Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness By Alami
Sam Raimi, creator of the Evil Dead franchise, «very easy» gets scared, according to his friend and collaborator Howard Berger. «He doesn't like being jumped out on,» says the special effects makeup maestro, who discovered Raimi's low fear threshold while working on the second and third Evil Dead films. Whenever Berger and the VFX team showed Raimi a new creature effect, Raimi's easily eccentric nature usually elicited the same response: «Yeah, that's awful, mate, it's gut-wrenching!»
This is how they convinced Raimi to use the Pit Bitch, one of the iconic creatures from the medieval Army of Darkness, also known as Evil Dead III. The Beast appears early in the film when Bruce Campbell's Ash, magically transported to 1300 AD, is thrown into the castle pit to fight the demonic «dead» including Pit Bitch, a lumpen, dim-witted zombie witch (played by Bill Bryan, who was also the Marshmallow Man of Stay Puft in Ghostbusters).
«When we started sculpting it, Sam said, 'Ah, I'm not sure about this monster,'» recalls Berger. “We finished it, and the day Sam came to see it, we played a joke on him. We dressed Bill in full suit and put him on the board. He stood there like a statue. Sam looks at him and says, «Yeah, buddy, that's an interesting creature, but…» Then he jumped on Sam! Sam is like, “Oh my God, this is the most horrible thing I have ever seen! It should be in the movie!”
The Evil Dead returns this week with Lee Cronin's Rise of the Evil Dead, which is more in keeping with the giggling, heartbreaking horror and screaming good gore of the original. Released in 1993 to a mediocre response, Army of Darkness is more of a comedy than horror. But for the kids of the 1990s, who watched the movie on VHS repeatedly, making it a true cult classic, Pit Bitch lurked in a plethora of scarred nightmares for life. «Yeah, that's great shit,» says Berger.
Consistency is the madness of the Army of Darkness in… well, not in a nutshell, but in the pit. It was a good scare; some hilariously disgusting creature effects; Bruce Campbell receives a comedic defeat; and Campbell — as Ash, a supermarket boy turned chainsaw dead-killer — giving Pit Bitch both barrels with his Arrow Arrow. (“A double-barreled 12-gauge Remington,” Ash tells the medieval peasants, showing them some S-Mart salesmanship. “You can find this in the sporting goods department…retails around $109.95.”)
But Pit Bitch is just a taster of the medieval madness that awaits Ash. See also: his already majestic chin is sucked into a whirlpool; a vicious gang of midget-like mini Ashes; Ash grows a second head and then fights himself; Ash's metal arm and battle-modified Oldsmobile (actually Raimi's own car, which has made numerous appearances in his films); and a dead man «Evil Ash» who leads an army of skeletons.
Raimi's brother Ted, who played several small roles, said the film had problems at the box office because it was «too weird» for the general public. In fact, Army of Darkness has become such a cult classic that it's easy to forget how bizarre the concept was, from the low-budget cabin in the woods in the Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 horror genre to the comedic skeletons besieging the city. castle.
A medieval-style sequel was actually advertised much earlier in the series. The first Evil Dead premiered in 1981; just two years later, their savvy distributor placed the Evil Dead 2: Evil Dead and Army of Darkness trade ads as «in production» in trade ads. That didn't happen, and when it came time to make Evil Dead 2 — eventually released in 1987 — the medieval concept proved too expensive. Instead, The Evil Dead 2 — a reprise of the first film with heightened slapstick — ended with Ash being sucked into a time portal and sent back to the Middle Ages.
Army of Darkness Skeleton Stars. Author: Alami
“When we were filming the ending of Evil Dead 2, I was like, ‘Wow! This is complete madness,” Berger laughs. But you just follow the path. Whatever Sam wants to do, you just follow him.» Indeed, Raimi's co-writers describe him as infectiously enthusiastic — like a child bouncing for the joy of filmmaking — and they all seem to adopt a Looney Tunes-esque nasal voice when they mimic Raimi's enthusiasm. (Raimi can be heard in «Army of Darkness» — he voices some of the skeletons.)
The screenplay, written by Sam Raimi and his other brother, Ivan (a daytime doctor), tells a story in which Ash attempts to return to his own time. Sent by a wizard to retrieve the Necronomicon — the book of the dead — Ash has to repeat three magic words («Klaatu barada nobody»), but he misunderstands them («Maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, but basically I said em»), which awakens the army of the dead.
Raimi already had a deal with producer Dino De Laurentiis for a third Evil Dead. De Laurentiis was fascinated: he was eyeing the overseas territories, where previous Evil Dead films had sold well. Raimi also directed his first real studio film, the superhero film The Dark Man starring Liam Neeson for Universal. It suffered from studio interference, but Darkman, released in August 1990, was a modest success.
Director Sam Raimi on the set of Army of Darkness. Image Credit & Copyright: Alami
De Laurentiis partnered with Universal, giving Raimi an $11 million budget—blockbuster money in Evil Dead terms. According to Howard Berger, The Evil Dead 2 (which cost just $3.5 million) was «scratching at the bottom of the barrel». But the spirit of the first two films, characterized by that playful, malevolent force that rushes through the forest in a camera shake style, remained strong. “Evil Dead 2 had a very student feel,” says Berger. “In the case of Army of Darkness, it was so much more – it was a giant movie. Although the feeling of a student film remains. We just filmed and filmed and filmed…”
Army of Darkness was partly based near Acton, California, where the medieval castle in the film was built. “It was almost in the middle of the desert,” says Berger. Berger, along with fellow makeup artists Robert Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero, lived there the entire time. It was a tough shoot. Berger recalls working 22 days without a day off. “It was like six months of night shooting,” he laughs. «I think after all these years I'm still recovering.»
“It was a completely exhausting experience,” says Robert Kurtzman. “We filmed in the desert at night, but during the day it was stuffy. As long as there were hours, we didn't care. We had a great time on set.»
Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness. Author: Alamy
No one had it harder than Bruce Campbell. He was thrown off his horse, beaten, thrown into the hospital to have his wounds treated, and spent hours getting prosthetics put on. Campbell, speaking about the making of the documentary, called Army of Darkness probably «the most physically uncomfortable film in the history of cinema… any other actor can kiss my ass loud and hard.»
Starring opposite Campbell was South African actress Embeth Davidtz, who played the medieval mistress Sheila («Give Me Some Sugar, Baby»). It was Davidtz's first American film, and she soon found herself under prosthetics after she took an evil turn before the climactic battle. . «I don't think she really knew what she was getting herself into,» says Berger. “Wow…so this is filmmaking!”
Campbell's duties included battling both stuntmen and rubber skeletons, and even teaching sword fighting in the air so frame-by-frame skeletons could be added using a projection technique called Introvision. He also played several roles: Ash, Evil Ash and mini-Ash. In one scene, skeletal arms come out of the ground and tug and poke at Ash's face, like in the Three Stooges program — pulling his tongue, hooking his mouth and poking him in the eyes. «It's all about Sam on the side literally torturing Bruce with rubber skeletons,» says Berger. Kurtzman adds: “Sam loves torturing Bruce, he laughs at it. Bruce was crazy throughout the shoot.»
Even for the special effects team, the battle scenes have become a real battlefield. “We put ourselves in danger a lot of times, but we didn’t really think about it,” says Berger. “There is a scene with all these explosions. Bob Kurtzman and I were puppeteers and were covered in a very thin blanket. Bombs exploded and fire fell on us. We continued to control those skeleton puppets! It was very, very dangerous! But we completely immersed ourselves in it.”
Monster effects are paired with a timeless cinematic magic that CGI rarely uses. Kurtzman points to the Winged Dead — a giant bat-like creature that carries Sheila into the night — as a favorite. But it's the skeletons modeled after Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation, the frowning-browed skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts, that outshine the comedic backdrop: chattering and laughing skeletons; skeletons of Scottish pipers with red beards and checkered hats; rubber skeletons paddling on horseback; and cowardly skeletons who jump into action as soon as the flaming arrows begin to fly. «Get out from here!» one shouts.
“We built everything in such a way that it was modular,” says Berger, “so that it can be taken apart and reassembled. Sam is very picky about things — he destroyed a lot of things while we were filming. Skeleton parts literally disintegrated in my hands as they fought with swords. Sam clashed swords and heads fell. Me, Bob Kurtzman, and Greg Nicotero figured out how to make it work so we wouldn't be standing on set like a bunch of idiots with a bunch of broken things.»
A little fiddling with the final installation. with Dino De Laurentiis and Universal, the film required several reshoots and edits. The most significant was the new ending.
To return to the present day, Ash drinks a potion that puts him into a deep sleep for 700 years. In the original ending, he drinks one drop more of his potion and wakes up in a post-apocalyptic London. No, I slept too long! exclaims Ash, a brilliantly dark climax and potential setting for the apocalyptic Evil Dead IV.
«I love this ending!» Berger says. “I think it's great and fun. He drinks one drop more because he's really an idiot and distracted. This is Ash's typical oversight. Sam always said «Ash is such a loser!»
Bruce Campbell and Embeth Davidtz in Army of Darkness. : Alami/Bruce Campbell and Embeth Davidtz in Army of Darkness
But the studio wanted something a little more heroic, so Raimi filmed a funny but less interesting ending in which Ash, safely back in the present, works at S-Mart again, where he dispatches the last Deadite in the aisles. «Hail the king, baby,» he says before kissing Angela Featherstone.
“We filmed this in one night—on Christmas Eve at Ace Hardware in Malibu Canyon,” says Berger. «Sam said, 'We have to reshoot the finale tomorrow.' We're like, «It's Christmas Eve!» He said, “Yes, yes, yes, we will knock him out. It will be a short day.» But for Sam, a short day can be 72 hours. He has no concept of time at all. Which is nice about him too. But it was fast and furious.”
In a surprise battle against another horror icon, Ash finds himself embroiled in a dispute over Hannibal Lecter. Dino De Laurentiis owned the rights to the Hannibal character after the production of 1986's Manhunter (which starred Brian Cox of Legacy as the cannibal proto-Hannibal), but Universal wanted to make a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Universal withheld additional money for Army of Darkness and held the film hostage until the rights issue was resolved. Army of Darkness, which could have been a hit in the summer of 1992, didn't hit theaters until February 1993 (although it could have been worse: The Lambs' possible sequel, Hannibal, didn't hit theaters until 2001).
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Army of Darkness received another blow from the MPAA, which gave the film an R rating despite being relatively tame and without gore. Berger recalls that he had a large jar of fake blood that he never opened. Some suspected it was the MPAA's revenge for having the first two films completely bypass the ratings board. «It's all bullshit,» said Bruce Campbell. «This movie should have a PG rating.»
Army of Darkness was not a hit in the US, where it nearly made its budget back. Campbell blamed the title in part, which, at Universal's urging, omitted any mention of the Evil Dead. “When it came out, it didn’t get noticed at the box office,” says Robert Kurtzman, “but some adults remember it from their teenage years and show it to their kids and younger siblings. Children show their children. It just became a cult classic.»
The Evil Dead films were the product of the home video boom (the first film was, in fact, one of the banned «video nasties» in Britain). And your favorite of the original three — whether you prefer the screams and splashes or the comedic zombie warfare — probably depends on which one you saw in the video first. Something about Army of Darkness is running at a distance from the first two Evil Dead. Made with unbridled jubilation to Raimi's own influence, it's the kind of film that fires the cinematic imagination with an incomparable tomfoolery. Like a man with a chainsaw selling sporting goods to medieval peasants, the Army of Darkness stands apart. As Ash himself would say: hail the king, baby.
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