12 Things You Never Knew About 'Army of Darkness'
2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the cult classic "Army of Darkness." Is it a horror movie? A campy comedy? Who cares? All we know is that Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams is one movie icon who's stood the test of time.
So grab your boomstick, hone your one-liners, and check out 12 things you might not know about the final chapter in the original "Evil Dead" trilogy.
1. Director Sam Raimi originally had a much more pun-worthy title in mind for this sequel. He wanted to call it "The Medieval Dead."
2. Officially, the film's full title is "Bruce Campbell vs. the Army of Darkness." Raimi wanted to pay homage to classic monster movie mash-ups like "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy," but shortened the title to make the film easier to market.3. Raimi had originally planned to make "Evil Dead 2" set in medieval times, but it was only after the success of 1990's "Darkman" that Raimi was able to find the budget he needed to bring that story to life.
4. If that Oldsmobile Delta '88 looks familiar, it's probably because it's appeared in every single Sam Raimi film. For instance, it was also the car Uncle Ben used to drive Peter to the library in 2002's "Spider-Man."
5. Star Trek and Batman fans may also have a case of deja vu watching the film. Portions of "Army of Darkness" were filmed at Vasquez Rocks (the sight of the iconic "Star Trek" episode, "Arena") and in Griffith Park's Bronson Canyon (where exterior shots of the Batcave were filmed in the 1966 "Batman" series).
6. Similarly, Raimi's brother Ted has a habit of appearing in all his films, and he plays no fewer than three characters in "Army of Darkness" -- a soldier, a villager, and an S-Mart employee (above).
7. Raimi and visual effects supervisor William Mesa used over two dozen storyboards from 1948's "Joan of Arc" to help craft the film's final battle sequence.8. Originally, the film was slated to end very differently. More recent DVD collections include the alternate original ending, where Ash drinks too much potion and wakes up in post-apocalyptic London rather than in his own time.
9. "Army of Darkness" was originally saddled with an NC-17 rating, due in large part to a scene where Ash decapitates a female Deadite. Raimi trimmed that scene, but resisted studio pressure to edit the film down to a PG-13 rating.
10. "Army of Darkness" saw its release pushed back by several months, as it became collateral damage in a legal battle between Universal Pictures and producer Dino De Laurentiis over the rights to the Hannibal Lecter character.
11. Because of lingering issues with Universal, the Starz series "Ash vs. Evil Dead" (which is set 30 years after the events of the films) was unable to reference the events of "Army of Darkness' in its first season. Fortunately, those problems have since been ironed out.12. There have been numerous comic book continuations of "Army of Darkness," including a series where Ash meets "Re-Animator's" Herbert West and another where he battles zombie-fied versions of Marvel heroes.