RedLetterMedia - Army of Darkness & the Evil Dead Series PART 1 (RESURRECTED Commentary Highlights)

[Applause] hello and welcome to our commentary track for army of darkness i'm mike i'm jay i am rich evans and that's bruce campbell's feet oh my god and that's bruce campbell and his his stump that is stuck in that thing even though it makes no sense [Laughter] hi i'm sam raimi the director of the evil dead i've invited to see my new movie [Music] i don't believe this say you uh do you think this will scare the audience as much as the first one that's a safe bet yeah it's got a lot in it to grab the audience [Music] so we're watching army of darkness and this is one of the worst movies ever made let's all make fun of this movie i don't know well you notice uh here the housewares department like the sign placement and everything looks different than it does at the end of the film because this was a part of the original filming and the ending was a reshoot oh my god the redone ending and that was bridget fonda for some reason she wanted to be an evil dead i think she just yeah she's a fan it makes sense she ends up in uh a simple plan later sam raimi put her in another movie um but i was gonna say it makes sense if it was like holly hunter or something because there was a period of time when like sam raimi and the coen brothers and like holly hunter all lived in a house together like when they were all starting out in hollywood but this is footage from evil dead too this opening recap of the the first two evil dead movies is a combination of footage from evil ed2 and uh reshot stuff like when he cuts his hand off it's a reshoot because they didn't want to be as bloody yeah that's one thing i i noticed watching this movie is that it has an r rating yes it really shouldn't it shouldn't it would they made it with the intention of it being pg-13 but for whatever reason the ratings board just kept coming back with an r oh really and that i could think of one particular scene that made it makes it r but uh he's cause he says [ __ ] once you can say [ __ ] once in a pg 13. he said get the [ __ ] out of my way um when he's coming back with the book yeah yeah grace great the [ __ ] out of my face um i would i would i would venture to guess it's the the fountain of human blood that get gives us the r rating the fountain of kool-aid you mean yeah [Laughter] and then they said yeah you can't show that i mean i was a producer of the remake of evil dead it's a really bloody movie it's a really bloody movie we sailed through the ratings it's all a crock of [ __ ] anyway this movie should be rated pg you know my my my mother used to love horror movies and she'd have us watch horror movies all the time but i i vaguely remember watching this with her as a kid and she didn't know it was a sequel the evil did too and we got to this and she's like oh it's the guy from that movie well that's that's the most baffling thing is that this movie it wasn't produced by universal pictures it was like picked up for us distribution by universal but the idea that they thought they could market it as just like a standalone movie it's so baffling was there like just talks of calling it evil dead three uh well i think sam raimi wanted to call it the medieval dead which is very clever um but no it's just army of darkness i think they kind of wanted it to sort of work as a standalone movie but i mean all this opening is just like if it was just just its own movie it was just all so baffling sorry i always hate that you could see those boards oh yeah that drives me nuts that was a shot from evil dead too and then we cut to this shot which was shot for army of darkness and like the color temperature is completely different the location is the same at all oh that's right the original ending and then they they what what happens they uh a horrible flying hag monster flies in and he shoots his head off it's like a truncated version of this opening that's right well the truncated version of the whole movie because then they're like hail he's as far as none of them being similar in any way tonally do people generally like this more than evil dead too i think evil lead 2 is the most well liked yeah well it's the best it is but we're we're talking about army darkness but evil that two is the best i in my opinion but that's the thing is like you have evil dead which is super cheap and rough around the edges but it's basically a straight horror movie evil ed2 which is like a weirdo horror comedy and then this which is more of like just an adventure slapstick comedy there's not a whole lot of horror in this film this is the gremlins 2 of the gremlins series yes yes it gets very looney tunes so does evil dead too honestly it does but it still is a is a horror film yeah um the this i mean this is just pure goofiness well the horror pretext has been dropped yes there's no uh three stooges bit in evil dead too as far as oh yeah yeah yeah technically there is there is oh what what is that when the when the uh the creature in the basement when they they stomp on its head and its eyeball pops out and it lands in the the girl's mouth that's directly from a three stooges movie but it works as a horror sequence as well a very silly one but yeah but this one is like goofy comical skeletons and poking him in the eyes i mean it's nonsense before the evil dead my part my friends and myself just a group of school chums and and and i would make super eight uh comedies three stooges comedies control yourselves you hit man with glasses with you oh my my glasses let's see ah there they are all my classes oh it's you paul i'm glad i ran across you why have you stood you such an influence on you what do you like about them i like the fact i like their physical comedy and their sound effects you know the the hyper real uh schticks that they do and um they just make me laugh wow europe really looks like southern california i guess they could be in like like spain or something right well that's not very likely i never noticed this until i watch this on blu-ray but uh henry the red uh all of his men are are gingers i don't think i ever noticed that either yeah like the it's oh yeah they're all redheads that's pretty funny [Laughter] whoa whoa wait a minute oh wait wait a minute you you gotta understand man i i never even saw these [ __ ] i don't know why some of this stuff is just so funny i think it's just performance as far as a comedic performance goes this is my favorite bruce campbell performance yeah as far as a physical performance probably evil dead too when he's doing all the when his hand's possessed and he's you know flipping himself over in the kitchen and everything but as far as just a straight i mean this is what kind of cemented the bruce campbell persona the sort of cocky but also incredibly dumb is another interesting thing about this series and that each iteration ash just gets dumber [Laughter] first first movies like college guy second movies a little silly and then this is like nonsense and then ash versus evil dead he's even dumber i don't know if i'd call him dumb so much as selfish and overly cocky monstrous yeah was big trouble in little china an influence it's similar where you take like an action hero protagonist but he's also kind of an incompetent boob yeah that's true yeah it's very reminiscent of that sure i don't yeah i don't know if it was an intentional influence or not this feels more that's the weird thing about this movie it's like this big adventure you know time travel swashbuckling thing and then sam raimi's just like but then the lead will be bruce campbell that's that's your gimmick the whole the whole movie's a joke which is again why it's weird that like you kind of have to be in on the joke to get the movie like did either of you see this in the theater i did you did oh okay i thought i might be the only one no a friend of mine was into evil dead oh okay and evil dead too i think i saw this at the dollar show i mentioned it because my dad took me to see it because it was rated r so i couldn't get in and i was really excited to check it out and at the end of the movie he just goes i don't know what the hell was happening in the entire movie that's pretty clear though i think it was maybe it was the tone threw him off yeah because it's like what is this it's like nonsense [Applause] those girls are watching a scene from a horror film called evil dead one which broke all financial records in the cinema and as a home video when released four years ago yet it was attacked by some as being no more than a video nasty in the department of public prosecutions took court action to ban it you you still seem to have in that film an obsession with with mutilating the human form i mean is that what's necessary these days to bring the thousands of people into the cinemas to watch that kind of movie um actually it's evil that is a story of uh demonic spirits and it's really a battle of man vs monster would you let your kids watch any anything at all like this have you have you got any children and some of the the gruesome grotesque and gratuitous violence simply for the sake of showing violence not only did it make me feel sick but also it quite clearly is working away at people's sensitivities and that's what's crazy is like universal tried to sell because i how i found out about this movie was uh through the trailer that said like from sam raimi director of dark man and i liked dark man uh but i didn't know what this was and then i read in fengori it was a sequel to these evil dead movies did dark man come out before this yeah holy [ __ ] a couple years before it which also makes this movie funnier because it's like oh sam raimi a modest hit with dark man he's gonna follow it up with this evil dead sequel [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [ __ ] elephant [Music] yeah and then he shoots scenes like this with the arrow the camera's following the arrows well this is he's sped up like like cartoon it's like like ah classic sam raby stuff yeah i love shots like this where there's there's a lot of scenes like this where the camera moves and all these characters either come into frame um this just super long yeah a camera move there's one where after he defeats everybody um or the bad guys the camera's moving back and all these main characters are kind of stepping in the frame one night oh yeah there's there's really cinematic shots and then there's slapstick lock down the camera and throw rubber skeletons at bruce campbell right right right or ten minutes of uh of slapstick with skeleton hands hitting him in the eyes and uh and looney tunes sound effects [Laughter] if you have it you don't need it if you need it you don't have it why didn't bruce campbell become a bigger star i mean obviously he's big in the right circles yeah he's big in b movie circles but he was never a big star and why isn't why isn't that the case he's funny as [ __ ] i don't know it just never really happened is he a good actor actor well you don't put him in in like serious dramatic roles you find a goofy comedy and you put him in that like like a buddy cop movie kind of thing yeah i guess bruce campbell starred in every super 8 movie that we made because it's very simply he was the good looking one and still is so he said the girls like you will put you in front of the camera the girls don't like us we'll stay behind the camera and uh he's got like the like the leading man looks like he looks like an action star oh look you can see the woman's head on the side of the frame oh yeah you can see your hair a little bit there this is a great little set too and you can see her laying down look at that this movie's a mess it's terrible i told you when this started this is the worst movie it's true oh my god there's so many mistakes yeah bad things well that's that's part of the i mean it's kind of like uh martin scorsese with his editing or it's like he's not concerned about continuity he's just concerned about the flow of the scene yeah yeah and sam raimi is just definitely doesn't care about continuity or little minor errors it's all about just what what works for the gag make way strange one strange one [Music] see now like this if you watch this as a standalone movie that opening recap that tries to set everything up does not explain the chainsaw arm at all [Laughter] well the the wizard finds it and holds it up but the but why it is fitted for his stump none of it makes any sense yeah yeah look at that great shot through the middle of the spikes he explains that he has to cut off his hand that's explained in the recap yeah they explain that but they don't explain why he has a chainsaw that fits right on there this is a great monster it's a shame it doesn't have any articulation that's true it's essentially a halloween costume it was a halloween store hand it sticks to that guy's face do you know who's in this monster costume i do not sam raimi no it's roomy i don't know the actor's name but it's the same guy that played the stay puft marshmallow man ghostbusters yeah wow when the time came i heard you know rolling action and come out monsta bill that was my direction so that was my performance who wants some who's next huh you you want a little you want some had either of you seen the other evil dead movies before this i did i did not okay again i had a friend who was really into this and they would always say dead by dawn dead my dog yeah i had like i just saw the trailer for this before something and i knew it was the guy who did dark man and that was all i knew but then before it came out i was reading in fangoria they had an article about it and they mentioned that it was a sequel to the evil dead movies so i was like before i see this i gotta watch those other ones i guess i just remember there was a moderate amount of hype around it there was for this one who you knew i guess yeah it depends on certain people but i know this was like a giant bomb when it came out because nobody knew what the hell it was universal was like where do i wanna call it evil dead three they didn't want it any reference to the other two movies and we're like why why wouldn't you want that no no no name so army of darkness people didn't even know it was evil dead three and there were lots of people who liked evil dead one and two but i had yeah a weekend like before we went and saw this where i rented the the first two movies and watched them back to back and it was a magical time the the evil dead trilogy kind of changed my life [Applause] [Music] this was like the series that made me kind of understand what a filmmaker was because the style is so broad that it's like that was where i was like oh somebody made these decisions like these shots and all the the creativity and the weirdness is like somebody made this [Applause] the sword boy's job and he just kicks him down [Laughter] the the pacing of this moment where he shoots the top of his sword off and then it cuts to all these different reaction shots and just like the shot of the uh the flag like the pacing of it is all so perfect yeah all right you primitive screwheads listen up see this this is my boomstick listen up you primitive screw heads he has so many great lines in this and that was like my my youth just repeating every line from this movie yeah this was i may have seen this movie more than any other movie ever because there was a period when it first came out on home video i watched it like every day after school for like six months this is one of those ones where i knew like every sound effect even that's that's the fun of this and that it becomes even more prominent in ash vs evil dead is that he's a complete buffoon about everything except killing monsters he's a badass when it comes to killing [Laughter] he's demons a guy that wants to get home jack he's just a complete selfish [ __ ] which again they build up even more in ash vs evil dead relax sweetheart i'm not sticking my neck out for anybody in fact i'm just about to haul noogies [Music] this scene particularly demonstrates that this is sitting on that it's funny too like i think because this was like a reshoot like they didn't do this when they initially shot the movie so if you look at arthur's beard here oh it's like like glued on it's like a cheap fake beard yeah and this set's so tiny i don't know if they shot it or if they ran out of money or what but there was the comic book adaptation that was what the scene was originally supposed to be there's like this big room with all these pillars and the witch lady that comes up was like knocking the pillars and they were going down like dominoes like it was this big elaborate thing and here we just get like a two all set it's fine it's like a high school play [Laughter] and that was shot like in a garage like a car garage like for two days this is how resourceful sam is like we're all out of money pal so we're gonna have to shoot in this restroom but just imagine it's gonna be great it's the castle this is where king arthur lives in this restroom did they not shoot that scene they just wrote i don't know i don't it's kind of unclear i think they like just ran out of money or something and they didn't shoot it but that was the original idea for the scene and then they ended up filming it later and we actually built the miniature model we shot most of the plates for it we did some of the crumbling of the plates but we couldn't really actually add the stage time into that whole scene just send me back to my own time pronto today chuck and snap zoom yeah a classic hag evil dead hag monster you shall die and this witch lady is uh patricia tallman who is like an actress and stunt person and she started with like george romero's camp she was in like george romero's night rider and she played barbara in the united living dead remake oh yeah i think she was casting this as more of a stunt performer but i think she was on like babylon five as like a regular character one of those types of shows bubble on five's a big pile of [ __ ] get out yay it's a trick get an axe now here's a yeah here's a continuity thing she's facing away from him but now when we pan up and we cut to this wide shot she pops up from behind him it's fine oh yeah oh you know it's great but it again doesn't matter she's a demon this is great though this this frantic like handheld camera yeah it's just so so comical [Laughter] this is terrible commentary because i'm just watching this and smiling which is just it's [ __ ] awful for a commentary [Laughter] i love when sam remy does these things though where there's like a whole sequence where every shot is kind of done in this like one particular like this one every shot has that it's not like crazy michael bay shaky cam no it's following the shot it's just jittery until the sequence until the yeah until the sequence is done and then when it's done you know we get a lockdown shot like this yeah it's not it's not like it action movie exciting it's it's almost there's there's a specific it's like the scene has too much energy and so the camera yeah yeah yeah yeah and here's here's another one where every shot is a snap zoom for the sleeves yeah this is this is uh where he makes the nonsensical robot arm i hate the robot arm i was disappointed because i was like oh i wanted to have the chainsaw through the whole movie and it never really comes back i know why sure yeah she doesn't have to have a stump the whole movie and yeah and they indicate here it could crush a goblet but then he never really uses it for its crushing powers no this man is an engineering genius why does he work at smart don't touch that please your primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys and compositions and things with molecular structures in the but i love this scene uh re-watching it the other day it was like it's the scene where they had they have their bond they have a little fight you know they make up yeah but it's so like shortened and almost self-aware oh yeah because they don't make up he just walks up to her and they start exactly he's like give me that they don't bond over anything in particular no right it's it's what would be a longer scene in a movie with more dialogue and more gravity and you know characterization of each other yeah his fiance died yesterday i made this i made this for the i need another horse blanket and she slaps him and then he says uh give me some sugar give me some sugar baby it's it's like it's like sam raimi knew the scene had to happen yeah but he just didn't want to write a whole scene yeah they just wrote like four lines he treated it's a joke the whole movie is a joke yeah and you're either in on it or you're not it's bordering on like a naked gun scene you know what i mean now what's the story with this castle is that a miniature or a matte painting or what uh i think it's a miniature but i'm not positive i mean it's clearly composited in but yeah i don't know exactly what it is it's that castle in southern california oh yeah here we are yeah this is the famous vasquez rocks which is most well known from being in bill and ted's bogus journey uh-huh that's the there's nothing else nothing else this is where kirk fought the goron rich knows that though you and i know that i don't even need to say that well ian abercrombie was on star trek right that guy has to have been on star trek at some point probably everybody's been on [ __ ] star trek he's been on star trek i think we've heard enough of your noise tommy boy i say we tie them up to the lamppost in the square and show them how spirit folk were dealt with in the olden days i know him as mr pitt elaine's boss on seinfeld when now retrieves the book from its cradle you must recite the words push the whopper button push the whopper button okay well repeat them yeah look at bruce campbell's hair in the scene it's like two years long yeah i got it i got it i know your damn words all right here we get some more kind of moody evil dead uh stuff someone has a smoke machine just off camera what are you doing watch that honestly this is where the movie kind of falls apart for me oh yeah the second axe bad yeah the second next terrible we'll talk about that oh there's lots of fun stuff in the second act yeah but the fun stuff though with the whole premises of him going back into time is him interacting with people from the past that's true you have this whole section in the middle of the movie where he's just on his own see my favorite stuff in evil dead 2 is when he's by himself and just going crazy in the cabin and it's just like the bruce campbell show sure but you can watch evil dead 2 for that yeah i think these scenes just kind of waste the premise yes i agree with rich that's fair and then this feels like the second act needed evil dead stuff like this cat like the the camera following famous evil dead point of view shots yeah and then the banging on the door and all and then i hate the little ashes um i like the idea behind them but the execution of it i openly hate that whole sequence of the movie oh my god i do i do too silly did he take it too far too wrong for this movie for what this movie should be yeah his quest needed to uh to find the book needed a couple scenes with him going to things you've seen in medieval movies posse with him of arthur robin and his merry men kind of thing yeah yeah yeah we've got to go to this village all these little obstacles he has to face along the way to the main yeah what's a trope from oh jeez like a uh like a he's got a battle a night a jousting tournament you really put me on the spot uh oh some kind of wizard asking him riddles okay a guy at a bridge asking like what's in um uh uh uh the [ __ ] monty python movie yeah oh yeah there's the guy who gets all of his limbs cut off or he's he's guarding the bridge or whatever right yes he needs he needs the three death stalker two when death stalker has to get in a wrestling match with the woman from glow there you go yeah this this sort of seems like they wanted to recreate some of this oh yeah weird stuff i get i understand why they'd want to do that because evil dead 2 is arguably the best movie ever made [Music] and yet we're here doing the commentary for army of darkness [Music] i mean declaring any movie your favorite is always silly because your favorite movie can change depending upon your mood but sure evil dead too it's in the mix there for me oh yeah that's fair i do like the he almost says it sarcastically when he wakes up and he's like what a horrible nightmare [Music] it's the whole situation it's just too stupid this uh this looney tunes stuff [Laughter] these these large-scale miniature sets are kind of neat yeah yeah i think it's an isolated sequence this is kind of fun even though the the effects the compositing is not great at all just think uh uh just be thankful we're watching the us theatrical cut because the international cut this is like twice as long oh no they drop a bucket on his head and there's some slapstick with that it's a little uh gulliver's travel thing right yeah i guess the point of the look at those wires oh man hd has not done this movie kind you can see the little mat around where the thing jumps into his mouth yeah well i'm holding his nose look look terrible the effects in this movie are not good but that's not the point some of them are fun it's not like evil dead 2 where all the effects are it's like the perfect use of everything of like stop motion and creature effects and this one i think they got a little too i mean i'm fine with them going ambitious because that kind of makes the movie funnier so here he's pouring boiling hot water down his throat to burn the guy but he does not burn his mouth i used to always think like oh that's how he guys the the evil ash got his face [ __ ] up he got burnt in the stomach and then i always forget that he oh it comes out shooting in the face with the shot in the face with the shotgun i like the shot coming up here yeah the eyeball it's so gross [Music] but then instead of any sort of effect to see the thing growing out of him just adr line where he says it's getting bigger dispose universal was was watching like the dailies of this and just thinking oh god what have we done well that's no this wasn't made by universe we just yeah they picked it up after it was already made but the fact that they watched the finished movie and said we can sell this is pretty amazing [Music] [Applause] you know sam raimi made this in his backyard this friends on the weekend i think universal was maybe hoping that because dark man was a decent uh success that maybe they could get more of that audience [Music] yeah i like an evil dead too the more like when his reflection comes out of the mirror and he's like tormenting himself it's a little more psychological this is just goofiness and that rubber tree just completely wiggled when he hit it no no the force of the impact was so severe it ripped the roots rocking normal okay [Laughter] i always used to say why why didn't he have a like a a line right before he shoots him in the face because he's saving it i ain't that good [Music] good bad i'm the guy with the gun [Music] and here's the there's a recreation of the uh evil dead two scene yeah this is more in line with the tone yeah this particular series of shots certainly not little ashes yeah i guess ash cuts them up here they kind of got rid of the idea that you have to completely dismember them in this movie because all the the demons he's killed so far at this point he just kind of shoots them that's pretty painstaking that was part of the whole mythology in the other movies i think peasants just come in later and they hack the bodies up oh okay we just don't see that yeah we don't see it that's fair [Music] [Music] and he always builds crosses in all these movies i never understood it oh at their graves yeah i think it's just to indicate that he's buried them in a grave sure that's like it becomes a great joke in ashford that's right yeah they make a joke about that you know they were jewish right i i did not wish it could have said something before i made those dumb crosses but dude we should talk about the music the music's amazing in this movie we're listening to it with the sound off i can't even [ __ ] hear it oh yeah you're right yeah main theme by danny elfman and then the rest of the score is joe laduca who's done all these movies see this is kind of what you're talking about where he has to have his little challenges yeah it's a bit questy but we need some interactions sure not spend the last 15 minutes completely by himself mm-hmm it's fine this is i think it could be better rich and i just hate the windmill it's just all the time and everything to do with it that's fair it's a small portion of the movie yeah it has a great great first act and a great last act a really great first stack though oh yeah it is yeah that's definitely the strongest about it the battle the battle's epic there are some problems you got to put epic in quotes there's a great makeup appliance though yeah that's not his real face being stretched no that put theirs now the i know the there's the international cut where this goes on a little bit longer in this truncated us cut it's actually funnier how he's shaking his head and just hard cut to him i think it's after this one where he just starts talking [Laughter] i vividly remember seeing this in the theater and everybody laughing at the movie at that point how do you know what they were laughing at it's possible they were in on the joke but i don't think so i think you're supposed to laugh at this movie [Laughter] no you laugh at movies that aren't aware of how ridiculous they are well this movie is this movie's aware of how ridiculous oh so yeah so you're laughing with it okay well you said the audience was laughing at it i i think the audience that i saw it with them like they thought it was supposed to be serious like they didn't know what they were getting into yeah which is why this movie was a big flop i don't like the uh new look of the necronomicon in this though and why is that i don't know it looks too clean i like the the janky evil ed2 book this one looks too because it looks too constructed like the whole idea is that it was like bound in human flesh and here it looks like somebody like sculpted that cover as opposed to just being a face that's awkwardly stretched over the front of it i remember you had a version of this movie uh that was made from the necronomicon you did jay no i had evil did two oh that yeah it was foam latex yeah and it just started falling apart yeah that thing was that was actually it was not built to last they had one for evil dead and evil dead too how much did they charge for i don't remember this was like 15 years ago they got his money though i don't i don't know if any series of movies has been re-released more than these three did you mean the book of the dead edition or the ultimate edition dvd what's the difference or maybe you were talking about the limited edition blu-ray is that all the same movie or did you mean the limited edition tin of evil dead 2 or there's also the 25th anniversary blu-ray of evil dead 2. or maybe you were talking about the book of the dead edition of evil dead 2. don't get me started on army of darkness why do you have all those because my life is an empty shell the whopper [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, d&d, commentary, dungeons and dragons, rlm, redlettermedia commentary, comedy, review, avp, alien vs predator, aliens, predator, star wars, return of the jedi, george lucas, commentary highlights, redlettermedia star wars, batman, batman & robin, batman and robin, the batman, george clooney, joel schumacher, batman forever, 90s, banyabat, banya bat, best of the worst, evil dead, army of darkness, ash, sam raimi, raimi, bruce campbell, ash vs evil dead

Id: 1lpAaL3f8kg

Length: 39min 54sec (2394 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2022