ARMY OF DORKNESS: EVIL DREAD III

ARMY OF DARKNESS: EVIL DEAD III
dir: Sam Raimi

ARMY OF DORKNESS: EVIL DREAD III
Cracked Monster Party #20, April 1993
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan

Sort of starts where the last Evil Dead left off, with Ash (Bruce Campbell) is sucked into medieval times by the Necronomicon, the book of the dead. People there do not believe he is from the future and he is forced into slavery.

Ash had been a clerk at S-Mart, a K-Mart stand-in, and in the previous movie lost his hand and replaced it with a chainsaw. In the third one, where he is in the thirteenth century, he has had his chainsaw and shotgun taken from him by Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert) who believes he is with Duke Henry (Richard Grove) who Arthur is fighting with. Ash is thrown in a pit and forced to fight monsters and corpses and a sympathetic wise man from Lord Arthur's side (Ian Abercrombie) throws his chainsaw and shotgun down, which he uses to defend himself and is able to climb out of the pit.

Ash tells the crowd he is “magic” threatening to use the shotgun, which he calls a 'Boom stick' on anyone who messes with him. He wants to go back to the present time where he belongs, and the wise man can only do this if he retrieves the Necronomicon and chants the spell “Klaatu baraa nikto” (which comes from The Day the Earth Stood Still.) He also meets Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), the sister of one of the knights.

When Ash travels and gets the Necronomicon, he overcomes many obstacles. They're not shown here, but he breaks a mirror and the reflections come out and become little versions of him and torment him (see below). He kills one doppelganger who later escapes and turns Sheila into a monster like him, and they lead the dead in the Army of Darkness of the title.

Ash returns with the book and demands to be taken back to the twentieth century. He did not say the spell right, creating all kinds of chaos.

The army of darkness approaches, inspired by the Ray Harryhausen skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts, and led by the evil version of Ash. The good Ash stays to fight the dead and his corpse for possession of the Necronomicon., using the living and tools made from things from the twentieth century that he came with. The two warring armies of the living unite and Ash returns to the present, where he brags about his escapades to his co-workers at S-Mart that he could have been a king.