Dan Oliver - Zombies A-Z

Alien Dead is a horror movie directed by Fred Olen Ray, who also wrote the screenplay with the help of Martin Nicholas. Fred is best known for his work on the TV show The Lair and for directing Evil Toons and Scalps. He cast Buster Crabbe as Sheriff Kowalski, Ray Roberts as Tom, Linda Lewis as Shawn and George Kelsey as Emmet.

The tranquil peace and quiet in a sleepy American town is broken when a meteor strikes and hits a houseboat. The occupants of the houseboat become zombies and need to feed in order to survive. At first they eat the alligators that live in the swamp, but soon they start eating humans when they run out of alligators. They kidnap people from the town and eat them, but do it in secret so no one knows that they are zombies. As more and more people start disappearing, the local scientist grows suspicious and decides to investigate.

The third movie in the Evil Dead trilogy, Army of Darkness is a slapstick comedy horror movie, which sets it apart from the first two movies. In it, Ash is trapped in medieval England and has to fight the zombies called deadites to reach the present day. The movie was directed by Sam Raimi, who wrote it with his brother Ivan. It stars Bruce Campbell as Ashley J Ash Williams, Embeth Davidtz as Sheila and Marcus Gilbert as Lord Arthur.

In the movie, Ash and his girlfriend Linda find the Book of the Dead and open it. Linda is killed by the satanic force it unleashes. Ash is forced to chainsaw his hand off when the force enters him and it ends up sending him to the Dark Ages along with his Oldsmobile, chainsaw and shotgun.

Ash is captured by Lord Arthurs men who strip him of his weapons because they think he has been working for Duke Henry, their enemy. He is taken to the castle with Duke Henrys men and is thrown in the Pit of Death, which contains deadites. It looks like Ash could be about to die but then the Wise Man tosses him his chainsaw. Once he has destroyed a deadite, he climbs out of the pit and gets his gun back.

He manages to get Henry released, which makes him a hero in peoples eyes. Ash falls for a woman called Sheila, whose brother is one of Arthurs knights, but still wants to get home. He finds out from the Wise Man that he needs a special book called the Necronomicon.

Ash sets out and travels through a haunted forest. He is chased by something and hides in a windmill but manages to break a mirror. Things get a bit strange when his reflections climb out of the pieces of mirror and start taunting him. One manages to get inside him by diving down his throat and becomes a life-size copy of him, but Ash manages to kill and bury it.

He continues on his quest but when he arrives at the location of the Necronomicon he finds three books instead of the one he was expecting. He manages to distinguish which is the real book but when it comes to reciting Klaatu barada nikto so he can take the book safely he cant. He remembers the first two words but cant remember the last one so he mumbles it, thinking that he can get away with it. Big mistake.

Ash takes the book and quickly returns to the castle. But because he didnt remember the last word he has awoken the dead, who start coming up from their graves even his life-size copy. The deadites join the Army of Darkness and Sheila is taken by a deadite. Ash wants to go home but he cant he has to help put things right. He wants to lead the people against the army led by his life-size copy, but they arent sure about it. He uses some textbooks to learn what they need to do and Duke Henry helps him. They manage to defeat Ashs life-size copy and the army before Ash goes back to the future thanks to a special potion from the Necronomicon.

Ash tells a colleague in the S-Mart store what he has been up to and that he could have been a medieval king if he had wanted. He manages to mess things up again when he causes a demon to possess one of the female workers, but he manages to kill it and then kisses the woman. The voice-over declares: Sure, I could have stayed in the past. Could have even been king. But in my own way, I am king.

The movie might have been set in medieval England but it was filmed in California, in the Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park. They built the castle on the edge of the Mojave Desert and the interior scenes were shot in Hollywood. The script was written while Sam and Ivan were producing the movie Darkman, an action superhero movie that Sam wrote and directed. They had been given an initial budget of $8 million but this wasnt enough to do the script justice because of the special effects needed. Happily Darkman was a success, so Universal Pictures agreed to fund half of the movies budget and Sam, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, the movies producers, each gave some of their salary. They still couldnt do exactly what they had wanted to do, but that couldnt be helped.

After the movie had been finished Universal decided that they didnt like the ending, which was deemed too negative. The company wanted one where Ash was a hero, so a new one was filmed. The company also cut some scenes including one where a deadite was decapitated after the movie was given an NC-17 rating, which meant that no children under 17 could see it, and the company wanted it to be suitable for all. It ended up with an R rating, which meant that anyone could see it, as long as children were accompanied by an adult.

Generally, Army of Darkness got good reviews. It was given a score of 71 out of 100 (based on 88 reviews) by the website Rotten Tomatoes, although this wasnt as high as the previous two Evil Dead movies, which received scores of 100 and 98.

Critics did enjoy the movie, however. Desson Howe from The Washington Post wrote in his review: Theres a little Monty Python black humor at work here. There are moments of cyberpunkish mutation. Youll also find remnants of Arthurian legend, Gullivers Travels and, uh, the Three Stooges. But the movie has an original life of its own.

Bill Popes cinematography is gymnastic and appropriately frenetic. The visual and make-up effects (from artist-technicians William Mesa, Tony Gardner and others) are incredibly imaginative. Ash contends with even more Books of the Dead that suck him into nightmarish hells. He has run-ins with teeth-clattering, scary skeletons that recall the great old Ray Harryhausen movies.

Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly gave the movie only a C+ rating but still liked the movie, writing: The director sends his usual hero, the square-jawed wiseacre Ash (Bruce Campbell), through a time warp and back to the Dark Ages, where he comes on like a smart-ass cross between Indiana Jones and Mad Max. With his Dudley Do-Right chin and light-as-air machismo, Campbell is a walking human cartoon, and its fun to watch him drop insults in late-20th-century slang and treat his medieval hosts, including the demons, with brazen contempt (Yo, she-bitch, lets go!).

There are also a few flashes of Raimi at his best: a loony-tunes sequence in which Ash does bloody battle with Lilliputian versions of himself, an encounter with the Book of the Dead that leaves his face all bent out of shape. As always, Raimis evil dead are amusingly corporeal: in Army of Darkness, the rubber-faced ghouls and witchy-poos dont just spook you they thwack you in the face.

Army of Darkness was a big hit in the cinema and made $21.5 million. Fans loved the movie and it was nominated for a host of awards. At the Saturn Awards it won for Best Horror Film and was nominated for Best Make-Up, but lost out to