Ash vs. the Middle Ages: Army of Darkness

Army of Darkness is the third film in the Evil Dead series. It picks up the moment Evil Dead II ends, with Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) stranded in the Middle Ages, where he has to lead a medieval army against the undead to get home. Sam Raimi directed it, co-wrote it with his brother Ivan and co-edited it. It leaves behind the cabin-bound horror of the first two films for a dark fantasy comedy full of slapstick, Ray Harryhausen-style skeletons and one-liners. It premiered at the Sitges Film Festival in October 1992, but its US release was in February 1993, so sources list it as either a 1992 or a 1993 film.

At a glance

Release date	October 9, 1992 (Sitges Film Festival); February 19, 1993 (US)
Director	Sam Raimi
Writers	Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi
Based on	Sequel to Evil Dead II (1987)
Starring	Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, Richard Grove, Bridget Fonda
Runtime	81 minutes (US); 89 minutes (international)
Rating	R (US)
Budget	$11 million to $12 million (sources differ)
Box office	$11.5 million (US); $21.5 million worldwide
Franchise	Evil Dead: follows The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987)

Plot summary

Thrown back in time with his shotgun, his chainsaw and his 1973 Oldsmobile, Ash lands in the middle of a war between Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert) and Duke Henry the Red (Richard Grove). Arthur’s men take him for a spy and throw him into a pit with a deadite. Ash kills it, gets his weapons back and is hailed as the hero foretold by the Necronomicon. He falls for Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), the sister of one of Arthur’s fallen knights.

Arthur’s Wise Man (Ian Abercrombie) explains that the only way home is through the Necronomicon. To take it safely, Ash has to say the words “Klaatu barada nikto.” Along the way he is attacked in a windmill by tiny versions of himself that crawl out of a broken mirror. One grows into a full-size double, whom Ash dismembers and buries. At the book’s resting place he finds three books instead of one, and forgets the last word of the phrase. He mumbles and coughs his way through it, and the dead rise.

Spoiler section: the ending

Ash’s buried double comes back as “Evil Ash” and raises the deadites into the Army of Darkness. A flying deadite carries Sheila off and turns her. Ash stays to fight, using textbooks from his car to arm the castle and recruiting Duke Henry’s men. The humans win, Evil Ash is blown up and Sheila is saved. Ash drinks a potion to return to the present. In the theatrical ending he is back at his job at the S-Mart department store, where a surviving deadite attacks. He kills it with a Winchester rifle, says “Hail to the king, baby,” and kisses a co-worker. In Raimi’s original ending, Ash drinks too much of the potion and wakes in a ruined, post-apocalyptic London, screaming that he has overslept.

Production and behind the scenes

A third film had been planned since Evil Dead II, which was first conceived as a trip back to the year 1300. Raimi drew on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Gulliver’s Travels, Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the Three Stooges. Scott Spiegel was busy, so Raimi wrote the script with his brother Ivan. After the success of Raimi’s Darkman (1990), the film became part of a production deal between Dino De Laurentiis and Universal, with Universal paying half the budget. The ambitious effects still pushed costs past plan, and Campbell, Raimi and producer Rob Tapert gave up $1 million of their combined salaries to finish the film.

Filming began in mid-1991 and lasted about 100 days, on a castle set near Acton, California, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, as well as Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks. Interiors were shot on an Introvision stage in Hollywood. The front-projection process was Raimi’s tribute to Ray Harryhausen. Tony Gardner’s company, Alterian, handled the makeup for Ash and Sheila, and KNB EFX created the other creatures. The skeleton army mixed stop-motion animation with mechanically rigged puppets. Danny Elfman wrote the “March of the Dead” theme, and Joseph LoDuca returned for the rest of the score.

Release and reception

Universal took control in post-production and rejected Raimi’s bleak ending, so a new S-Mart ending was shot a month later in a lumber store in Malibu. The release was then held up by a dispute between Universal and De Laurentiis. Universal needed De Laurentiis’s rights to Hannibal Lecter to make a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, and the film moved from summer 1992 to February 1993. The MPAA first gave it an NC-17 for a shot of a female deadite being killed. Universal wanted a PG-13, but even after cuts the film was rated R. It opened on February 19, 1993, in 1,387 theaters, earning $4.4 million in its first weekend, $11.5 million in the US and about $21.5 million worldwide.

Reviews were mixed to positive. Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four, finding it less funny than Evil Dead II. Janet Maslin of The New York Times thought Campbell’s “mock-heroic posturing” suited Raimi’s “droll outlook.” It holds 69% on Rotten Tomatoes and 59 on Metacritic. It won the 1994 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film.

Legacy and influence

Like the earlier films, Army of Darkness built a large cult following on home video, under fan nicknames such as “The Medieval Dead” and the Japanese “Captain Supermarket.” Many fans consider it the film that made Ash a pop-culture icon, and lines such as “Hail to the king, baby” are among his best known. Comic books, a 2005 role-playing game and video games followed. Plans for a direct sequel were announced around the 2013 Evil Dead and eventually became the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead (2015), which ran for three seasons. Because of legal issues with Universal, the series could not directly reference the events of this film. The series continued in film with Evil Dead Rise (2023) and Evil Dead Burn (2026).

Trivia

Onscreen, the title reads Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness.
“Klaatu barada nikto” is the command from the 1951 science-fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Campbell said a “rights issue” meant they had to reshoot Ash and the car falling into medieval England instead of reusing the Evil Dead II footage. During the shoot, the crane holding the Oldsmobile collapsed and fell into a gravel pit.
Campbell was cut by a piece of armor during one fight. The plastic surgeon who stitched him up had to ask which of his many makeup wounds was the real one.
Bridget Fonda plays Linda, the role Denise Bixler played in Evil Dead II.
The film is dedicated to Irvin Shapiro, the producer who suggested the title, who died in 1989.