The medieval dead: how Army Of Darkness took Bruce Campbell to hell and back

Sam Raimi, creator of the Evil Dead franchise, gets scared “really easily”, according to his friend and collaborator Howard Berger. “He doesn’t like things jumping out at him,” says the special make-up effects maestro who discovered Raimi’s low threshold for scares when working on both the second and third Evil Dead films. Whenever Berger and the special make-up effects team showed Raimi a new creature effect, Raimi’s easily-rattled disposition usually provoked the same response: “Yeah, that’s terrifying buddy, that’s gut wrenching!”

It's how they persuaded Raimi to use the “Pit Bitch”, one of the iconic creatures from the medieval-set Army of Darkness – aka Evil Dead III. The monster appears early in the film, when Bruce Campbell’s Ash – magically transported back to 1300AD – is dumped into a castle pit to fight demonic “Deadites”, including the Pit Bitch, a lumpen, gloopy, zombie hag (played by Bill Bryan, who was also Ghostbusters’ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man).

“When we started sculpting it, Sam was like, ‘Ah, I’m not sure about this monster,’” recalls Berger. “We finished it and the day that Sam came in to look at it, we played a trick on him. We dressed Bill in the full suit and we put him on a board. He was standing there like a statue. Sam’s looking at it going, ‘Yeah buddy, it’s an interesting creature, but...’ Then he leaped out at Sam! Sam’s like, ‘Oh my god, it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen! It has to be in the movie!’”

The Evil Dead returns this week with the Lee Cronin-directed Evil Dead Rise, more in line with the cackling, soul-rattling horror and screamingly good gore of the original. Army of Darkness, released to a middling response in 1993, is more all-out comedy than horror. But for the 1990s kids who watched the film repeatedly on VHS – making it a genuine cult classic – the Pit Bitch lurked in many a scarred-for-life nightmare. “Yeah, it’s great s–––,” says Berger.

The sequence is the bonkers-ness of Army of Darkness in… well, not a nutshell, but in a pit. It's got a good scare; some hilariously hideous creature effects; Bruce Campbell getting a comedy beating; and Campbell – as supermarket boy-turned-chainsaw-handed Deadite slayer, Ash – giving the Pit Bitch both barrels with his “Boom Stick”. (“A 12-gauge double barrelled Remington,” Ash tells the medieval peasants, giving them some S-Mart salesmanship. “You can find this in the sporting goods department… retails for about $109.95.”).

But the Pit Bitch is a mere taster of the medieval madness that awaits Ash. See also: his already magnificent chin being sucked into vortex; a vicious gang of lilliputian-like mini Ashes; Ash sprouting a second head then fighting himself; Ash's metal hand and battle-modified Oldsmobile (actually Raimi’s own car, which made numerous cameos in his films); and a Deadite “Evil Ash” leading an army of skeletons.

Raimi’s brother, Ted, who played several small roles, said the film struggled at the box office because it was “too weird” for mainstream audiences. Indeed, Army of Darkness is now such a cult classic that it’s easy to forget just how oddball the concept is: from the low-budget cabin-in-the-woods horror of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, to comedy skeletons besieging a castle.

A medieval-set sequel had actually been touted much earlier in the series. The first Evil Dead premiered in 1981; just two years later, their savvy distributor placed a trade ad promoting Evil Dead II: Evil Dead and the Army of Darkness as being “in production” in trade ads. It didn't happen, and when it came time to actually make Evil Dead II – eventually released in 1987 – the medieval concept was too expensive. Instead, Evil Dead II – a retread of the first film with amped-up slapstick – ended with Ash sucked into a time portal and sent back to the Middle Ages.

“When we shot the end of Evil Dead II, I thought, ‘Wow! This is totally insane,’” laughs Berger. “But you just go down the path. Whatever Sam wants to do, you just follow him.” Indeed, Raimi’s collaborators describe him as infectiously enthusiastic – like a kid hopped up on the joy of filmmaking – and they all seem to adopt a nasally, Looney Tunes-esque voice when mimicking Raimi’s enthusiasm. (Raimi can be heard in the Army of Darkness – he voices some of the skeletons.)

Scripted by Sam Raimi and his other brother, Ivan (a doctor by day), the story sees Ash trying to get back to his own time. Sent by a wizard to retrieve the Necronomicon – the book of the dead – Ash must repeat three magical words (“Klaatu barada nikto”) but he gets them wrong (“Maybe I didn’t say every little tiny syllable but basically I said ’em”) which awakens the army of the dead.

Raimi already had a deal in place with producer Dino De Laurentiis for a third Evil Dead. De Laurentiis was keen: he had an eye on overseas territories, where the previous Evil Dead films had sold well. Raimi had also directed his first proper studio film, the Liam Neeson-starring superhero flick Darkman, for Universal. It suffered from studio interference, but Darkman – released in August 1990 – was a modest hit.

De Laurentiis partnered with Universal, which gave Raimi a budget of $11 million – blockbuster money in Evil Dead terms. Evil Dead II (which cost just $3.5 million) was “scratching at the bottom of the barrel” by contrast, says Howard Berger. But the spirit of the first two films – characterised by that playful, malevolent force that rushes through the woods shaky-cam style – remained strong. “It was a very student feel on Evil Dead II,” says Berger. “With Army of Darkness, it was much, much bigger – it was a giant movie. Although, it still had the feeling of a student film. We just filmed and filmed and filmed…”

Army of Darkness was partly based near Acton, California, where the film’s medieval castle was constructed. “It was pretty much the middle of the desert,” says Berger. Berger, along with make-up effects colleagues Robert Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero, lived there for the duration. It was an arduous shoot. Berger recalls working a 22-day stretch without a day off. “It felt like six months of night shoots,” he says, laughing. “I think I’m still recovering after all these years.”

“It was an entirely gruelling experience,” says Robert Kurtzman. “We would shoot in the desert at nights but it was sweltering during the day. As long as the hours were, we didn’t care. We were having that good of a time on set.”

Nobody had it harder than Bruce Campbell. He was thrown from a horse, bashed around, rushed to hospital to treat his wounds, and spent hours having prosthetics applied. Campbell, speaking on a making of documentary, described Army of Darkness as probably “the most physically uncomfortable movie in the history of motion pictures... any other actor can kiss my ass loud and hard.”

Starring opposite Campbell was South African actress Embeth Davidtz, playing medieval love interest, Sheila (“Give me some sugar, baby.”) It was Davidtz’s first American movie – and she was soon piled under prosthetics after taking an evil turn before the climactic battle. “I don’t think she really knew what she was getting into,” says Berger. “‘Wow… so this is filmmaking!’”

For Campbell, action duties included fighting both stuntmen and rubber skeletons – and even learning to sword fight thin air, so that stop-motion skeletons could be added via a projection technique called Introvision. He also played multiple roles: Ash, Evil Ash, and mini Ash. In one scene, skeleton arms reach out of the ground and yank and prod at Ash’s face like a Three Stooges routine – pulling his tongue, fish-hooking his mouth, and poking him in the eyes. “That’s all Sam, on the side literally torturing Bruce with rubber skeletons,” says Berger. Kurtzman adds: “Sam loves torturing Bruce, he laughs about it. Bruce was a crazy trooper throughout all filming.”

Even for the effects team, the battle scenes became a real battlefield. “We put ourselves in danger a bunch of times but didn’t really think about it,” says Berger. “There’s a scene with all these explosions. Bob Kurtzman and I were operating the puppets and were covered with just a very thin blanket. Bombs were going off and fire was falling on us. We kept operating those skeleton puppets! That was really, really dangerous! But we were totally into it.”

The monster effects stand up with that kind of timeless, filmic magic that CGI has rarely mustered. Kurtzman points to the Winged Deadite – a giant bat-like creature that carries Sheila off into the night – as a favourite. But it’s the skeletons, modelled after Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion, furrowed-browed skeletons from the Jason and the Argonauts, who steal the show as comedy foil: chattering and laughing skeletons; Scottish piper skeletons with ginger beards and tartan hats; rubber skeletons flopping about on horseback; and cowardly skeletons who leg it once the flaming arrows start flying. “Get the hell out of here!” one screams.

“We built everything so it was modular,” says Berger, “so it could come apart and be reassembled, Sam’s very hard on stuff – he destroyed a lot of stuff while we were shooting. Skeleton parts were literally disintegrating in my hands as they were sword fighting. Sam was smashing swords together and heads were falling off. Myself, Bob Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero figured out a way to make it work so we weren’t standing on set like a bunch of idiots with a bunch of broken stuff.”

With some jostling over the final edit with Dino De Laurentiis and Universal, the film needed several reshoots and edits. Most significant was a new ending.

To get back to the present day, Ash drinks a potion that puts him in a deep sleep for 700 years. In the original ending, he takes one drop too many of his potion and wakes up in post-apocalyptic London. “No, I slept too long!” cries Ash – a brilliantly dark punchline and a potential setting for an apocalyptic Evil Dead IV.

“I love that ending!” says Berger. “I think it’s great and hilarious. He takes one drop too many because really he’s an idiot and gets distracted. It’s a typical Ash faux pas. Sam would always say, ‘Ash is such a loser!’”

But the studio wanted something more heroic so Raimi shot a fun-but-less-interesting finale in which Ash – having safely returned to the present – is back working at the S-Mart, where he dispatches one last Deadite in the aisles. “Hail to the king, baby,” he says, before smooching Angela Featherstone.

“We shot that in one night – on Christmas Eve at an Ace Hardware in Malibu Canyon,” says Berger. “Sam said, ‘We’ve gotta do a reshoot of the ending tomorrow.” We were like, ‘It’s Christmas Eve!’ He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll knock it out. It’ll be a short day.’ But a short day to Sam could be 72 hours. He has no concept of time whatsoever. Which is also endearing about him. But it was fast and furious.”

In an unexpected battle against another horror icon, Ash was caught in a dispute over Hannibal Lecter. Dino De Laurentiis owned the character rights to Hannibal after producing 1986’s Manhunter (which starred Succession’s Brian Cox as a proto Hannibal the Cannibal) but Universal wanted to make a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Universal withheld extra money for Army of Darkness and kept the film hostage until the rights issue was settled. Army of Darkness, which could have been a summer 1992 hit, wasn’t released until February 1993 (still, it could have been worse: the eventual Lambs sequel, Hannibal, didn’t reach cinemas until 2001).

Army of Darkness took another hit from the MPAA, which slapped the film with an R rating – despite being relatively tame and gore-free. Berger recalls having a big tub of fake blood that he never cracked open. Some suspected it was the MPAA's revenge for sidestepping the ratings board entirely on the first two films. “It’s all a crock of s–––,” said Bruce Campbell. “This movie should be rated PG.”

Army of Darkness was not a hit in the US, where it just about clawed back its budget. Campbell partly blamed the title, which – at Universal’s insistence – ditched 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 teens and show it to their kids and younger siblings. Kids show their kids. It just rolled into a cult following.”

The Evil Dead films were products of the home video boom years (the first film, in fact, was one of the banned “video nasties” in Britain). And your favourite of the original three – whether you prefer the screaming and splatter or comedy zombie war – likely depends on which one you saw on video first. With Army of Darkness, there's something about its distance from the first two Evil Deads that works. It’s made with a rampant glee for Raimi’s own influences – it's the kind of movie that fires up filmic imaginations with a nothing-else-like-it wackiness. Like a chainsaw-handed man selling sporting goods to medieval peasants, Army of Darkness stands alone. As Ash himself would say: hail to the king, baby.