. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?
- Duke Henry: You Sir, are not one of my vassals... who are you?
- Ash: Who wants to know?
- Duke Henry: I am Henry the Red. Duke of Shale, Lord of the Northlands and leader of its peoples.
- Ash: Well hello Mister Fancypants. Well, I've got news for you pal, you ain't leadin' but two things, right now: Jack and *****.. and Jack left town.
- Ash: Lady, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to leave the store.
- Possessed woman: Who the hell are you?
- Ash: Name's Ash.
- [cocks rifle]
- Ash: Housewares.
- Ash: [to the Witch] Yo, she-*****! Let's go!
- Ash: Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys and compositions and things with... molecular structures.
- [Sheila wants to apologize to Ash]
- Ash: First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me. Blow.
The Tony Barone Overacting Award: Nobody overacts like Bruce Campbell. This award gets the week off.
The One-Night Stand Award (hottest chick): Embeth Davidtz as Sheila - who is almost the only woman in the movie - is still smoking hot in 2024 at age 58. Shoutout to Bridget Fonda as Linda in the scene in the department store near the end.
The That Guy Award for the actor in the movie that you've seen a bunch of places but you don't know who they are: Ian Abercrombie as the Wiseman who sets Ash on his journey. If you're like me, you recognize him as Elaine's boss , Mr. Pitt, from Seinfeld. He also voiced Palpatine/ Darth Sidious in most of the Clone Wars cartoons and video games.
Half-Assed Internet Research:
[ol]
What Happened the Next Day?
There's an alternate ending when Ash takes too many drops of the magic potion, oversleeps, and wakes up in a nuclear wasteland.
Unanswerable Questions:
[ol]
Who Won the Movie? A 100% slam dunk victory for Campbell as Ash, Bad Ash, and the mini-Ashes as well. Good? Bad? He's the guy with the gun.
Previous Rewatchable Entry
#1 Big Trouble in Little China
