7. Evil Dead 3: Army Of Darkness (1993)
Sequel To: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, which was both a sequel to and a remake of
The Evil Dead. Both are classic horror-comedies and have cult status in their own right.
Who Made It?: Sam Raimi, who helmed both the first two films.
Why Was It Made?: Raimi had always envisioned doing an
Evil Dead sequel set in medieval times. He had wanted to start production after
Crimewave, but the box office failure of that film led him to postpone and make
Evil Dead 2 instead. He spent the next five years working in the script, in-between shooting the cult classic
Darkman.
Why Is It So Bad?: Sam Raimi once described
The Evil Dead as "a Three Stooges movie, with blood and guts standing in for custard pies". In the first two films there was a near-perfect balance of horror and comedy, with the goofy tone making the horror seem all the more demented. In
Evil Dead 3, however, there is a shift towards goofy comedy that quickly falls flat. In a bid to expand the world of Ash and the Deadites, the plot becomes sprawling and is ultimately just a series of set-pieces interspersed with special effects. It has its moments but never builds to anything, resulting in an incoherent mess.
What Happened Next: The film was a commercial flop and the series ended. Raimi continued to court mainstream success with
The Quick and the Dead before directing the
Spider-Man movies. A remake of
The Evil Dead was released earlier this year.