Blank Check with Griffin & David - Army of Darkness with Eva Anderson

Episode Date: April 17, 2022

KLAATU BARADA NIKTO - did we get that right? Writer Eva Anderson (WeCrashed, You’re the Worst) joins us as we attempt to answer several questions related to the final entry in the Evil Dead trilogy - 1993’s Army of Darkness. Why was this film not called MEDIEVAL DEAD? Did Embeth Davidtz and Liam Neeson talk about Sam Raimi on the set of Schindler’s List? How does Ben feel about the concept of a town pit? And most importantly, we introduce a tantalizing Hollywood mystery - was there a falling out between Silver Lake roommates Sam Raimi, Joel & Ethan Coen, Frances McDormand, Holly Hunter, and their sixth roommate…Kathy Bates?  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Thank you. Klaatu, Barada, Peanut, Popcorn, Puddle. God, it's a P word. It's definitely a P word. Klaatu, Barada. Okay, then. That's it it That was very good, Griffin I didn't say it You see what was funny I know, I know

Is the bit is not saying the one word I'm supposed to say Did you get it? I would do that I would do that though too Do you know what I mean? I'd forget Oh, you identify with him in that moment i know immediately i would i wouldn't write it down and then in the moment when i have to

say the fucking phrase yeah fuck it up i think that's what i relate to the most is the confidence of like yeah yeah i got it yeah of course i got it three words i got it uh david do you think you would have remembered i would have remembered? I would have remembered it because it's Klaatu Barada Nikko. That's the only... Have I ever told you my The Day the Earth Stood Still story? It's not a really exciting story, which is probably why I've never told you. No, is this a story about what you were doing on The Day the Earth Stood Still? No, luckily that day hasn't happened yet.

My mom is not a genre film fan in particular right like she has only seen one star wars movie in her life and it was two i'm sorry two she's seen revenge of the sith when we did a commentary live right and she saw force awakens at the zigfeld yeah well i can't remember but like she was like i gotta see that just because it's everyone's talking about it and so we saw the force awakens let's see but no not a genre film person okay okay you know if she's showing me a classic movie when i'm a kid she's showing me comedies she's right you know she's showing me other stuff but then she would always be like god there's this one movie i love that i saw when i was a kid and like you know and then one day the

nft in britain was doing don't you do the bet was doing the day the earth stood still nft that's the i'm too distracted by that to go for i know it's called the bfi now it used to be called the nft the national film theater i know beyond fungible items right right right right and she's like that's the movie that's the movie let's go see it i'll you know this is like the sci-fi movie i love so we went and saw it saw it i think i liked it a lot i think we walked down she was like well that's not the movie i was thinking of that was pretty good but uh that wasn't that wasn't it and then later we finally figured out that she actually

meant the movie the day the earth caught fire which is another british sci-fi movie that is also great that is also you know it's it's the reason she liked it it's actually a newspaper movie like it's about people working at a london newspaper when the earth you know what the sun does something insane or what you know i can't remember what it is uh daily express movie yeah no i my uh day there still is one of the only sci-fi movies I remember my mother speaking highly of when I was a child. She like,

It was a classy horror movie. I mean, sci-fi movie, sorry. She liked that and she liked all the versions of, uh, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But I, but I think the original one as well. Like, those are the two concepts

that caught on. It is funny that it's like, uh, famous phrase from that movie, right? Then the Evil Dead franchise riffs on it substantially. And then Star Wars does as well. There were like the three Skiff aliens. When they're on the Skiff and Han is like fighting off Boba Fett,

I think the three aliens are named Klaatu, Barada, and Nikto. Or at least that's their species names. Yeah. Well, it's sort of clearly a movie and a series of words that made an impression on a lot of people who watched it when they were young and then went on to make films of their own.

Right. It's the movie we all came out of or whatever. Yes, you are correct. Anyway, our guests can talk anytime, by the way. Anytime. Anytime. If you want to burst right in, that's totally fine. I've never seen it. Never seen The Day the Earth Stood Still? No, I know what it is, but I

just never seen it. Gort? You're not a Gort fan? Gort? Guess not. Gort's the big robot. Gort. And then in the remake, Gort's like a nano thing, right?ort's like a nano thing he's like nano technology

every fucking 2000s remake that was what they came up with can it be a cloud or can it be a lot of little things I'm gonna name my son Gort sure do it Gort Hosley you've already said that you want to name your son Droopy McCool

I think the first time on the podcast that you've invoked a future name for your child you're in a very serious relationship have you discussed at any point in time like you know i know it's a big conversation to have but like i just want you to know if we're ever going to have children our their names are going to be droopy mccool hosley and gort hosley i'm waiting for the right. I haven't, I haven't sprung it on her yet, but cool. Yeah. I'm sure it'll go over.

Great. Did you, uh, guest, uh, Eva, geez, I can just say,

we don't have a rule where I can't say your name. Did you see the remake, uh, of the day the earth stood still with Keanu Reeves? Did you see it? No, I've never seen any of the day the earth stood still. Wow.

Is it the remake? Anything? Uh, I've never seen any of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Wow. Is the remake anything? The remake is not much. Okay. Bizarrely. It's okay. It feels like it should be a little better than it is, right? Yeah. Keanu is well cast in that Klaatu, who he's playing, is sort of supposed to be kind of robotic and weird.

Jennifer Connelly and john ham and jayden smith it was early ham in movies you know it was like we're on like season two of mad men and it was like why isn't this guy in every movie you know and so when he showed up you're like hey it's ham hmm i've heard of him on ride but him in movies okay no i just i've heard of one and i hadn't heard of the other i i'm just i'm not trying to make a joke i just genuinely i've heard of one is great and truly you look it's like you're it's like this cartoon kind of animated living room it's like almost like squints squinch bob square pants is like living room it's got that vibe. It's the Evil Dead cabin, Ben. Oh, okay.

Sure. Because it was an escape room I did over Zoom during lockdown that was an Evil Dead-themed escape room that was being run out of the Chaz in Seattle. Did you successfully escape? Yes. Oh, yes, yes. And they even had a Bruce Campbell impersonator

that you'd have to interact with on a like a little it was great it was like there's different ways people did escape rooms over zoom but this one was just that there was a guy running around with a camera in the escape room going like what should i do what do you want me to do and he just kind of yelled him like go over to the mirror to be like okay and he was kind of playing this like hick goofball character so he was just like i just came in this cabin from outside he's had a little he had overalls and stuff but he was like larry middleman from arrested development where it's like he's just wearing a camera and you're sort of like

living vicariously through him yeah yeah he'd be like go back to the lock yeah try this you'd be like okay that's fun that that it does sound fun it also sounds it sounds like trying to play a video game with five people though right where you're all like shouting different instructions or something i don't know it might frustrate me i did it exactly one time and then i was like well i've done that activity the way it shouldn't be done. And should we go back to the fact that saying the words SpongeBob SquarePants seemed to give Ben a nervous breakdown or should we just. Yeah, I don't know what happened to me. Like I couldn't like speak. I'm really sorry about that. Yeah.

Hit a spot that I think in my brain is maybe like they're just like it registered Spongeongebob squarepants and then somewhere that like that chain got broken and it just yeah it really i like uh it's just spun out wow i don't want to force your hand but maybe your third son should be named squongebob honestly then was it like when you're like about to say someone's name to their face who you've known for years and then your brain's like that's not their name short-circuited or whatever and it is their name though but then you then you like swallow their name because you're about to just say you just panic because that happens yeah yeah well i think it's just the nature of the name being kind of words just jammed together and it just didn't sound like i was like am i saying gibberish right now but then we got there we

got there and we're exploring it and i love that ben you're showing your ignorance spongebob squarepants is a traditional nordic name it is not just words smushed together okay check your ignorance this is an educational podcast in which we check our privilege and our ignorance is called blank check with griffin and david I'm Griffin. I'm David. And it's about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. And sometimes they bounce.

Baby. And this is a miniseries on the films of Sam Raimi. It's called Podcast Me to Hell. Today we are talking about Army of Darkness, the third film in his Evil Dead trilogy, and the second film in his early 90s universal dark-in-the-title duology. I guess so. It is funny that he makes, like, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Darkman, Army of Darkness.

I do think it's bizarre that this movie is not called Medieval Dead, right? Oh, so good. I know that was the original idea way back when they wanted Evil Dead 2 to be set in the past. And then I guess they dropped it and Army of Darkness was some title they came up with that they then dropped and added Dead by dawn to evil dead 2 instead and then they but like why isn't this called medieval dead don't you think this would have made 10 more million dollars like if it was called medieval dead yeah my memory of it was that because it was like new rights holders universal making this one then they didn't make the previous films

they were like we want this to stand on its own. We want this to be an entry point. We don't want people to feel like they're jumping into the third movie. But it's a better title. Yeah, it's a better title. Yeah, but yeah, we're here to talk Army of Darkness, a movie that I feel like

I don't know about you guys. I didn't watch for years because I, as a teenager, thought this movie's reputation was straight up bad. Like, I think I watched Evil Dead 1 and 2, and I had somehow absorbed, like, Army of Darkness, not worth it. Like, it's a Godfather 3 situation. Don't even bother. Like, they messed it up. up like i must have read something

somewhere that said this at some point so it took me years to see army of darkness yeah david i had the exact same thing but for evil dead one oh where it was like don't even it's it's they hadn't figured it out yet like the second one's so much better yeah it's not fun it's just gross it's just scary and i but i watched army of darkness like hundreds of times as well then well that's why you're here that's really nice it's very very very very kind of you to say that i am overwhelmed you are a classic anytime eva anderson is in my you know like the the episode pops up, some new show, and it's with Eva Anderson. I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, appointment. We're stopping the current episode of whatever I'm listening to to listen to this. That's the Eva Anderson touch. It's true. Aw. Sorry. I didn't mean to yell. And the bias here might be that David and I both love podcasts that are hosted by people you're good friends with that have you on. But I do think there is a consistency to any time you're a guest in terms of your

passion, but also the preparation you put into everything. You go very deep on whatever subject you're talking about. And and there I mean, I'll say two things. One, I was at a hotel a couple years ago i guess and they sort of had their like selection of books like in the lobby that are mostly i guess just sort of like interior design but ostensibly you could read if you just are trying to chill out in the lobby of a hotel and they had a volume of the fantagraphics dick tracy. And I got so amped for a moment that it was the one volume, which you've talked about on Podcast The Ride, being out of print and costing thousands of dollars,

which features the Moon Maid arc. And I had to explain to the person I was dating at the time, the arc of me going, holy shit, holy shit, is that, is that? And then taking this Dick Tracy book off a wall in a hotel lobby and like flipping through it frantically and then being crestfallen.

And she was like, what just happened internally? And the whole time in my head I was running, if this is it, do I take it? Do you steal it? Yeah. That's so cool. Do you want to hear something interesting about that mysterious Moon Maid comic? Do you want to hear something interesting about that mysterious Moon Maid comic? My brother Dashiell, shout out to Dash, fan of the pod, he found me the missing Dick Tracy. He found it like a guy in Australia had bought a bunch of them.

And so he sent it to me for my birthday, but then it didn't arrive. So he emailed the guy. So I ended up, the guy ended up sending it again. So now I have two copies of The Missing Dick Tracy. Wow. Dick Tracy, I still read Dick Tracy, the daily three panel comic. You do? Of course you do.

Of course you do. I love love that cup of coffee and your dick in the morning griff it's funny you say that it just introduced a new villain called coffee head whose head looks like a cup of coffee his head looks like a mug i guess is the better way to put it here i will but is there coffee inside of it? No, he's just, you know, that's the whole thing with Dick Tracy. They don't think that hard.

It's just like a guy's head will look like a screw and they're like, his name is screw head. You know, like that sort of shouldn't be mug head. How do you know what's called? He is says they call me coffee head. Now it's coffee with a Y. I don't know.

Maybe to just kind of, let me see if I can. Does he have two? Does he have one big ear? I'm looking at pictures here. It looks like both ears are handle shape. It should be one tiny ear. Okay. Sure. I guess he's mostly they're playing the angles on it. So he's

like a sippy cup. He should be called sippy cup head. He looks like a fucking sippy cup. They should give him the little like tintin flip at the front of his hair so it looks like the little nozzle of the sippy cup he's got two i'm putting it in the chat i'm putting in the chat there it is you can click on it now they call me coffee head wow uh and the the idea of this villain is that he used to own a coffee shop i guess so he's a coffee he's sort of like you know in mulholland drive when uh when badalamenti the the composer he plays like the mobster who drinks

the coffee and spits it out right the mobster who cares that much about a good espresso uh he's attractive you're into coffee he's one of the more handsome Dick Tracy villains. Yeah, he's way hotter than I thought he would be. Is it because, Eva, do you like a square jaw? Because this guy's got like a set square jaw. He does, but he also has kind of tortured, dreamy eyes. He's got a frown. Like full, kissable lips.

I was going to say, the lips are really, yeah. Because every other Dick Tracy villain looks, I mean, really unfortunate. Am I allowed to say this? Yeah. That's not a hate crime to say Dick Tracy villains are ugly. Am I kink shaming by saying that Dick Tracy villains are by and large very ugly? They're not the handsomest bunch i mean it's sort of a you know i suppose it's a retrograde problem with dick tracy where you can judge a book by its cover and

dick tracy right yes that's yeah pretty much the idea training children to hate the ugly right exactly is karen hon gonna send me a bunch of angry texts telling me that she has a crush on the influence on flat top I mean but that's that you're right it's not just it's it's double whammy it's children should not trust unattractive people and they should focus on whatever their weird

facial flaw is and say that's their name or whatever right that's a defining characteristic it over it usurps every other aspect of their personality you know i love uh the film dick tracy i love the baby movie i think it's so cool to be clear not not the movie we're talking about today a movie we will inevitably i wanted to i was but like you know that movie came out in 1990 right this is 92 ramey's probably too small for it but like you can imagine a ramey

dick tracy around like dark man's got a lot of dick tracy going on like he he would have made you know the man was sort of making living cartoons at the time right like he he could have made a dick tracy well yes and and the weird arc of this movie is of course like they want to do this premise for evil dead 2 they're like that sounds too nerdy uh he makes he he really wants to direct uh the shadow which we talk about in the previous episode i assume uh he really wants to make a shadow he doesn't get the job he makes dark man as sort of his angry like not breakup movie but his rejection movie of like, I want to show you what I could have done with this sort of pulpy noir film, which was that whole post Batman trend of everyone going,

they don't want more superheroes. They want more like two-fisted comic strip heroes. They want 30s radio drama energy right now. The Phantom was around then too, right? With Billy Zane. Yes. Yeah. And like, weirdly weirdly dark man is one of the more successful of that wave by being spiritually in line with that but not literally being an adaptation of anything and also being present day rather than like full pastiche um the phantom movie of course right that's the famous situation where they were like we played it straight and the guy who wrote it was like wait what i wrote that as a comedy. And the guy who wrote it was like, wait, what?

I wrote that as a comedy. What are you guys talking about? It was Joe Dante. Joe Dante was going to make it as a comedy. And then they fired him, took his same script and played it straight. Everyone except Treat Williams, who, if you've seen that movie, knows exactly what's going on. Xander Drax is a funny villain. But Billy Zane is not poor billy zane

because it uh yeah if you feel bad for billy zane in that movie but treat williams if you guys don't know one of the best tweet twitter accounts out there really oh my god oh man i gotta check it out the most sincere dad tweets of all like just like absolutely straight faced i mean you might have to turn off retweets because it's a lot of like sincere retweeting as well but my brother just sends me great treat content all the time we used to both be big everwood fans so we've always loved treat he's awesome that makes a tremendous amount of sense um it is funny though that yeah like dick tracy was supposed to be, like, the new Batman, right? And then you have Rocketeer, you have Shadow, you have Phantom. I guess Phantom's,

like, kind of the last in that run. That's 96. By the time this movie comes out, pretty much that trend had, like, largely petered out. But there's a scenario which I imagine the Sam Raimi Dick Tracy would have been more successful than the Beatty Dick Tracy because Raimi probably just would have leaned fully into the goofiness. Whereas at the time, I think people were very confused by the tone of the Beatty Dick Tracy and the weird mashup of like the cartooniness and his weird prestige, serious minded sensibilities. Yeah. It's a, it's almost like, uh, in retrospect and saying how, how serious Dick Tracy takes itself.

So serious with that visual aesthetic. And it's exactly what makes the movie fascinating. Right. It's why it's, why it's interesting. Right. If it was art, it would probably be less interesting.

But I think you're right. Sam Raimi could have made that same movie with that cast and that script, and it probably would have been more popular with children. But imagine Bruce Campbell as Dick Tracy for a second. I mean, he'd be good. He'd be so good. He'd be so fucking good. Not that Warren doesn't crush it in that yellow suit. I mean, he'd be good. I mean. He'd be so good. He'd be so fucking good. Not that Warren doesn't crush it in that yellow suit.

I mean, he looks great. Like, he's a hot guy. But Bruce Campbell looks like he was drawn with ink. You know, that's his whole thing. He has the actual chin of Dick Tracy. Yes. Yes, he actually does. The profile.

And Beatty was old at that time. Yes. Yes. He actually profile. And he was old at that time. But yes, weirdly, Darkman being successful lets Ramey do kind of his first like check cash in, which is you're going to let me go back and do the third movie in that dark man had been written for campbell and then campbell was like i'm gonna step aside because my buddy sam's about to torpedo his career right he he has to stop insisting on me as the lead of all this movie right it's like it's a kind of a sweet story where campbell is just like i knew i was gonna be okay but i knew sam had a bigger career in front of him and if he insisted that I always had to be his leading man, it was going to get hamstrung. So then this is sort of this weird like cashing in the Darkman check. Darkman, which does well theatrically, but does like way better on video, kind of explodes immediately once it hits video, leads to the direct to video sequels. He's able to go back and go, you're going to let me make this movie with my buddy.

Now picture Bruce Campbell as Oscar Schindler, because that's another thing we could have ended up with, right? It's another thing we could have ended up with. I could have done more. I wish I could do Bruce Campbell. I also could only think of one Oscar Schindler quote. You know, he would have been good as early Oscar Schindler in the first hour of Schindler's List

when he's a party animal, when he's just going to bars, he's smoking, he's hanging out with ladies, you know, fun Oscar Schindler. Do you think that Edbeth Davids and Liam Neeson talked about Sam Raimi on the set of Schindler's List when they had their, like... They must have. Oh, you too? Probably. Like, you also? It's just such a funny thing to think about, right? Because this ended up coming out after Schindler,

but was shot first. Is that correct? I think it's the next thing she does. Yeah, it came out before Schindler's List. This came out in February of 1993, and Schindler's List came out in December of 93. Okay. I just know it was shot a lot earlier.

Yeah, exactly. This was weirdly delayed. And M. Beth Davids, yeah. Army of Darkness is her first screen credit, I think, and Schindler's List is her second. It was kind of out of the gate for her. Well, she had done South African movies. Yeah, I guess you're right.

It's her first Hollywood screen credit. There, she had done South African movies. Yeah, I guess you're right. It's her first Hollywood screen credit. There's a couple of South African movies. It's her first Hollywood movie, yeah. Yeah, you're right. I love M. Beth Davids. I always love to see her. She always shows up. She's always good.

Absolutely. When she showed up in Old, I was so happy. Same. Same. And I even had that excitement of going like, oh, fuck, is that M. Beth Davids? Yeah. Like it was like a final surprise under the Christmas tree. Oh, man. She was locking down like a very awkward storyline on the Apple morning show.

She was Steve Carell's unfortunate ex-wife. I need to watch the morning show. Every time anyone describes it to me, it just sounds bananas. It is. It just sounds like something they're getting away with over there and putting it out they're like okay yeah four you know it's it's weird it's crazy it's interesting though because like she doesn't work a tremendous amount it feels like she's somewhat selective in what she chooses to do and then i was looking at her wikipedia and

there were like four or five performances in big movies where I'm like, I forgot she was in that and she's great in that. Like, I forgot that she's Lane Price's wife on Mad Men. Yeah, she is. She's good in that. I forgot how good she is in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She's really good in that. Did you remember that she is Peter Parker's mother in the Amazing Spider-Man films? The mystery of his parents. wasn't gonna mention that that's

not her fault no it's not that is a weird waste of her uh miss honey she's miss honey she is miss honey i'm not gonna i don't want to go too crazy over here but she is such a babe and matilda it's crazy that that feels like maybe the ultimate davidative crush. It wasn't the ultimate one, but she is. She's a total babe. She's got those round glasses. Remember? Yeah. But also she's like amazing in Junebug.

Oh, yeah. She's always good. And it is just so funny to have her 1993 be this and Schindler's List. And that's her entry into Hollywood. Literally Princess Sheila and then Schindler's List and that's her entry into hollywood literally princess sheila and then schindler's list a princess named sheila yeah and she spends half of this movie being like a dead a dead i temptress or just getting manhandled by ash but you know it is funny that she's you know she's like you think of miss honey you think of this like she's more of this sort of

what's the word i'm looking for like she turned into the scary type a english lady like not that that's always what she does but i feel like that's what she's typecast as like more sort of icy and in these early movies she's not that at all she's like sexy and fun and cool like i i don't know i'm i i'm not sure why that is how that goes she's just because she's english maybe i don't know she's like a nafe or something it's it's very odd how strongly her type changed but she's good at both um i just re-watching this movie every single minute at least once a minute, I would think to myself, I can't believe they let them make this. Oh, yeah.

Like, this is just such an ultimate where you're like, they got studio money to make this? Like, the whole movie feels like an in-joke in a bizarre way and that the joke is, can you believe? Like, you're watching someone

get a big budget to do a student film you know it's like this is the movie we make in the backyard with our friends and now we have like animatronics and evil dead 2 feels like the absolute height of the size you could imagine someone would get for that kind of and then this just like blows that up yeah there's there's like there's lines ash has that are so aggressively stupid on purpose that i was like just picturing like sam raimi giggling writing them down like i was like i felt like everyone just was like ah yeah like ash is dumb now and he's a an asshole that's what ash has been gone for a while now ash sucks now and he's an asshole. That's what Ash has been gone for a while now. Ash sucks now and he's awesome.

It's funny because like the through line of these movies is obviously Sam Raimi loves torturing Bruce Campbell, right? He loves making him look stupid and he loves making him do difficult, painful, embarrassing things on screen. And Campbell is like this goofy, amiable jock who's always down with the spirit of the thing. And then, right, you have this transformation at the end of Evil Dead 2 that you just think, like, there's no way they can pull this off, this guy becoming a badass. And then it's like, now he's sort of become, against all odds, after the first, like, you know, one and three quarters movies, a genuine kind of action star by the end of two and then their choices so we're going to take that and as you said turn him into an asshole

and an idiot like we're not we cannot let him be conventionally cool if he's now confident then it has to be a problem yeah i was thinking about it in relation to like because it had been so long between evil dead 2 and army of darkness and like I was thinking about it in relation to like, because it had been so long between Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. And like, I was thinking about it in terms of like Terminator 2, which was the year before. But this was like a type of action hero was really just around. And you were being told, I felt like I was being told as like a teenage girl, like that I that I had to love Arnold, that I couldn't just like admire him as a strong bully, but also he had to be my friend, too. And I was like, no, like, like I've seen Pumping Iron. This is this guy's a Nazi.

He's bad. But and I feel like there's that's kind of and I feel like there was also like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. It's like a type of muscle man that you were supposed to be like, yeah. And there's something that's fun about doing the full transformation of taking Ash from. Because the only way Ash's character logically makes sense in Army of Darkness is if you're like, the events of the previous two movies have driven him insane. And he has like, he doesn't care anymore he's just his personality has like changed because he can't he just all he's ever done is like have girlfriends and murder them like ash doesn't even have a job until the third movie right we never

know that he has a job he just has girlfriends right we're unaware of any yeah his only backstory in one and two is he has a girlfriend and he has to kill her that's that's really it right and in one he buys her a shitty now he bought her a shitty necklace and in one he doesn't say groovy and in two they're like but what if also he says groovy and it's like okay well that's our big that's our big addition to the ash character i mean it's funny what you're saying eva it's not just like you say that arnie was big and strong and all that it's in the 90s it's there's the pivot to like we need to soften those guys we need those guys to suddenly be family friendly in a way they weren't before like that

that's it that would that was sort of galling at the time i sort of i was i was little when this movie came out but still like but also like peak of, the 90s were the peak of that sort of muscle upon muscle, hyper-violent action movie that was riddled with groany one-liners, right? And part of the appeal was when Arnold says, consider that a divorce, does he know that's funny at all, right? says consider that a divorce does he know that's funny at all right like when stallone gets these lines or van damme they deliver it in a way where it's just like do they understand that's a joke is is it winking at all are they taking that totally on face level and then like they give ash shittier blunter lines in this and he delivers them with this attitude of like, I know this is fucking awful, right? And somehow he's able to thread this needle

where it's like he's mocking almost the principle of having these guys turn like one degree away from the lens and say the fucking thing. But also the lines work. Like it is bizarre that all of his one-liners in this movie have successfully achieved some sort of stickiness with fans as like badass quotable one-liners even though it almost feels like the point is what's the most groan inducing thing we can have bruce campbell say and how hard can he like fucking oversell it? How much spit can he put on the ball? Yeah. And then also on top of that, Griffin, the movie is answering, adding one more layer on with like asshole mean Ash, like delivering these terrible one liners and acting like he's and bragging about his weird job and like being suddenly completely self-aware, like having no self-awareness from like the sweet beta that he was in the first movie.

But then just having like basically in every scene, like an old lady punches him in the face 150 times. Right. But also like enough time has passed that there is zero boyishness left in him. Right. He is like fully a man now. Oh, yeah. Still hot though. So hot.

Still incredibly hot. Still incredibly hot. But also like in two when he's just like gorgeous and in this you're like he's maybe crossed over into comically handsome. Like it's hard to take him on face level where he's in like carrie elwes territory where it's like what do you do after princess pride you have to do robin hood men in tights right you cannot do the straight version of this right i mean right but it's just every time i watch one of these i put on evil dead one and i'm like god bruce campbell such a cutie and then every time i watch another one i i have the same reaction i'm like he just

he's it's not like he's not a handsome guy now he's very handsome he's got the great jaw still like i love it it's just i think i just you always think of him as funny and yet you forget just what what what a gorgeous specimen he is that's all i want to know eva what your history is with this movie because i sort of said mine which is like i avoided it for a bit and then when i got to it i was like this is so much fun like why why would this have a bad rep yeah um so i'm older than you guys i was in high school in like the mid to late 90s sure um so solidly like a video store era there was there were pre-dvd basically um and it was very much like i had like a small group of friends and we wanted to be like movie people one day and we would rent sam raimi movies and watch them together constantly like we were we like uh

him and peter jackson were like our people like that we felt like we had the secret knowledge of um and it was really interesting like both of them watching them sort of become like mainstream uh after high school was really interesting because they really did feel like like a secret but like that only only the cool people knew about evil dead and army of darkness um and i think at some point i did own i just i owned the uh the army of darkness i bought like a the video store in our neighborhood was going out of business and I bought Army of Darkness and I watched it, like I said, like hundreds of times. I mean, like when watching it this time, when Ash comes out of the pit and he does the long monologue where he's like, you want some to all the guys. I knew every line in it.

Just I just in my head, I just was like, you want some, huh? Like I knew I knew when he turned, I knew when he was going to turn to the camera. Right. Right. So, so good. And then I told you this, David, but like in my early 20s, I was working for a production company that was doing these countdown specials for Entertainment Weekly. And they did like the top horror films of all time.

And I was like a producer, like called a producer, but I was basically a coordinator, like a set coordinator on it. And Bruce Campbell hosted the special. And I ended up shooting for like four days in the desert with Bruce Campbell on this really crazy strenuous like low budget shoot where he was fighting zombies and um and he was so cool like he was

like it was totally the dream was like not only was he like very funny elevated this weird material but also like because it was this super low budget, I just kind of cast a bunch of my friends and, like, got all my friends on set because they weren't paying anything. And, like, anyone, whenever he had downtime, like, if you wanted to talk to him about, like, Evil Dead, he would just tell stories and stuff to, like, the crew, to the cast. He was so generous and nice. crew to the cast he was so generous and nice and you could tell also like he was really proud of of his career and just like really proud of evil dead because he like he paid for evil dead basically um yeah and he knew that he's just like so he just was like it was just such the the i i love him so much like in retrospect too just being like man he could have been such a dick to us because we were arguably wasting his time

and uh right and it's this annoying weird project and like he doesn't need to make an effort or whatever right like yeah i've watched it you sent me i i guess it's sort of a cut together of everything right like it's like a 47 minute video on youtube yeah of all the like all the wraparounds that he did. Um, it really weird. Um, but yeah, he was just like kind of great, but it is, it's bizarre. Yeah. Um, side note, just from what you were saying before, uh, it was for AMC and at the time AMC was mostly just showing like bachelor party all the time. But like when, when we were producing the thing, like the head of AMC on one of the calls was

like oh yeah we're doing our first like original show it's about madison avenue right advertising it'll be out next year and it would that was like that puts it all in like in time or whatever yeah right and then everything is so it is so crazy because yeah before then amc was like what if we were a worse a and e like they weren't even like let's be a worse uh what do you call you know tm tcm let's like like ams a and e is a little too classy what if we showed shittier movies like and even like tbs and tnt had very clear identities and what kind of movies they show yeah and they had like you know the occasional sitcom and like you know you'd watch like baseball on tbs or whatever right

like amc was just like i'll watch major league two or shawshank right and then as you said eva it's like bachelor party is the best they can get yeah i just imagine like those old cable days where it's like Warner Brothers comes in. They're like, all right, here's our 1994 movie slate. And HBO is like, we'll take this and this. They're all bidding. And AMC is just sitting back in the chair like, we can wait. We can wait for the dregs.

Don't worry. I got two nickels here. The Phantom, you say. Billy Zane, you say. Oh, man. the phantom you say billy zane you say oh man it is i mean the way you were just sort of describing him eva and like how much he could have gotten away with being an asshole not that anyone should ever be an asshole right but that like it is bizarre it's notable how much of a nice guy he is and so much how much he appreciates his fans and is proud of his legacy and all that stuff that is the thing that made him such like a cult icon it's like i mean when we were doing the back to the future movies and talking about how bob gale

has like made his life about being the ambassador of back to the future right for all things and it's like what if the guy who was the bob gale of evil dead was also the star of evil dead and also still had a good career like it's one of those things where it's like it's not like he's only doing right there's nothing tragic because there's no other option about bruce campbell's career at all like so him being king of the convention or whatever like that's just what he's the best at yeah but he's so happy to go around and talk about these movies and his legacy within them and how they were made and touch base with the fans and yeah all that sort of stuff i mean i'm remembering my first association with this

movie was before i even knew what evil dead was right because i mean i've talked about in the other episodes but it was one of those things where I was like, who's this guy who's like all over comic book stores? What is this weird franchise and this icon who doesn't seem to be part of larger popular culture? I'm not going to see him at like the mural at the pizza parlor, you know, or AMC or whatever. But like within comic book stores, this guy's iconography is like big. But years before that, it's something like 90s VHS. I must have rented some universal VHS where they had the trailers before the video. I remember seeing the trailer for this movie as like a young child and being like, what is this?

Like the existence of this movie doesn't make sense to me. They're treating like this guy like he's iconic. But this is not any movie star I know of. This doesn't seem to be a movie star that my parents know of it's not even i'm too young for this guy you know i'm like this guy isn't nick cage but they're positioning him like he is and and then right the weird like is there a presumed familiarity i'm supposed to have with this character in this trailer you know they're treating him like he's this archetype and what

is the aesthetic of this movie that it has this level of like scale and monsters how could anyone get this movie made like and then years later when i watched evil dead one and two i was like wait a second army of darkness is the third evil dead movie like it made sense to me that that's the only circumstance in which this movie could come into being but also have such a bizarre tone like it's the amount of fucking cartoon sound effects in this movie and like literal head spinning and like eyes bugging out faces getting stretched and shit it's funny this movie obviously was trying to be pg-13 you guys know that right like that was their hope and it got an r rating uh which which hurt it at the box office it it feels pg-13 like it feels more teenage fun and light and its energy or whatever and i guess it was probably just do

you think it's just that it was too weird like the violence isn't even horrifying but it's just sort of bizarre and that's and that's why like or is it just because it was an evil dead movie and they were like eh we're gonna just tend towards like this is for grown-ups it must have been some combination of the two because nothing about this movie screams are and it's like there's a lot less viscera than there was in the last two because you're mostly dealing with like fleshless skeletons a lot of bones ben and shit oh i know before we started recording i said this movie is chock full of skeletons it sure is you don't usually get skeleton bad guys it's no it's a rare skeleton monster there is so much incredible bone work and not only that usually you're lucky if you get one or two you know this one has what i would refer to as an army of darkness for sure

yeah they skeleton but they have little heads for their drums they have a thigh for their they play a flute that's a bone yeah oh my god man like all of the just different little ways to get them to move and do stuff throughout the movie i was really i was pausing i was taking notes you were getting ideas from this yeah i i was right i i really i've really inspired me don't do it ben whatever you're planning don't do it don't don't raise any bone armies ben we don't need that right now the world's a little a little on edge i don't think a skeleton army has emerged is something i just i knock a shovel or i move a shovel out of the way like off camera so that you know uh yeah are your hands covered in dirt what's going on um all right let me give you some context griff let's i was just

gonna say just quickly just about skeleton i just want to say before we move on the context before we dig into the context if you will it is funny how much like the the ray harry has an influence on the the titular army of darkness is very apparent but like in behavior the skeletons are more like like the fucking walt disney skeleton dance short you know oh yeah like they're just like what are funny visual gags you can do with skeletons to eva's point they're cute yeah they're cute yeah um they're they're like they're kind of more animal even though they're human skeletons obviously right they're not they're not like the Harryhausen where it's like, this is a soldier.

It just looks like a skeleton. I don't know. They're having fun, no matter what. They are having fun. They're having fun. So, as we've mentioned, they make Evil Dead. Then they make Crime Wave. That doesn't work.

Okay, we're in retreat. We're going to gonna make evil dead too that's the thing we can sell they make evil dead too initially wanted to call it medieval dead and then they and then they wanted to call it army of darkness it's called dead by dawn obviously so they do that um dilorentis i guess his his subcompany had folded. He did have sequel rights, Griffin. After Darkman, Universal is happy enough with Darkman that they decide to split the budget with De Laurentiis. So it's 50-50 from each whatever company. $12 million budget.

They send Ivan and Sam off to come up with the script. And they are very insistent together that they, I guess, do not want it to just be a part three. They wanted it to stand on its own. Right. I want someone to be able to come in and enjoy the film without worrying about, you know, Evil Dead lore. Not that there's a ton of Evil Dead lore in those first two movies, really. But that is rules i guess this is good right like sure sure yeah it is what's funny about this movie though

because like as a kid seeing that trailer on a vhs i was like i understand what type of movie this is presenting itself as which is fish out of water modern guy lands in medieval times, right? Like a modern snarky action hero is now dropped into supernatural, evil, medieval, epic. But Ash is so bizarre as a character. I think that was the thing that jumped out to me as a kid where it's just like, if you're just starting the process of writing a movie from square one with that premise, this is not the guy you put at the center of it. Like, it's just confusing that he starts out with a chainsaw for a hand. And even though the movie has to, like, front load this, like, I bet you're wondering what happened to me. And then watching Bruce Campbell have to act out the same events for the third time now.

Yeah, this is true. I did locate one. There is one rule of evil dead, which I did figure out. I didn't really click in until, because I watched all three movies this weekend. It became very clear in Army of Darkness

that the main rule is that the evil dead are horny. Because in this one, they're very horny and and they're always kind of horny but this this one they're just they're just like they're just really horny you're right and zombies are never you're very right and like and i know the deadites are not exactly zombies but they basically are like they're possessed peoples i don't't know, but you're right. They're horny and they do bits. And those are both unusual. They're having a blast. They're back from the dead, okay?

And they're enjoying themselves. Oh yeah, that one old lady, Eve Deadeye, does the little trick in the first castle scene where she's got her eyes open. She's like, hee hee, while they're all coming up to her. It's cute. I wouldn't say cute necessarily.

But that's the other thing is they love fucking with this guy, right? Like it's sort of the arc of these movies is just Ash being cursed beyond repair. As you said, Eva, really just like his brain breaking right yeah and just he cannot escape this fucking shit he's doomed to be followed by these forces forever and part of it is because these forces seem to find it funnier to fuck with him than anyone else like he just reacts to it worse right i mean he had to fight his hand for more than an hour like he had to cut his hand off and then his hand still flipped him off and still was fucking with him still handsy it is incredible i mean talk about like towing this line of like making the movie stand on its

own but also making it a third evil dead you have this like okay here's this high concept setup right and the final act of the movie is going to be big medieval battle knights versus skeletons the middle act of the movie is well obviously we got to go back to the thing where he's just stuck in a small shed right where he's in the woods and things fuck with him for 30 minutes talking to himself weird shit happens it's very loony tunes on screen unless it's another version of him the three stooges is the major visual inspiration yeah and universal is like okay and dino de laurentis is like i love you sammy good job i give you a big kiss i don't i don't know what he sounded like that's just how i imagined him yeah no he

sounded like a little you were underplaying they definitely both sam and ivan say like no one gave us any notes on this one i guess at this point it's just sort of like well they know what they're doing so like you know like they were not really being messed with by the studio anymore dino was very much like sounds good which is fine is good and they earned it or whatever but like it i i wonder like if now a studio would be like medieval i don't think so like let's try something right like if the the premise itself might turn off uh a studio just because like medieval stuff doesn't really play right or maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm crazy specifically this type of like insincere medieval stuff where all the costumes are dumb and it's a castle in a desert.

The Monty Python element. A desert castle? That's a point. Initially they wanted to go to Spain or England and find a castle but apparently it's hard to get a castle.

I guess. It's hard to rent a castle and stage a giant medieval battle. You're telling me, Anna. That's really hard. So then they're like, fine, we'll just build a little castle. We'll fill the rest in post-production or whatever. They looked in Utah. I might take someone aside and be like, just FYI,

nowhere in Europe looks like Utah. That's not gonna read like but eventually they ended up in california they just they shot it in the studios like in you know act in california i don't know if anyone knows act in california but it looks like it's whatever like you know north of la out in the desert there right like not far it's like it's where they would shoot westerns or whatever yeah it's like the manson ranch they shot this like it's that shit right the spawn ranch yeah yeah well and it's like they set it up i mean at the end of evil dead 2 when he lands and everyone's like hailing him right in medieval times it looks like this but it would have been

such a good opportunity to just abandon that. And much like Evil Dead is wont to do, just change it to fit however you want it for this movie. But yes, they're stuck in weird, like, tumbleweed medieval times. And I always felt like, well, it's a cool concept, time-traveling medieval times or whatever. And then Hodgman in our Evil Dead 2 episode, like,

explained it so perfectly where he's like, imagine these guys have made successful horror movies and they come in and pitch to you, we're going to do this but at a Ren Faire. Like, that is what the vibe of this is. Absolutely, yes. It's not what I would have predicted. I know that's obviously how evil two dead evil dead two ends so i know they you know they had set they had called their shot there but it's just not the energy i would have expected from sam ramey and like again we've been reading about the guy everything he talks about he's like i love the three stooges like he's not saying like you know what i love excalibur like that was a movie that

meant a lot to me or anything like i don't know where this is coming from, but whatever. But it almost feels like that's what it's coming from. We're like, uh, uh, Connor Ratliff, dear friend of the show, past and future guest,

uh, talked about how, when he started doing improv, he bought the ultimate box out of every single three still is to just short. And I was like, why did you do that? And he was like, well, because I realized I'd have to start a lot of improv scenes with professions. And I feel like people pick the same two or three professions. And I was like, what's the thing I

can watch with a lot of good professions in it? And so like every three stooges short, it's like, now they're five men. Now they're knights. Now they're this or that. It does feel like that influence of it, where it's like, he's not interested in making Excalibur. He's interested in the idea of what can you dress Bruce Campbell up as? Like, what's a different patina

you can drop him into, you know? So this is just the third beat? Like, the third beat of the Evil Dead Herald? Right, right, right. It's that improv thing where the joke becomes every third beat is like, are you in are you in the future yeah you're the president this movie then sets up it it's alternate ending fourth beat is the future is right it's like it's like post apocalypse or whatever yeah it's just such a funny combination of things and to your point david

there was like this window and I think it happened again sort of in the mid 2000s, but in the early 90s where like video was just so lucrative where they could look at it and be like, it costs $12 million.

Dino's putting up half of it. The star is some guy who's not really a movie star, but Darkman did well opening weekend. This thing will make its money back on video. We'll sell it to cable.

Like there's almost no way for this movie to lose money. so why even give them notes because it doesn't even matter 100 um have you guys talked about the apartment they all lived in with with with the coens and francis mcdormand and holly hunter the hottie apartment the hot department one two three hottie street go on carry on i've just i just did they i feel like they i read that they wrote this in the apartment potentially or this like this the the some of this an early draft of this maybe was written in the of army of darkness i thought so but you might be right here wait let me see let me see there's definitely some stuff in our research here they had started this much earlier and then it was after darkman that they got to go ahead and really wrote like the final script but i think there were earlier drafts ivan reitman uh it must be stated uh was an acting acting physician at the

time like he he was working as a doctor in young ivan ramey not ivan right ivan ramey i'm sorry not ivan right all right not a lot of ivans out there uh was a was a physician so he is a doctor he's working as a doctor in ohio so i guess he just like would would moonlight on the side with sam and cook up these scripts so maybe he's coming out maybe i don't know i don't know all i know is that this is a very cute quote from ivan where he says this this is Ivan. Yes. Uh, we fight over commas. And when we get in a fight, we don't mind resorting to fisticuffs. Sam does improvise a lot because when you get on set,

you realize that certain things, you know, you need to improvise on. Sam says that Ivan has the easy job. I clean up your mess, but I just like Ivan being like, Oh, well,

there'll be fisticuffs between us when we're fighting over where to put an M dash or whatever. like oh will there'll be fisticuffs between us when we're fighting over where to put an m dash or whatever i have a question about the apartment that's been weighing on my mind and it's completely a conspiracy theory that i cooked up in my head that i know is not real but can i just present it to you guys please the other person in that apartment was kathy bates yes, a young Kathy Bates. She never was in a Coen Brothers movie or a Sam Raimi movie after that. Bizarre. Because you could see her fit

into both of those universes very well. Not only... I was like, that can't be true. Surely she's in a Coen Brothers movie. She feels like a character in a Coen Brothers movie. Just regular Kathy Bates. Just nice lady Kathy Bates.

Just nice lady Kathy Bates. That's so weird. So do you think that she didn't pick her hair out of the shower drain or whatever? That's my theory. Fucking Kathy Bates. Was she a bad roommate? Or were they all bad roommates and she was the good roommate? Because another thing, when I thought about it a little more, I more i was like oh she's also like 10 years older than them right so maybe she

was kind of the den mother and she got sick of like picking up after them or whatever but what happened what happened in that apartment that she never ends up in any of the movies i now i gotta know because you're it's also funny. Like, how did that come about? Like, why is that the crew? It's Campbell, Ethan and Joel, Holly and Francis, Kathy Bates. I think Scott Spiegel lived with them as well. Like, why are they all together? Is it like Kathy Bates winning an Oscar?

And like, now I'm imagining like Joel and Cohen and Sam Raimi and everyone. Like, they're all sitting on the couch and they're like yeah well she's still like you know didn't know how to use a vacuum cleaner like are they still because like like there's no reason for them not to work together after all of their fame right like everyone now we don't get our talented security deposit back because of baits maybe it it's all like a jar of pickles or something. You know what I mean? It's like a dispute over something that dumb even.

It's a real world. She was the puck of the apartment with the peanut butter left open. Or she was walking around with curlers in yelling at them for making a ruckus when they're giggling over lines they're gonna write for ash but that sounds like a character that would appear in either a sam raby or a

is kathy bates in curlers yelling like that sounds about right i mean i think kathy bates's first movie was uh uh taking off the milo shvormin pot comedy oh wow with buck henry and she's in that as like a young folk singer auditioning a big part of that movie is it's like two parents trying to find their daughter who ran off to audition for like a uh some sort of music show and you see all these auditions and one of them is kathy bates very earnestly singing uh a folk song that i believe she herself uh wrote and that's like a decade before she would have been living in this apartment guys whereas everyone else is really starting out i have a further wrinkle that i must introduce okay i'm so glad this this theory has taken off i don't i it's not going to give us any conclusive answers one or the other and already this feels like the beginning of a long

open-ended podcast series that doesn't really answer any questions but just asks a lot is it going to raise more questions right you know one of those shows were like by episode 10 is like you know i'm at the end of my journey and i still don't know why kathy bates and the coen brothers don't get along but you know one of the one the end of my journey and I still don't know why Kathy Bates and the Coen brothers don't get along. But you know, one of those series where you're like, wait a second, why did I listen to any of this? But anyway, as you may know, in 1997 after the success of Fargo,

there was a pilot made for a Fargo TV series starring Edie Falco as Marge Gunderson, right? Kathy Bates directed it? Kathy Bates directed the pilot what's up with that sorry for jumping the gun but i just remembered that jesus but was this another like we don't approve of this like that's what i'm saying did she direct it as a fuck you to

the codes where they were like well we don't want there to be a cop show based on fargo and she's like well i'm directing it so you can go fuck yourself a big deal that the FX Noah Hawley Fargo had like a vague stamp of approval from the Fargo where they were like we know this exists and it's fine no they didn't

like they wouldn't even like no no no like Francis McDormand scowls at the Emmys cause she's like to be fair Francis McDormand scowls at the Emmys because she's, like, she's nominated. To be fair, Frances McDormand scowls a lot. But, okay, carry on. Sorry.

Yeah, to be fair. I was Googling trying to answer the Bates question. I found an interview where Frances talks about Kathy moving into the house and says no more. Okay. But she also, like, slams the Fargo show in that same interview wow okay well maybe look i'm just saying i'd now because at that point in her life kathy bates obviously she's an academy award winner but still she had directed like one episode of homicide life on the street and one episode of nypd blue like it's not like she was doing tons and tons of tv directing so it feels like

she's maybe either taking it as a fuck you to the cohen's or with their blessing but i'm i'm leaning to the former she also shows up at the house with a like she had already been nominated for a tony she got nominated for night mother quite young like holly and so maybe too fancy yeah like yale drama school friends she was much deeper into her career than everyone else in addition to being older yeah right she's done a lot of play for her like at that point in her career i now also okay and we have to move on from this after this but i am how big how big was this house i now need a floor plan this is the i need to know where you're sleeping where i know it's in it's in silver lake it's a former hunting lodge oh wow that sounds pretty cool wait a second it's a 12 partner guys let's we'll move on

we just added two more parts yeah no, no, we got to make this into a limited series. Oh, man. I mean, I feel like whenever Franny does interviews about her and Joel falling in love, the thing she says is that, like, he was really well-read, and we would, like, talk about books on set, and then he, like, came over and would, like, read to me at night,

and we'd drink hot chocolate, and, like, he'd read books at night and we drink hot chocolate and like he'd read books aloud and we discussed them do you think kathy bates was the one who was just constantly like knocking on the door from the inside of her room going like shut the fuck up stop reading postman always rings twice to your fucking drama student girlfriend put the hot cocoa down and go to fucking sleep like it's such a charming story and do you think she was just like i have work in the morning i'm not amused well we will never know and oh man thank you for taking this journey maybe we will maybe we should say kathy bates is our guest on the for love of you know i i'm just imagining a world where i get to talk to joel cohen say for like 15 minutes and it's like it's

joel cohen it's a director i admire like you know there's a lot i could ask him and i'm just like i gotta look when you're like in your 20s like you know i just immediately i'm like i just gotta ask can you just shed some light on this for me? What was the floor plan? He might literally be like, which I feel like Joel Cohn's normal thing where he's like, I don't know. It was fine. It was normal. You're always just sort of like, hey, why'd you make this Macbeth movie?

And he's like, I don't know. Wanted to do Macbeth. I figured I'd do it this way. And that's what I did. It was available. And these other people moved in. I think he does that. He steps outside. He's like, well, nice meeting you meeting you gets on the phone call sam ramey he's like someone's asking about kathy we're gonna get canceled they're gonna find out about kathy

um anyway uh army of darkness right some more all right so they're shooting in acton california it sounds pretty annoying because this movie mostly takes place at night. And I don't know. I mean, Eva, you're out there on the West Coast. You can tell us. Apparently it gets very cold in the desert at night. Yeah. It's dust.

Acton's like dusty. I think it's kind of like farmland. It's right over the grapevine, I think. It looks like. Right. Exactly. It's not like physically far from LA, think it looks like right exactly it's not it's not like physically far from la but it looks like yeah it's flat and cattle ranchy and uh and yeah very cold at night probably very hot during the day i it's um you know just they have to wait for the sun go down

they don't have a lot of time and it's freezing cold and because it's hot in the daytime everyone has to immediately like shift into cold mode bill pope griffin one of the greats of course one of the great he shot dark man so he but that was his first movie i just said bill pope's 90s alone i don't know if you know like griff let's go through them dark man okay then a movie called closet land that I've never heard of whatever some Madeline Stone movie Army of Darkness Fire in the Sky very underrated sci-fi abduction movie Blank Check

the film Blank Check Clueless Bound of course the Wachowskis Gridlocked a movie I constantly talk about. Tim Roth and Tupac. Black comedy, really good movie.

Zero Effect, that sort of underrated Jake Kasdan comedy. And The Matrix. Oh, yeah? Like, almost everything he made was interesting. And obviously, in the 2000s, he does Spider-Man and The Matrix sequels, and he did Team America and all that. I was not wrong the other thing he does in 1999 is he's the dp on the pilot of freaks and geeks there you go that's right probably because he'd worked with jake caston right like that correct but but even

still that's a very influential show in terms of like there had not been a comedy that looked like that at that point in time he's the best and everyone talks about him like he's the best uh in all their research like he's the guy who's getting you through these crazy shooting nights really by working really really fast like he he was really really good at that um and another problem they had is they had a bunch of fucking horses sam ramey even talks about in these interviews the classic clint eastwood thing where you can't say action because they know that word and then they start moving the second you say action you got you guys are aware of this right well i didn't know this

yeah clint eastwood says like all right and what's the other thing griffin i gotta look it up now enough of that like a safe word yes but right and it's and and people apparently when they work with eastwood you know like tom hanks tells some story on about it like yes there's a great graham norton tom hanks clip where he's talking about on sully that you're waiting for him and then you look over and he's behind the monitor and he sort of just like waves his hand and he goes like okay go on right and then when the scene's done you wait for him to call cut you look over and he goes like okay enough of that but but it is like it now reads as like mystique this like badass old man but then he asked about it and he was like you just can't be loud with

horses you don't want to spook the horses as he's shooting like Sully or a horseless film. Yes. But he just never got over. I mean, this movie just feels like such a nightmare to shoot, not just in terms of, yes, you're shooting in this like completely like like acrid environment, but also arid environment. But also like you're shooting almost exclusively at night. arid environment but also like you're shooting almost exclusively at night there's a middle third of the movie at least a solid third where he is the only actual actor on set and so many scenes where you have such complicated effects or like an army of animatronics that all need to be working in unison um yes it sounds annoying they use this thing called introvision which they also

use for dark man which was sort of hard to explain i think it's been driving our researcher jj slightly insane reading so much about introvision uh so i feel a little bad and i want to at least shout it out but the way he best describes it is it's like it's halfway between classic rear projection right and what they that crazy shit they do now like on the mandalorian what's called The way he best describes it is it's like it's halfway between classic rear projection, right? And what they that crazy shit they do now, like on the Mandalorian, what's called stagecraft or whatever, right? Where you're standing in front of like a monitor that's like has perfect imagery behind it, right? Well, and the big thing with that is that like if you adjust the camera, the angles and the perspective of the digital background adjust with the camera and the lighting is rigged to the digital image so the lighting matches the environment it's like

the most intuitive way to do this kind of thing right introvision i think is a a a more primitive version of that idea right um half of this movie apparently is shot using introvision they saved a lot of money doing it you can't really tell this movie looks pretty good i would say like it's that rainy thing of like the special effects anytime they're junky or goofy it gets away with it because that's the the cartoony energy i guess i don't know but like i and he'll like throw the sound effect on there right i have the one liner that just like well the joke is that now this character is acting like daffy duck or whatever um but it basically combines pre-recorded like back projection with live action recording on set i can't i look i jj please forgive me i can't describe this shit he sent me a long video i tried to watch it was very boring um but it's crucial to them using stop

motion basically like it makes stop motion a lot easier to do because you could shoot the live action footage and then project it the stop motion animation in the foreground oh god he's gonna kill me i'm sorry i mean it's it's the other thing with this whole trilogy is they're using every single pre-CGI technique, right? Absolutely. In a way that's really impressive. And like, right, sometimes the Deadites are stop motion. Yeah. Sometimes they're guys in suits.

Sometimes they're animatronics. And there's, I mean, I just feel like, unlike a lot of movies like this, maybe maybe where you're having like multiple techniques of like like here's a bad comparison point i'm thinking of right like in the child's play movies it's mostly an animatronic sure but then sometimes they will put a child or a little person inside a little chucky costume or they will have a dummy chucky doll that isn't rigged that the actors just have to wrestle with. And your brain always clocks when the technique changes, when you're like,

Chucky's not moving the right way. Whereas I feel like this time, in this movie, anytime the vernacular of the characters or the special effects change, it's like on purpose. Like they're trying to make the most out of that specific weird movement.

Here's the best way. And when I'm going to say it sounds so counterintuitive but instead of bruce campbell fights an invisible energy and enemy and you imagine you you put the enemy in afterwards right they would have already done the stop motion photography for the enemy and bruce campbell has to precisely match the movements to fight it. Does that make sense? Like he's acting against something that's already been animated. So he can kind of see it.

But he has to hit exact physical marks for it to look good. It's like reverse Roger Rabbit kind of. Yes. And so they were acting to like numbers being called out. Because they had this complicated number system to remember every physical movement that they had to do. Basically, Bruce Campbell found this incredibly torturous. It sounds so annoying.

But, I mean, it's cool. This is like the single biggest thing about this movie for me. I think I've talked about this before, but there was a thing on the tick where we had to essentially shoot something this way because there was a character, there was a mad scientist character who created Shrink Ray and he accidentally shrunk himself down. So I had to have scenes with like a tiny man and they would shoot him in a big set and I would stand off camera and say the lines and we'd figure out the blocking of where I would be and I'd step in so

they would get like the lighting reference. And then the next day i had to go into a complete green screen space that just had marks taped off and an earpiece where they played back not just his lines but my line readings from the day before and i had to say them in unison and hit the marks at specific timing both in terms of my movements and eye line and then like, like, if it was off by a centimeter, it'd be fucked. And they'd cut and we'd go back to the beginning. Because they're like, you walked through a table or whatever. And it was impossible. And impossible to do on, like, a TV schedule and budget for one scene.

It was so difficult that for the rest of that episode, they made him a puppet that I held in my arms with the head turned to the camera. Away from the camera. So that no one could see it. He just dubbed it later. And then they rewrote the character they were like i don't know he's got a robot suit now he doesn't have to be little anymore uh this movie is like all that like almost every scene he's interacting with elements like that and he also has to be funny like he has to have his personality he has to it has to be fucking charisma it's not like it's like uh i don't know perfunctory uh exposition scenes and it does make you realize like not just oh well this movie is

like a tribute to bruce campbell and his love of this guy and his friend who he so badly wanted to make it to a leading man and whatever but it's like you truly could not have done this movie with anyone else because i don't think anyone else would have put up with this. And I don't think anyone else would have busted their ass hard enough to figure out how to reckon with all these technical shit things and also put a funny performance on top of that. Like, not only is the fact that the guy at the center of this

movie is Bruce Campbell rather than Bruce Willis means you're putting that money back into the budget for all of those effects. But also that you have a guy who's like, I'll work an 18-hour day. Just tell me where I need to stand and I'm going to solve this. I'm lazy. I wouldn't do that. Nightmare. Nightmare. He kind of had already done it, right?

Because who else would you trust? He's already done this for you twice. Of course. It's the whole thing. That's why they're good at this. But if I'm finally... My reaction to universal being like you have 12 million dollars to make the next one be like great i can rest easy that's a lot of

money we this will be fun we'll make some i get two million this time and you have a stunt double do all the shit and instead sam ramey's like 12 million great how much can we possibly do right like you know like right well what is everything that we could cram into this and not only that can we put more on bruce let's have him play two full-bodied characters that have to interact with each other also like five mini ashes the second bruce oh my god do you guys like the second bruce has horrible makeup oh i love them i love the shot of him from the their pov of him stepping on them i love that shot it's beautiful why is that so good because it it doesn't make any fucking sense in the movie really it just sort of starts happening uh but like why why is that good griffin and like fucking you know the stupid little marshmallows and ghostbusters is lame like what is it just

because the technical prowess of it is so good is it because bruce campbell's performances are so good like they're they have such good little like little stinker energy i think that's a huge part of it i think he's the right actor to both play the little stinkers and play the person who's being tortured by the little them like you know holding the gun and shooting i always love that like after they poke him with the the pitchfork then they then they're like let's shoot him with a gun oh god i love them coming out of the mirror obviously such a cool effect like like practically like a lynchian effect is their pitchfork just supposed to be a fork at their scale. It's just a regular fork.

Do you know what I think it is? I mean, I spent the last week with the aforementioned Conor Ratliff on a cruise ship. So we, of course, spent a lot of time talking about old cartoons. The main language that Conor talks in. He's such a historian of all these things and watches – you know, like I'm going to watch every cartoon featuring Donald Duck in chronological order so I can chart the evolution of the character and whatever. And a thing that we were sort of talking about a lot was like that was something like Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, right? There's not like a build to them. Like the new Wile E. Coyote roadrunner cartoon is not acknowledging or or continuing the

chronology of the last one right but that you are aware of the fact that the audience has now seen like six of these or ten of these and it's like there's a format you need to fit but you also need to build on the bits and sometimes it's heightening and sometimes it's moving laterally but it's like what kind of gags fit into a wily coyote roadrunner cartoon and i think this movie the little ass shit works along with everything else because they're just sort of in that zone where it's like you know what the format is he goes into a small contained space in the middle of the woods and things fuck with him right we've now seen this three times this is the third time it's happened what other kinds of things can fuck with him what are the ways he can be fucked with and because you're riffing on that

sort of cartoon language it's like what are the things that can happen someone can get big you can have a bunch of a little thing you know i i just think what it happens in ghostbusters afterlife it's so out of conversation with anything else that's happening in that movie let alone the franchise at large whereas with this you, you're just like, yeah, I don't know. You've made like three of these. What's going to happen now? Is it funny if he's little? Is it funny if he's evil? Yeah, it's it's Chuck Jones timing. Also, it's like, yeah, where the Ghost Busters timing is just chaotic and cynical. Right. But like I I was thinking about, uh, I don't know if you guys talked about this in evil dead too. Um,

but that incredible sequence, I laughed so hard when he goes, when he's, he puts the woman's head in the vice. He looks up, he sees the outline of the chainsaw on the wall. And then the headless, the headless corpse runs in holding the chainsaw.

Perfect timing. Purely comic timing. Not even, like, to scare you. And I feel like that's what the whole cabin sequence is in this. It's like, this is just like a Tom and Jerry cartoon at this point. Right. It set up its rules. Like, because this is now the third beat of this where it's like we're just here for invention

what there's gonna be an eyeball on his shoulder just like throw shit at me really like the eyeball on his shoulder very very good very nightmarish and we definitely in that episode by the way talk about the outline of the chainsaw that my favorite part right yes um i'm gonna do that whenever i have a shed i'm gonna draw outlines of every tool just so i know where they go when i when i replay right that that must that that's the only logic i can think of chainsaw goes here absolutely yes yeah yes and he goes he still has to go chainsaw yes should we discuss the plot of army of darkness uh Ash has been captured by, you know, some, you know, King Arthur-esque guy. Right, Eze? Well, I just, I want to ask before we dig into this, because it's relevant.

Eva, as someone who's watched this movie like a hundred times, I assumed the VHS that you had was the theatrical cut? I guess so, yeah. Must have been. i think it because there are four different versions of this movie okay i watched the the version i know is the one i just watched on hbo max and does that end which is the version on hbo smart and ends at the supermarket it's the classic ending yes hail to the king baby right right so it's there's the 81 minute theatrical cut yes which was dino de la rentas and universal cutting it down after i think he originally got an nc-17 no and they were i don't think so i saw it was nc-17 and then it went down to r i think i read that too actually let me look at that because the others got nc-17 apparently yeah there was a decapitation scene that

yes the npa didn't like so they got rid of that right that's when they took it away from him and then he restored his director's cut which had the rip van winkle ending which the studio hated because they thought it was too depressing they wanted to have a win at the end right right right right right um and yeah it's it's uh i really like the mall ending i like that bridget fonda is in it she was a huge fan of evil dead and asked to be like do you have a part for me and they were like well we could throw you in this new ending. But yes, but obviously the original ending puts him in futuristic London. It's like post-nuclear apocalypse or whatever. I have seen it. I haven't seen it in a while.

The other major cut is the international cut, which was what was released in theaters in Europe and other countries, other territories, where I think the ratings were less strict, where it is essentially all the bonus material that is in the director's cut, but with a theatrical ending. Right. Uh-huh. Right. So there's the short version with the S-Mart ending, the long version with the Red Van Winkle, the version that's slightly between the two lengths with the S-Mart ending. and then there's a tv cut that was one of those we just dumped all the extra footage in

to fill out a longer programming block which is the version i think no one defends other than just as a completist it's interesting to see everything right um yeah they shot that final thing in malibu i mean ramey did not want it to be long he handed in like a 90 minute cut and then they lopped off like 10 minutes from that yeah I mean I'll say I watched the director's cut with the Van Winkle ending which was the one that I saw first so it still sticks in my mind as being like my version of Army of Darkness even though I like the S-Mart ending a lot and it is funny how at 96 minutes you're like this overstays its welcome a little bit like it feels a little laggy even for a short movie because the other ones are all like 81

minutes no filler so lean i like that they're all under 90 me too it's it's and ramey says like i think he has a quote here like i like really short films i think 90 minutes is a great length for a picture the kind of picture i make would work best as 60 minutes no brain no story no nothing you just like walk out having been like kicked in the head a bunch like and you know it's funny that he says that considering that like like anyone i do feel like he eventually has suffered from like bloat right like yeah oz the great and powerful is a classic like two hour ten minute you know sort of like oh boy this has got to drag me to hell though to its credit is a is a it's a good clean like under 100 minute like that's a fun lean heart like that was him i feel like going back to basics and i think that's a case where

like the difference between the unrated theatrical cuts is like a minute. Whereas this it's like 15 minutes. It is funny, though, that like the most self-indulgent kitchen sink cut of this movie is still 96 minutes long. So another thing that was going on during all of this, Universal and Dino De Laurentiis are fighting over the fact that de laurentis owns rights to hannibal lector's in manhunter right like he specifically owns red dragon universal owns the rest of the lector stuff and when ramey asked for more more money for this movie uh to finish like reshoots and all that stuff universal held back financing and delayed the release date that's maybe why ambit david's you know shot this before shin like why it got delayed uh

delayed the release date until de laurentis allowed for like you know to basically relinquish like the rights to hannibal lector you know what i mean like you know he's specific lets them green light sequels and stuff so they could make like hannibal that exactly yeah you could eventually make hannibal yes which nobody wanted no but was a stupid big hit and took another decade eight years to get made um am i am i wrong in this david because i know we talked about this in our two previous lector episodes we've done but wasn't it that like because he owned the manhunter rights he technically had first right refusal for sequels for anything to do with cannibal lector i guess yeah right right so it wasn't just that he owned that book

but he had like the default rights for the character but he didn't hold on to them for silence like when they came to him he was like hannibal lector movies don't make money good luck with that he passed on silence of the lambs which is why that right but then after silence was a hit he still had some stake they still had to fight him right and you know because the other three are all delirantis productions right uh i yeah i guess uh let's see hannibal yeah uh he did produce hannibal and red dragon and hannibal rising of course right in which hannibal rose just the only one he didn't produce was the one that won best picture yeah well you know what like leave dino alone he produced army of darkness you like that yeah no great choice

great choice but yes this movie opens with I think that's another cut difference, but the director's cut has the Bruce Campbell versus Army of Darkness title card. Does theatrical have that too? I think so, yeah. Okay. I just, I love that. Yeah. Rather than saying like Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness, you're telling everyone your lead actor's relationship to the title of the movie. And then you start with him in uh stockade uh yes he's been captured uh they think that he is a spy for duke henry right the duke uh who is played by richard grove king arthur lord arthur whatever

they call him it's played by mark it's all these English actors. These like, you know, job-a-day English actors. Ian Abercrombie, obviously. Ian Abercrombie, yeah. A blast. I mean, we all know him best from Seinfeld, right? Yes. Princess Sheila gets told just kind of just randomly that her brother's dead.

Yes, yes. And the first big sequence is the pit, like that's that's sort of the beginning of the movie yeah well you do you do the flashback before that right he has his like i bet you're wondering how i ended up here it's just funny to drop you in to the deep end of this movie and be like what is this modern guy doing in barracks what is happening here we didn't see how he was apprehended then you flash back to reshooting these scenes for the third time now with bridget fonda

abbreviated and then sort of just filling in a little bit like right he landed here in this time period and he's just fucking been been tortured since then everything's been going wrong and this is his first big test uh Yes, he's thrown into the pit. He's fighting a deadite. Two? Two. Two deadites? Two pit witches, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Ben, you're pro-pit. Do you want a town pit to throw people in? No, I mean, that's quite extreme. I'm not of the opinion that we need to sacrifice humans for entertainment purposes. You just sounded excited about the pit, Ben. That's all I was just trying to say. I am excited, though, about not necessarily a killing pit,

but I think having a town pit would be a great thing and a fun, like, what did you do today? I was in a pit. David, that was quite extreme of you to suggest that producer Ben, a man who earlier talked about his desire to have his own skeleton army, would want a pit. It's also like a trash compactor.

What would make you jump to that conclusion? It's a spike trash compactor pit. That's true. It's a Sarlacc pit and it's the trash compactor from the Death Star in one. Right. You have that first great bit where they throw the guy in and then the blood just like explodes

out of it. like it's a fucking splash zone at sea world classic evil dead and then he's up next yes yes just just blood operating however blood needs to operate um but but it's it's a fun action sequel it is funny for how much like the iconic image of ash is him in the tattered shirt with the leather straps and the chainsaw it is only the very end of evil dead 2 and the very beginning of army of darkness oh yeah he gets rid of the chainsaw right away yeah even though it changes into a new tune on the poster obviously iconic poster him with the chainsaw he's out of gas right you know that's the that's the great

tagline right the most ripped like they had to give him arnold body the frisetta poster you're talking about yeah yeah that's so good and there's the other one where it's like him like with his arms thrown up in the air like an agony where his his chest is even more extreme he looks like conan the barbarian or something i think that's actually a confusing poster for i mean i do too yeah but but i think dino did the conan movies right he must have just gone like i know what sells well especially make him look like the i mean if you've seen the international poster which is that's the one right exactly which it must be by that guy must be literally the guy who did those yeah right he did red sonja and all that yeah oh yeah look at

these yeah because on the international poster you can't even see his face no it's just like he looks like he-man he does look a little he-man what's in his other arm it's a shotgun the chainsaw and the boomstick right yeah and there's no shirt it's just the straps on the chest yeah with the with the sort of um the he's got like straps across them so it's it looks very conan yeah like a harness uh yes uh he is celebrated as a hero because he he blows up a deadite right like you know this is the oh yeah this is where he meets either ian abercrombie right who gives him the whole necronomicon, you know, spiel. Everyone hates the Duke. And Beth Davids thinks that he killed her brother.

And Arthur hates him. And they think that Ash is a spy working in cahoots with the Duke. It's like the Brits versus the Scots kind of deal. Right. Sure. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, when Ash proves his worth and defeats the pit witches and gives his whole spiel that even knows by heart that he's able to sort of say, like, here are my terms.

I'm in charge now. Let the dude go. Treat me like a king and then help me get back to my time. Yeah. Yes. I want to read this wonderful quote from Ian Abercrombie, who seems like a real he I know he's dead now, but seems like one of those classic like guy who would have some good stories, right? Like, you know, grew up in Britain, did all kinds of stuff before he becomes like a comic actor late in life. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, yes. And also, like, one of those guys who you could imagine being really ornery about the fact that he was never taken as seriously as, like, John Houseman or whatever. And instead is just like, no, I did, like, fun comedy and genre movies and whatever. Like, has that kind of pedigree, but doesn't seem self-serious. And, you know, he voices Palpatine in the the clone wars cartoons i do know that and he played alfred on the weird failed birds of prey tv show oh man he did a fairy tale theater uh yeah his career is wild if you look at it yeah you know he was in the wizards of waverly place a lot like late in life anyway lovely lovely quote from him about Sam Raimi. He's grounded in his roots. That's why he's surrounded by his friends.

That's why he has Bruce. Sam's success is because he's very grounded and he works really hard. He delegates authority, but when it comes to bottom line, he's at the helm. He listens. He has no patience for slackers, and he's got this cherubic face like a choir boy gone wrong that's my

reference for him i always say he reminds me of a choir boy who's done something naughty that is sam ramey's he said sam ramey through the eyes of ian abercrombie that's all that's wild he's he's he's so good in seinfeld i i i i love him in seinfeld yeah he's great um yeah anyway and he's great in this. He's sort of the Merlin figure, I guess, right? Is kind of his vibe. Yeah, it's just so funny. It is just kind of impossible to imagine a major studio today, even if you have someone like DeLaurentis putting up half the budget, greenlighting a movie like this where there are no stars.

Where you're just like you imagine they would get someone who was on 90210 to play sheila or you imagine they would get someone who had been nominated for an oscar to play the ian abercrombie part and instead it's sort of like all jobbing foreign actors and bruce campbell uh yes um so him, you got to go get the book, right? Go into the forest, find the Necronomicon, say these special words. I want to shout out the building of the hand montage. Oh, yeah.

Incredible. Those montages, it's just like the budgets get bigger, the equipment gets better. But man, the third time around, it's so good. It's so well done. They really draw it out. It's so long, too. That blacksmith character with the really long thing mustache is great.

And that second scene, I mean, you talked about it. We talked about it earlier. But like when he's sort of luxuriating with the grapes and the women. And then that De-eye transformation happens and he realizes, like, I gotta just fucking get this thing in motion. Side note, the trilogy of Siskel and Ebert reviews

of these three movies are very funny. They're all on YouTube. But it's just basically them constantly, like, not liking the movies and then pretending later like they liked them but they don't like the new one oh like for every sequel they're like we all loved evil dead one of course but uh okay okay it's my favorite kind of phenomenon i feel like you see that with all like horror sci-fi franchises from like respectable critics in the 80s where they're like how i long for the halcyon

days of friday the 13th part one and then you read the review and they're like utter contemptible trash it was coming to nominator phil oh but ebert just is really into the um like that montage you're talking about ben and he he is talking about in evil dead 2 that he thinks it's an homage to a taxi driver. Oh, interesting. That's what he's doing. And he really leans into, like, the slapstick stuff. Siskel never Siskel is really grouchy about the movies. He gets really mad.

It's just funny that this movie like, has totally abandoned horror from its DNA outside of it being a monster movie. Right. Like it's like it's slapstick adventure now with like a monster sort of covering. Yeah. Like when you finally meet the army of darkness in the last like 20 minutes, they're not scary.

They're the opposite of scary. No. And Evil Dead 2 is straddling that line in a really interesting way. And in this one, they're never scary they're the opposite of scary no and evil dead 2 is straddling that line in a really interesting way and in this one they're never positioning anything as being scary no this film this film has yeah right this is a consistently the scares are down with everyone in this series that's the haunted the haunted forest at this point in this movie is when you would like rub your hands together with glee with like oh great like a lot of fun stuff is about to happen they're playing free bird yeah

um and i mean it might be it's probably my favorite part of the movie all that like you know the little guys all you know all all the all the ash stuff here it is funny for how big the final like third of this movie gets, that it doesn't get any better than him just fucking alone in a shed. Oh, yes. I know. And bad Ash hanging off of him, like in your

background, David. Evil Ash. You put aside how technically complicated it is to do this kind of acting. It's also just is to do this kind of acting. It's also just hard to do multiple weeks of responding to nothing. It probably helps you play crazy, though, right? If you're doing the Bruce Campbell thing, if you're trying to act like you're going mad, acting as nothing. acting as nothing there's a great quote that jj pulled up here from uh if shins could kill uh the book we discussed at length in the evil dead 2 episode uh his quote was he said 34 35

36 37 38 those numbers barked out via megaphone by an effects assistant all correlated with specific movements of an animated skeleton that i had to interact with, in this case during a SIRD fight. At 34, I had to arrive at a critical mark on the floor. At 35, I turned towards a specific spot on the rear screen since I couldn't actually see the skeleton. At 36, I duck a swipe from the skeleton. As I rose, a live-action puppet skeleton attacked me from behind. I have about 2.5 seconds to fend him off before number 40 when I take a swing at the animated skeleton.

By 42, the beast would be defeated and I'd be off to the next fight. seconds defend him off before number 40 when i take a swing at the animated skeleton by 42 the beast would be defeated and i'd be off to the next fight so it really is like it's like fucking like musical choreography but you add into that there's so many ways that the effects can go wrong that the gags can go wrong even if he gets it right and then when you get to a sequence like him with the mini ashes what he's reacting to is like five other performances that he had to give that all needed to interact with each other oh god he's amazing he's amazing he is amazing and it's it's it's a it's it's like balletic what he's doing yes it kind of makes sense to me that that this was kind of in a way way, his intro or his audition for television,

like lower budget action, like Briscoe County Junior and Hercules. And Xena and Hercules, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all this stuff, but I guess at this point he was such a pro that I bet he could just run in, do literally anything and and would be no it would probably be easier than what he had to do in this movie.

It is so funny that those shows broke out so much bigger in the popular culture than any of his movies. And that's running concurrent with him sort of making this pivot to like more adult respectable films and they like those shows become these huge money makers that have like taken his style and his sort of format and applied it to like a formula and a medium perhaps that was like more accessible to children and genre fans and then right when it felt like the transformation had been complete where it's like one side of Sam Raimi's persona is like mogul. And he's got this whole thing running. And now he's become a respectable like movie star director for adult dramas and thrillers and stuff.

Then like Spider-Man comes around. And it's like you got to, you're back in. And now we're putting everything back together again. Yeah. But the TV side is kind of where he gets to hide bruce for a while yes it's like his his terrarium for bruce yeah he's he recently he was in lodge 49 right people really praised his work on that show so good he's so good on that and when he it's so perfect when he shows up you're like of course it's bruce campbell and then he's just incredible on it it's so he's so funny i i mean obviously he did ash versus evil dead it's i i'm wondering

yeah like what i need more bruce lately like obviously give me more of that you're forgetting uh 111 episodes of burn notice which resulted i'm not forgetting he was great on that show i mean that show was a while ago now but yeah he did a did a Burn Notice spinoff prequel, right? Did he? Oh, yes. Burn Notice, The Fall of Sam Axe. Thank you. That was a TV movie, but yes.

Yes. Yeah. And no, look, Burn Notice is one of those shows that I never watched consistently at all. But I think I may have lived with someone who watched it at some point. It was occasionally on. And every time i would be like campbell's eaten like if nothing else bruce campbell knows exactly what he's doing on this thing um but yeah you know

there were there was he was an old secret agent in i want to say miami right yeah i remember a lot of hawaiian shirts yeah it was yes it was miami it was that classic usa thing where they were like plot schmott what beachside location will this be set in like he's he's a sports doctor fine i don't care is it in the hamptons okay good green light like please continue like that's fine he must have had the best fucking time working on that show like can you think about just bruce you get to be elder statesman you're the fucking cocky confident like know-it-all guy doesn't he feel like someone who walks into a hotel and has a whole like knows exactly how to be in a hotel because he's like king of the convention miami

it's like hotel city the guy was probably having so much fun in the hotels of miami and he lives in the rogue valley he lives like where my mom lives in uh ashland oregon he lives like outside medford so he basically like lives in like a weird part of oregon where he can like cool yeah like ride horses ride horses he could probably whitewater raft around or whatever and then he flies to miami stays in a cool hotel and does burn notice it's pretty nice campbell bruce campbell campbell i mean i think i've said this but every single convention that i've either worked at or gone to as a fan when he was there and low bar what i'm about to say he's so far and away the best dressed person in the entire vicinity.

Like he really, he dresses up for each one of those things like it's the fucking prom. Oh, his wife's a costume designer. Really? This makes so much sense. Because he's got these suits that look like they're custom made. He's got like shiny, almost Elvis-y suits. That's cool. I didn't know his wife was. she he married her right around now right around

army of darkness time they got married in 1991 cool yeah and she worked on this movie in fact she is yeah okay uh all right so yeah he goes to the guy to get that but not quick he does the he fucks up plateau barada nikko right but he can't he doesn't say it right classic ben moment he he he he didn't read the last it's like when my entire class went to see the stage production of nicholas nickleby because we were reading the book and you know how like nicholas nickleby the play is like seven hours longer like you have to see it all day no i i don't know but well all right keep going at the end when the big twist was revealed, my entire class gasped,

like, revealing that no one had finished Nicholas Nickleby. Everyone actually was surprised. Oh, that's funny. Right. And the teachers were so bad. You're right, yes. We were like, wait! I don't actually want to spoil Nicholas Nickleby

for anyone on this podcast but it has a big twist at the end and we were all like oh my god like anyway i own the the roger reese dvd of the play but i have not watched it so now i may now i might i will i highly recommend it it is very much a stage experience like it's done in this very cool way but i bet you it's like you know the production is cool and obviously that was like that was roger reese's that was what made him right was that was the famous play like they filmed the stage yeah right the national or the rs it's eight and a half hours long that's how long jesus right yeah you had to like you went and you like had dinner in the middle that was like how it was done. It's like Gats.

Like Gats, which I also saw. Or Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, three of the most important works of dramatic literature. Exactly. Three Tony-winning things. I don't think Gats won a Tony. I love that that show, when it got announced, she was like, it has to be two parts. You don't understand.

It has to be two separate shows. There's no way to contain this story in one night. And then the thing shuts down for the pandemic for like fucking 15 months and she's like yeah i came up with some cuts it's now one 90 minute show look i don't well in in in on broadway it is now one show and in london you can see it as two shows i will say my brother who is a cursed child mega fan says the for the one the one show version of it is completely awful. It only works as two shows. I like the merch. You need it for the merch.

You need to do the merch change. I know there's spoilies, but there's a merch change that happens midway through. And if you don't get that, it's not cool. You've got to do a transition. You're talking my language now. Yeah, yeah. That show is a real it is almost like podcast the right material and how yeah anyway uh different podcasts um

so and it's it's in the fucking spider-man turn off the dark theater oh yeah is it they i mean they yeah that makes sense because they would have had to use the biggest that was the whole point of turn off the dark right they needed the absolute biggest space possible. I forget what that theater is. It was the American Airlines Theater or whatever. They should call it the Spider-Man Theater. They should name it after Spider-Man like he was August Wilson or whatever.

And they should have a statue of Spider-Man outside of it, I think. They should. There should be an Al Hirschfeld of Spider-Man with a broken back. People have to fly. You have to fly things. If you have to fly things if you have to fly things you go to that theater you could at that theater so he you know because he fucks up right

he raises the army of darkness right that's it the line then the last half hour is just the battle well oh wait come on i love that no i'm not saying we're done i'm just saying like that that's the rest of the plot yada yada yeah i would do the same thing too you know yes yeah even if i did raise the dead i would be like yeah everything was fine you would not own up nothing really came up uh can you send me back to my time yeah nothing to report straightforward it's the point you made eva of like it's incredible how much this movie leans into him being an asshole. Where the first two movies, he was like a goof, right? And especially with the fish-out-of-water premise of this movie, there's a version of it where you're like, he's like a modern guy who's in over his head and he's panicking, right?

And the comedy comes from him trying to like keep it under control, but he's like a nebbish or whatever. And in this, he just fucks up with such arrogance and then comes in and is like yeah no no i got this i can i can talk my way through this and then when things go wrong he's like defensive that people are angry at him for fucking up and lying about it yeah oh it's just like the entire way they justify it is like this guy works at like walmart and he thinks stock boy and he said and he's an asshole about that, too, that he brags to these medieval people about the Walmart he works at. But but I do think it's almost like, you know, like he's like this weird anti Ripley where like Ripley becomes sort of like more focused and sort of like primal and heroic. The more she like survives all these alien

attacks and like you said ash just gets broken like it just becomes bravado in the place of anything else because all of his emotions have just been like stomped out yeah the sweet beta ash from the first one who hid the little necklace and he's dead he's gone he's such a doofus in the early movies right he doesn't really have this energy in either i mean certainly not in the first one right but in the second one of the sort of like all right i got this like he's not like that in evil dead 2 at all right no he's a little bit like of a dick when the people show up at the yeah at that point he's cut his hand off and he's like shut shut up. No one's going anywhere.

But this is a new Ash. Right. He's more badass there than he is, like, uncouth in this. You know? Yeah. Hello, Mr. Fancy Pants. Like, what the fuck? That's the first thing he says to anybody.

Right. He's got, like, asshole, like, gym coach energy in this. Yeah. He's a bully right he's a bully who like never got over being the high school quarterback he still wants a big time everyone but with hey he's going through it guys used car salesman no i'm sympathetic i mean i still love him he's still good right yeah yeah holy ash it's great it's final ash form until the video games and TV shows. I mean, the last line of the movie is him saying hail to the king. And kissing a strange woman. Give me some sugar, baby.

He's going to have to kill her. I'm just like looking at these lines. Yo, she bitch, let's go. Like they're just so blunt. Do you think that that is essential to Ash's character, Eva? Like no matter who he falls in love with, they will eventually turn into a monster he has to decapitate or whatever. Yeah, that's his curse. That's like the cosmic.

That's the cosmic horror of Evil Dead, right? Because it's like that's the Lovecraftian horror is like you fall in love. You have to decapitate your girlfriend and then she makes fun of you right with her head forever until you move to a new location he's always going to be a badass hero but he will always be right essentially like yelled at by his girlfriend corpse that's interesting he will always have to steer the helicopter car out of the way from chopping his girlfriend into a million parts yes well but then why doesn't he bring you know sheila with him i guess is my question well he's got something going on here yeah but it's just pillow talk baby like i think the new ash can't be tied down

so maybe the new girl will survive because new now ash just like he's a fuck boy right but maybe he has to be he's the one guy who actually is like i have to be a fuck boy if i if it gets serious with me you're gonna turn into a monster you don't want this buy you jewelry you don't want to know what the next thing, the next five things will happen to you. But you end up in hell. You end up in hell, but also it's kind of funny. It's kind of, you know,

it's kind of got like a sort of slapstick vibe. It's sort of cartoony and cool, but you will be dead. You'll be horny, but dead. Yeah, horny with great bits, but very dead. It is funny. I mean, Raimi still oversaw the reshoots when they did the new ending

and other stuff. It wasn't his choice. Yes, they just had different crew or whatever, and they had to rush it. But it wasn't something... I mean, he was told he had to come up

with a new ending, but it was an ending that he designed. And he's always said, when people ask canonically, which is the definitive ending? Like, what for you do you think is the true fate of ash and ash versus evil dead makes it the the asmart ending uh but up until that point he was like i just think it's kind of appropriate this guy has like two alternate

realities and one of them is just he suffers more and the other one is like a parody of an action movie right yeah he actually he gets a break but it's almost like you can just see the seams of his world now he just seems like he's in a movie yeah there's a there's a twilight zone ending that's like the the you know tragic irony and then there's the other ending that is like the joke is that he gets his hero moment but once again he's a 40 year old stock boy like nothing about this is actually cool and and i think i like that the tv show does is it's like they could have had so much happen to ash in the like 20 years in between and they're like no he's still working

at the store he's not even like really risen through the ranks that much he still has the same amount of arrogance he tells everyone all these things he used to do but it's just like yeah then why are you working at a fucking s-mark dude yeah but he also like the other i mean it is like him being tortured in the future or he's he's the king he's badass he's getting to get laid he killed that evil dead but the evil dead are never gonna stop coming for ash i think that's the the other implied ending is like he didn't just bring back one evil dead he fucked up the thing and they're always going to come they're always going to come for ash yes and also even in the realities where he's a hero and he's a badass never always more in his own mind than in the eyes of others like it becomes almost like a defensive posture yeah to mask like the sadness of like yes right anyone he ever loves is is going to

lose him and then fuck with him especially yeah again again the diets have no rules when and how they pop up is you know kind of whatever how they spread or how they infect is never really clear it doesn't matter none of that matters it's just it's like a bully picking on a kid because them crying is funniest right it's just like it's something this kid's the dorkiest but like he reacts the worst or it's like all the nerds got powerful and are picking on the bully like they got the bully trapped and they're fucking torturing him because they because they're like you think you're so fucking handsome yes and we're gonna just punch you and punch you and punch you forever which is also like the subtext of the

the whole franchise is like obviously bruce campbell's a mensch and their dear friend but it does kind of like hear all the like nerdy sweet boys who are like this fucking avuncular jock wants to play with us yeah from high school like our friend from high school we're gonna yeah if he wants to like get on our level then he has to punch himself in that pretty face yes that moment when he what is it i think it's the the mini ashes knock him down onto like the welding table like the iron and his face is burning and then he has to take like the little shovel and like pry his face off the table like it's a flapjack i'm just i'm I'm just I'm doing what you were doing Griff now I'm just looking at the quotes uh from IMDB you got real ugly come get some give me some sugar baby like all this stuff I'm now I am now uh yeah locking into Axe's more jockey energy with this one I actually just like uh wait uh ma'am I'm gonna have to ask you to leave the store. That might be my favorite.

This is another one that's incredible because I can't even track the internal logic of it. When he's being knocked around by the mini ashes and he says, all right, I'll crush each and every last one of you. I'll squash you so hard you'll have to look down to look up. That's like a Daffy Duck thing to say. Yes. to look up that's like a daffy duck thing to say yes and he really is like daffy duck getting his beak blown around to this front of his head all three of these movies are like duck amok like the ultimate part of the comedy is imagining sam raimi giggling behind the camera yeah what he's gonna do to bruce and how much bruce is gonna hate shooting it yeah yeah uh and as ben mentioned the fucking bringing in a mad max car to top everything off

uh yeah well he's he's got he's got his delta 88 of course the classic uh sam raimi car that's it's it's in all his movies right griff that's his thing it's his hitchcock cameo thing right it's uncle ben's car and spider-man um wait one more i just remembered is when sheila knits him knits him a gift he goes good i could use a horse blanket so me yeah yeah he's a good he has that kissing her like a kind of against her will maybe his seduction of her is insane because in the director's cut too it's a full sex scene like it goes from that kiss to then just like a full like Cinemax, like not that's explicit, but that kind of like gauzy lighting them in silhouette by candle. Oh, I got to watch this director's cut now.

It's good. I think the actual cut is just smoother. Right. And it's what you're used to. So the director's cut might feel lumpier because of that yeah i guess but it's fun to watch just like every additional idea and gag and shot and all that stuff um i wanted to say the the mask for the like leader of the deadites whatever that design do you know i'm talking about yeah it's great it's so good um is that

also ash is that the ash that he buried so yeah also playing that correct he's playing when he has a day off from playing the hero of the movie he then has to undergo like four hours of prosthetic makeup penguin level it's incredible and i i love the weird puppet skeleton evil ash at the end as well yeah yeah i mean oh i think we we've we've lavished so much praise on him but i guess this is us saying it's not like he's not gonna pop up in other raimi's but it's always small roles right like he never has a big role with Raimi after this I'm just triple checking that but yeah right was this the biggest flop like no it was it wasn't a flop exactly but it underperformed we'll get to the box office game in a second but like it made

basically its budget back and I think Universal wanted it more to do at least like 20 to 30 million. Do Darkman numbers. Yeah, Darkman, yeah. The weird thing I remember reading either Campbell or Raimi talk about in an interview was like two or three years after this movie came out, maybe even a little bit later, Universal called them up and was like, the home video numbers on this movie

are like bizarrely strong like this thing has finally gone into profit many times over would you guys be interested in doing a direct-to-video army of darkness 2 and they were like army of darkness is evil dead 3 what do you mean army of darkness 2 and they didn't know. Like whoever that person was at Universal was just like, we have this bizarre one-off movie that performs really well on home video. We can't stop re-releasing it. Why haven't we done another one of these? But that's sort of more the missed opportunity for me is like, I don't understand why Bruce Campbell didn't get to make like three more movies like this.

You know, even if it wasn't with Raimi, it's like there should have been guys who were sort of like Raimi acolytes directing. Like, can you make an eight million dollar Bruce Campbell is like a goofball asshole fighting some genre element. Like a better trauma. There should have been just like a Troma for Bruce Campbell movies. Right, Full Moon. Like I was just thinking about all these sorts of like studios like that that really made their money on home video

and just doing it at like maybe not half of this budget, which would still be 20 times more than a Toxic Avenger, but just make the movies with him as this guy, even if it's not Ash, like just kind of the, the movie star archetype that he's created for himself.

I wish there was just more of these, you know, I'm also surprised that all those guys that wrote on Briscoe County, like JJ Abrams and stuff, didn't, didn't use him more. Yeah. Like, like as, as they got big, the yeah yeah yeah it's a fair point i mean it's the bruce campbell thing of people cheerfully take it for granted i guess of like well you're bruce campbell you'll be fine you're doing great

yeah yeah yeah and maybe that's. And maybe he is doing fine. And he doesn't want, you know, and obviously he found TV in the 90s. And he like is sort of a pioneer on that front in a weird way. But yeah, maybe Bruce Campbell's sitting there thinking like, why didn't I get to do X, Y, Z? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

It's just Raimi obviously loves his friends. He puts Bruce Campbell in lots of other movies, but he never does this again with him. But, I think I was, sorry, I think I was wrong about J.J. Abrams. It was just Carlton.

It's just Carlton Cuse, but no, but there is someone else. I mean, like, well, I, obviously Carlton Cuse is the big,

is the big thing about that movie, but yeah, maybe that is it. I don't know. That's the funniest part though with loss is like didn't damon lindelof work on like nash bridges or whatever like yeah well that was carlton keese's show too right that was that was it right that was how they knew each other and like it's just funny that abrams is was such a big guy and you know he

creates the show and he's like yeah let me get my friend from nash bridges and he's gonna get his friend from nash bridges and they'll run like the most heady like sci-fi work on tv in a generation that like changes how people think about this stuff i'm saying like get campbell on the island you doofuses i know i i just it feels like there is still so much untapped that the guy can do. And it's one of those things where you, like,

can't be totally, like, angry about it because he has had a robust career and he's done all sorts of different things. But you do watch something like this and you're like,

no one ever lets him, like, be a five-tool player the same, to the same degree that Raimi did right and i'm just appreciating how how what a comic genius he is yes which is which i feel like he had he got the three movies to like prove himself more and more each time and then by this one it's just it's it's purely just he is a like physical comedy and he's yeah all types of comedy but like master master of comedy jj pulled this up in the dossier like most of the reviews

for this movie were bizarrely uh negative and like what he was saying about the eberts where they were mad again that it's not Evil Dead 2, even though they were probably not that nice about Evil Dead 2. Yeah, they weren't. Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+, and their line was, the spoofy cast of thousands looks a little too much

like a crew of bland Hollywood extras. By the time Army of Darkness turns into a retread of Jason and the Argonauts, featuring an army of fighting skeletons, the film has fallen into a ditch between parody and spectacle. And I'm like, you're saying this as a negative? Yeah. And also, yeah, that sounds like a cool ditch to be in. Right?

Do you not understand? Like, that's the exact thing the movie's consciously doing but then jj pulled up this is one of the only like fully positive reviews was peter rayner in the la times and he has this line that's just such a good explanation of the campbell magic where he says uh uh he's the perfect actor for ramey because he's both joke and in joke he toys with his stalness. Army of Darkness is mostly a terrific piece of mindlessness that may not sound like such a great recommendation until you drop in on some of this season's high-minded clunkers. And that two-point of just like, right, that's this line that Bruce toes

that almost no one else has such control over. And when you add in the technical challenges of the movie itself, it becomes even more impressive. But also like his exact point where it's like you're fucking ragging on army of darkness what are the like blockbusters that you're giving an easy pass to that same year i think it's yeah yeah i don't know calling something a retread of jason on the argonauts in the 90s like it's like what the fuck that gets like smell like it's like here are the the opera glasses getting pushed up the nose. You're fucking cynicism.

That's called an homage. That's not a retread. Like, if it's a movie from that long ago, you are like, you're honoring it. You're not just like ripping it off. We're ripping off Jason and the Argonauts? This stupid movie doesn't know whether it's a parody or a spectacle. And I'm like, no, maybe it does. Maybe it's a parody or a spectacle and i'm like no maybe it does maybe it's playing with that exact balance you don't know yeah maybe you should eat a turd

critics of 1993 um i think that that's just a particular no no but no griff it's like those early 90s it's the dawn of like means you know indie cinema right and all this intelligence stuff is suddenly flooding theaters and i think it's just like the height of hold your nose you know you know criticism of like you know schlock and blockbusters and right and like this kind of cartoony stuff right i i don't want to paint with a broad brush i just that's how i feel like a lot of this a lot of the sort of critical establishment was feeling post 80s right post yeah guns and brawn and you know a lot of like dumb blockbusters but i'm looking for like a

counterpoint here right i mean i don't like the guy who wrote the ew review i'm not gonna say his name right we're not gonna say it we don't need to say someone i like sure so whatever i think if you're not paying vladimir putin i feel like if you're not paying attention and you don't you're not in on the joke you could think army of darkness was like a steven seagal-esque shitty shitty past yeah right yes or just bad it's just it is wild to me that like i was looking for a direct counterpoint but uh a cliffhanger comes out like three months after this right and is one of like the highest grossing movies for of the year and the critical response was kind of like yeah it's like a good version that shitty stupid stuff you know like everyone kind of gave it this sort of like it's dumb obviously but it's like it's like rarefied dumb

this it's the same story as as even mentioned peter jackson peter jackson and sam raimi have very similar trajectories yes where they are masters of trash for years critics don't really like their movies when they come out and then when the next movie comes out critics are like this guy used to be good. This one's not that great. You know, like that's the story of over and over. And then in the early two thousands,

they reinvent mainstream cinema, the two of them basically. And that's what's coming up. But obviously, Rami is clearly feels burned by both this and Darkman. Maybe not quite. I mean, Darkman did better than this,

but like just not quite going over as he would have hoped yeah and then hud sucker proxy after this being the sort of like oh this is the bad cohen's movie even though that movie rules and i think that sticks to him that like his friends have gone legit and become so respected and they're finally doing their big collaboration and it's the first of their movies to be greeted with a resounding thud. I feel like maybe the timeline isn't quite right, but I feel like The Frighteners and Quick and the Dead were both completely rejected. I love Frighteners.

And they're both incredible movies. That's exactly right. Those are both the sort of mid-90s, okay, here's a real budget, do something for me. And both are kind of just spurned at the time and just in general everything ramey does in between army of darkness and spider man feels like him grasping at legitimacy yeah and i think all of the movies we're about to discuss are varying levels of good but he's never quite getting clearly like this sort of recognition he wants and then he's like fine

i guess you know then he makes spider-man and that you know then everything is very different after that it was what you said it's that everything that was not taken seriously at the time was canonized and also had become so profitable over the course of a decade the cults for all these things have become so valuable that he became suddenly a choice of a guy to take over a major franchise for movies that were kind of disregarded when they came out. I'm just – I'm looking at the cliffhanger review that Ebert wrote, right? So the same year – I'm just sorry, but it just – this feels like such a good counterpoint of like that was the biggest dumb action movie of that year, right? Sure. You have things like In the Line of Fire and Fugitive that are more biggest dumb action movie of that year right sure you have

things like in the line of fire and fugitive that are more high-minded that same year right but like cliffhanger everyone who likes it admits that it's junk right and ebert's third paragraph he's talking about how stallone's had a bad run and all the movies have flopped and everyone's like viewing this film with a sense of urgency of is this his final test? And he says, my guess is that it won't flop because it delivers precisely what it promises. It's big budget extravaganza with a lot of stunts and special effects. Starring Stallone as professional da da da da da da da da. And then his next line is true. There is not a moment in the plot that I could believe that didn't bother me for an instant.

So he's saying like this thing is stupid. It's stupid and it makes no sense, but is delivering the exact thing audiences are asking for. It's delivering on the promise. And I think the Army of Darkness thing. He would have a yardstick for every different, you know, different yardstick for every movie. I appreciate about him. I enjoy that. And I enjoyed like him giving movies that sort of display of kindness.

But I do think part of this movie's the confusion it was greeted with is just like, what is the tone of this thing? What is this? Versus something like Cliffhanger where it's like, we know it's dumb and we're delivering exactly this kind of dumb movie you've seen before. And critics are like, thank you. Six out of ten. It's stupid. Army of Darkness, they're like, what is this weird pastiche? And I think back to the great Ed Solomon, incredible screenwriter, was on the George

Lucas talk show. And he was talking about the process of working on Men in Black, which was like a very torturous film, right? in Black, which was like a very torturous film, right? That we, David, you and I often talk about in terms of being a masterpiece, especially for like films of that size. And I got Tommy Lee Jones on board. I think he signed on before they had Will Smith and he wanted to go out to dinner with Ed Solomon and maybe Sonnenfeld as well. And they're like having their steak dinner. Tommy Lee Jones seemingly in the same sort of mood that he was when he told Jim Carrey that he wouldn't sanction his buffoonery.

And they're like, this is like a celebratory dinner. We roped a big Academy Award winning movie star. And Tommy Lee Jones is just kind of like scowling. And then he looks up at Ed Solomon at one point and he goes, so what is it? And he goes, what do you mean? And he goes, well, you have to rewrite the script. Is it a comedy or is it a sci-fi movie? Right.

And he goes, it's both. And he goes, it can't be both. You have to pick one asshole. And it does feel like that's how critics kind of responded to this movie. Right. Right. Well, you know. You have to pick one asshole

but they're also like giving credit to sylvester stallone that they would never give to bruce campbell no and they're like stallone knows what kind of movie star he is after after all those years i guess he'd earned that respect like if you can call it that i don't know the benefit of the doubt it's weird yes he's been doing rambos i know that's the reason i wish he had just gotten to make like three more of these not ash movies but bruce campbell movie star films within the studio system at a lower budget so that at least like his persona could have solidified to a point where critics are like well we know we know what Bruce Campbell does. It's that kind of vibe.

Let's play the box office game, Griffin. Let's play the box office game. Okay. Eva, if you know the format here, we're going to talk about the box office for February 19th, 1993, which is when Army of Darkness opened. David, do you know what else happens on that day? On February 19th, 1993?

No. What happens? It's my birthday. Oh, that's right. Of course. Well, you would have been four years old in 1993. Is that right? You were born in 89, right? Yes, I would have been four years old.

Four years old. You probably did not see Army of Darkness in theaters, but maybe you saw some of these other films. I saw it in theaters. Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. This film opened number six at the box office to $4 million. It made $11.5 million total.

A little underwhelming for Universal. And it's kind of a February dump after it was supposed to be a summer release that got delayed because of the Hannibal ship. It was set for July 92 and so it's coming out a lot later. So, number six. So it's not in the

top five. Number one, however, is a comedy in its second week of release. A classic. Genuinely, you would say a classic? Yes. one of the greats i you're being sincere yes i am very sincere i love this movie it's very good i'm sure you love it too it stars one of your favorite actors is it is it a steve martin movie nope oh is it groundhog Day it's Groundhog Day it had to be

February yeah pretty great movie Eva do you like Groundhog Day love Groundhog Day who doesn't like Groundhog Day I do love that Ash kind of is stuck in a Groundhog Day thing of like

the first act of every Evil Dead movie having to put him through the same events over and over again cosmic horror man yeah yep it is yeah it is it is staggering to think about the implications of groundhog day all the time it's so good okay number two at the box office is a film that i'm pretty sure if i didn't see it in theaters i saw it pretty soon after um it's an adventure film comedy sort of uh it's about animals oh is it homeward bound yes can you give me the subtitle uh the incredible journey yes the first The first Homeward Bound. Of course, the second one, they got lost in San Francisco.

Is that correct? Correct. Correct. I definitely saw that in theaters. Yeah. That's the one with the dog and the cat. Two dogs, one cat. Sally Field, Donna Meche, Michael J. Fox.

That's correct. Dude, that shit's good. Yeah, that shit rolls. That shit fucks. Does it? I haven't watched it since i was a kid but i thought it was really cool when i was like chance the dog seven i thought i remember i thought it was so cool when i was a kid i just had it do they do their mouths move do they do

they're like the full or is it just right they're just sort of they do like garfield style it's like they just think yeah they can telepathically speak to each other. Yes, it rules. Yeah, it does. Isn't Homeward Bound 2 The Adventures of Yellow Dog? No, I think that's different. The Adventures of Yellow Dog is something else. What is that?

What is? Far From Home. Far From Home. Oh, man, so close. The Adventures of Yellow Dog. But that was another one. There were so many of these kinds of movies because there's the great panda adventure as well right benji's there's a ton of benji benji yeah

just so much i guess it must have been so annoying to make these fucking movies with these animals right and homeward bound is a remake oh the bear we've talked about about the bear but he's in homer bound as well is he does he threaten them at some point does he get the and and fart the bear as bear he certainly is in homer bound yes homer bound is a remake of a 60s live action disney movie called the incredible journey which is why it has that subtitle which was i think disney's sort of response to milo and otis when that like first wave of like benji milo notice uh uh incredible journey whatever and then it felt like that was like they sort of let that lie for 30 years because they were like these things are a pain in the ass to make right maybe we don't need to do this and then the 90s roaring

back to life snow dogs final moment snow dog well that's when we start to tiptoe into like can we use cgi do we not have to put fucking real dogs in front of camera but that's no that's the end of that run that's like late 90s early 2000s is the end well so homeward bound is number two it's okay on its way to a healthy 41 million dollars at the box office uh Number three is a costume drama period film. It's set in America, though, not British. Okay. And it's an adaptation of a famous French story. Is it Dangerous Liaisons?

Not Dangerous Liaisons. Oh, wait. It's a French story. Hold on. French. It's a remake of a French film. It's a remake of a French film? Yep.

It's not a good movie. It's not well regarded. This is not. It's not. It's not Diabolique, is it? No. Period. It's set after the Civil War. It's set after the Civil War.

It's set after the Civil War. It's a remake of a French film. Yeah. But it's set in the United States? Yep. It's set in Tennessee. I'll give you the basic premise if you want it. Yeah, I'm just thinking also about a period drama

that's released in February rather than an Oscar season. That's how you can smell the stink on this one. That's what's telling. It's a soldier returns home from war. The wife begins to suspect that he is an imposter. It's a return of Martin Gare situation. Weird. Yes.

And this movie's a stinker. Does it have big stars in it? Yeah. Yeah. Two big stars. Two big stars in it yeah yeah two big stars two big stars civil war imposter america remake a french movie hmm what about the director john emile of course the man only makes hits copycat entrapment the core yeah uh the man in the middle of course which we've i watched this podcast i

watched the core for the first time recently sure uh that movie fucking rips yeah i was like so disappointed with moonfall that that someone recommended the core to me right right right you wanted something in with that energy yeah right which the core, if it came out today would win best picture. Sure. But, but I looked at fucking John Emile's filmography after watching the core. So I've, I've looked at the name of this fucking movie in the last two weeks.

I'm going to give you the name because I feel like you're not going to get it. I'm not going to get it. The film is Summersby. Yeah. I was never going to get that. Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. Yeah, I was never going to get that. Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. Yeah, I was never going to get that. You've also got Bill Pullman and James Earl Jones.

Arlie Ernie is in it. But yeah, it's classic. Is it the real guy or is it an imposter? Yeah. Did you guys know that James Earl Jones did the voice of Darth Vader? Get out of town. What are you fucking talking about? You're crazy. What are you talking about about? You're crazy. Ben, what are you talking about?

I mean, this is what we hired. Ben! I just thought if we're gonna, you know, we should mention facts and trivia and stuff. This is why we hired researchers, so we don't just make wanton comments like that. Okay, actually, you're right. I should double check. We need to check that.

I'm right. Okay, so. I don't think it's right. Number four at the box office is Holdover from Oscar season. It's still hanging around. An indie hit that won an Academy Award. Yes. And was nominated for many more. It won one. Won one.

Can you tell me what category? Best original screenplay. best original screenplay best original screenplay it's too early for sling blade it's far too early for sling blade this i know i'm just trying to think of movies that have that kind of best original screenplay and this film the crossovers kind of i think launched the career of Harvey Weinstein basically as an Oscar powerhouse it was an early Miramax success it's The Crying Game yeah

that was a landmark one absolutely and then another in number five another holdover from Christmas it's an animated film is it beauty and the beast no aladdin it's aladdin got my years wrong i was i was getting confused about the this movie being shot in 92 released in 93 that's right uh yeah aladdin number 5 15 weeks in. It's made $179 million. It rules society, of course.

It was elected president of the United States, that movie. Eva, do you have any takes on Summersbee, The Crying Game, or Aladdin? I'm not even asking. I don't like Aladdin. Wow. Anti-Aladdin. You don't like it at all,

or you think it's overrated? Overrated, yeah. I like it less than most yeah too much Robin Williams don't like it I I kind of am inclined to agree but I also think I still think he's maybe the best part of the movie oh yeah

yes I think your episode about Aladdin was better than the movie Aladdin wow yeah I feel like my horny energy was off the charts on that episode. I can't remember, though. Number six of the box office is Army of Darkness. Number seven, Loaded Weapon

One. Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson. Written, directed, and produced by producer Ben Hosley is what I'm seeing here on the end of your show. Ben, have you seen you do you see have you seen or do you care about loaded weapon one financed i haven't seen it uh i'm not familiar with these movies at all it was a national lampoon spoof of lethal weapon yeah and they only ever

made one ben they just called the first one one it's a joke about how they are always getting turned into sequels that's fun fun. Is it worth watching? I don't think so. Nobody liked it. Nobody liked it. You should have put your money into it. Hotshots is the better version of that. Yeah.

Or like Top Secret. Top Secret's a good one. When are they going to make Hotshots part trey oh you think charlie you want to call up charlie sheen right now really i think he's ready to go he's never been better you've also got a couple more oscar holdovers sense of a woman howard's end you've got malcolm x you've got the the waning days of muppet Christmas Carol, of course. And Untamed Heart, the Christian Slater, Marissa Tomei movie.

Orangutan heart? Untamed Heart. But isn't that about him having an orangutan heart? Does he have an orangutan heart? Yes, a baboon's heart. Yes. Or at least he claims that he has one. I don't know. Is it a lie it might be a lie

i think it's i think it's apparently i'm reading the wikipedia summary it's a lie that a nun told him in an orphanage you guys who directed that what's their series are you guys gonna do the bill tony bill is the director of this movie. Do you have time for a mini-series? A Tony Bill mini-series? Tony Bill produced The Sting. So he won an Oscar.

And then he was like, but what I really want to do is direct. And all the movies he directed are strange. The last movie he directed was Flyboys, which was the fighter pilot movie that was financed by the Ellisons because the one Ellison wanted to be a movie star and he was good at flying planes. The one who now finances half the movies in Hollywood, King of Skydance. Yeah. He also made Untamed Heart. Uh-huh.

He also made My Bodyguard. Crazy People. Right. Crazy People I feel like is a fully hated movie okay with daryl hannah and dudley moore yeah he's like the he's the sorry he's in peewee's big adventure right he was also a character actor yeah he's terry he's like this he's the guy that cut who's like i cut off the he cut the mattress tag off he's Terry. He's the guy who's like, I cut off the mattress tag off. He's like that scary guy that ends up with

his own. His career is so fucking strange. Yeah, that's 20 Bill. Anyway, so that's Untamed Heart. So that's the weekend. That's it. It's a good weekend. I like it. It's a lot of weird stuff.

I do too. I just want to shout out quickly because this is the first episode we've recorded since it happened. But one of our listeners has made a website called boxoffice.me Box office game with the period

in between GA and ME. That's like a Wordle style game where a new box office weekend goes up every night at midnight or 1am, maybe Eastern time. Yeah. Uh, you have to guess what the top five movies are and it's for like a maximum 200 points per movie.

But much like David giving me hints, you can like sacrifice points to get the name of an actor or director or genre or whatever. It's a very impressive, very addictive. It's very impressive and very addictive. It's very cool how it's made and Griff seems to be the best person in the world at it. But it is great. What a surprise. What a surprise.

I played one round with no hints and I got just slaughtered. I was like, I didn't know you could get hints. I was like, I can never play this game. This game is impossible. But it's really impressive. Yeah, now I'm going to go back and do it with hints. I't start uh sharing my scores until the second day i played because the first day i did that and i fucking belly flopped and i got like 50 points yeah i'm a big fan of at least give me the tagline tagline usually will get me there you go for tagline i go for genre i find

that if i have genre and distributor and they give you distributor for free, I usually figure it out. That is how I usually start with you as well, I guess. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, what's Wordle? Oh, no. Come on, Ben. Oh, no, Ben. Ben.

Come on. You know about Wordle. Ben, you know about Wordle. Yeah, I do. Do you? I can't tell if you're bailing on a bit or you're pretending you don't have to pretend that you love it but do you know what it is really good i always get a high score because all right good at it guys we done. My daughter's about to come home from daycare.

I got to wrap this up. Yep, I agree. I'm looking at Ben's top Wordle guesses. Dirty, ditch. Hole, holes, pits, pitzes. Pukes. Bones, armies. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's good at word all uh eva thank you so much for being on the show guys thank you so much for having me i'm such a fan of this podcast and it's just so i was so i've

been so excited about this for so long so i really and you got me to do a cool movie too i mean i'm so happy i mean you'll be back but jeez I was very thrilled to learn that you listened to this podcast. I was sort of like, I can't believe it. No, we truly, anytime you are on one of the podcasts we listen to, Dave and I always go like, she's just the best. Like her episodes always are like standouts. And the second we heard that you liked the show, we were like, well, they're long overdue to get her on then. We just didn't want to ask because we were intimidated by you until you made it clear that you listened. I do. I just want to very quickly say I give you credit for warping my brain in a bad way for being obsessed with trying to find the Moon Maid Dick Tracy

book. But you said something on some pandemic episode of Doughboys that I truly I'm not being hyperbolic here is like the mantra i have kept in my head throughout these last two horrible years and one of the few things that kind of kept me sane where i think you were talking about baking and and projects you had done when uh you were in lockdown and mitch was like shitting on himself for like not taking on a pandemic hobby or whatever and you said the way i'm gonna paraphrase here but you said something to the effect whatever. And you said the way I'm going to paraphrase here, but you said something to the effect of the way you win the pandemic isn't by how well you use your time during the pandemic. The way you win the pandemic is making through it alive.

And I was very similarly dealing with that, like I'm a piece of shit and other people are becoming more functional during this to distract themselves. And I have just like broken as a person and i i it is a thing i repeated myself a lot of just like the only goal here is to stay alive and get through this fucking horrible unprecedented thing in terms of modern history so thank you truly from the bottom of my heart for saying that because it's it gave me a lot of value thank you for saying that griffin that really means a lot and um and you guys uh got me through a lot of pandemic just by being fun friends in my ears. So I appreciate you a lot. I always like to hear that.

That always makes me feel nice. Yeah. I also think it's just that our show's too long. I mean, people give us more credit for helping them get through the pandemic just because it takes less blank check episodes per day than most shows. But also there's the project. You get to watch the movie. You get to like make a little bit of it. It's just really, it feels communal and it's lovely.

So I appreciate you guys a lot. Very kind of you to say. And I want to say thank you for your kind words and thank you to our listeners. And please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media, Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork, Lane Monk governing the Great American Novel

for our theme song, J.J. Birch, Nick Loriano for our research, Alex Barron, A.J. McCann for our editing. You can go to blankcheckpod.com with links to all the things connected to our podcast that I no longer have to call out individually over on blank checks special features the patreon account patreons dot com slash blank check we're doing the matrix we went back to the matrix that's right that's a thing you can listen to if you yeah we're almost done with it, in fact. Matrix Resurrection is coming up.

It's coming up, and that's a wild one. Yeah, it's a riffy one. Riffy, yeah. They call me Griffin, but David was riffing in that one. God, we have to fucking end this. Tune in next week for The Quick and the Dead. Yep. Yes.

Very exciting. So good. I've never seen it. I'm very excited to watch it Russell Crowe is so hot in that movie you gotta give Sam Raimi credit he knows how to pick his hotties yeah female gays but yes they make it Sam Russell Crowe in the 90s

just just my favorite biggest crush David is fanning himself he's got sloppy hair. He's covered in dirt. He's vulnerable. I love him. David, bigger or smaller

crush than Miss Honey? Miss Honey's very specific. I think we've got real stuff. Ship them together. Yeah, why not fire and ice kiss each other

smooch smooch smooch kiss kiss miss honey 6.7 kiss kiss kiss crow davids fire and ice I think that's a good pitch that's like a fucking foreign film market pitch if I've ever heard it and as always I just think there's no more respectful way to

finish off our Evil Dead trilogy than by saying groovy. Groovy! Groovy. Okay. I don't want to call my shot in advance, but I'm proud of this one. I think this is a clever new angle. A new angle?

I'm not going to talk it up. I may put this at the end of the episode because I think this is... I think I finally found a new angle seven years in. You're going to fall into the episode? Funny. From the sky? Funny. Maybe it's not that new of an angle,

but I think it's different. It's different. It's not going to work every time. It works for this one movie. Okay, ready? Yeah. Okay.