Evil Dead - Army of Darkness

Most people will now know Sam Raimi as the director of the mind blowingly successful Spiderman film. In fact there are rumours the new maths block being built on campus is there to try and calculate exactly how much money the film is making. However there are others who will always think of Sam Raimi as the director of the cult Evil Dead horror films, and once youÕve seen one of them, you might think that way too.

Ash is a regular guy who has just spent two films fighting off undead zombies in a deserted cabin in the woods (yes, I know that zombies have to be dead by definition and the cabin deserted if he and the zombies are there). Anyway, just as he thinks his ordeal is all over he is sucked through a time warp to the middle ages where the army of darkness is waiting to destroy him and everyone else. He alone must destroy the evil ones with only a chainsaw where lower arm should be and a selection of one-liners that Johnny Bravo would trade his hair for.

Those who haven't seen the first two films needn't worry: what little plot existed in them is explained in the first 30 seconds of this instalment (told you there wasn't much plot) and they were basically the same film anyway. Instead you can concentrate on enjoying the best fighting skeletons you have seen since Ray Harryhausen got bored of spending his entire life moving small plasticine figures around and the most outrageous slapstick routines since the three stooges gave themselves brain damage.

The emphasis here is on humour more then gore (and the censors can rest easy with the lack of rapist trees), but the film is as gleefully absurd as its two predecessors and if you don't come out of the cinema quoting dialogue this time round, you never will. This went down a storm at a recent allnighter, and now you can have the privilege of watching it without sleep depravation. What more could you want?

David Goody