3. Army Of Darkness
My early teens were the worst of my film snob years. Let's just say I was very pleased with myself for knowing who Wim Wenders was and leave it at that. Back in 1993, I remember seeing an advertisement for Army Of Darkness in my local paper with the tagline "Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas..." It looked to me like the worst movie ever made. A few months later, I went to a sleepover at a friend's house. Right after school, we all went to our local Blockbuster Video. I fought a losing argument for any other movie in that fine establishment besides Army of Darkness. Please use that one against me in the comment sections below. We were maybe two minutes into Army Of Darkness before I knew I was absolutely wrong about it. Before the end credits were over, we all agreed to rewind it and watch it again. With an 81 minute runtime, that's not terribly taxing - but we laughed and cheered even more the second time... and even more again the next morning when we put it on again. I've never watched a movie twice in a row before... or since. I'm sure we weren't alone in doing this. Twenty-one years later, its energy and madcap brilliance is still without equal. Despite all the crazy camera tricks, Sam Raimi made a surprisingly low-fi movie for the time, a mixture of Three Stooges' silliness, Ray Harryhausen monsters, and good, old-fashioned B-movie schlock. It leaves you wanting more. And while we all want an Evil Dead 4, sometimes wanting more isn't a bad thing.