Movie Review: Army of Darkness (1992)

Army of Darkness (1992) co-written and directed by Sam Raimi

Ash (Bruce Campbell) is thrown into the 1300s AD by the evil force (an event that happened at the end of Evil Dead II). He is captured by Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert) who plans to execute him as an ally of Arthur's enemy, Henry the Red (Richard Grove). Back at Arthur's castle, they throw Ash into a pit where they expect him to die from the monsters that live inside. Ash beats them and emerges very upset. He orders Arthur to let Henry and his men go, then cuts a deal to get sent back to the future. The castle's wise man (Ian Ambercrombie) knows of a powerful book that has a formula that will send Ash home. It's the Necronomicon, the evil book that started all the trouble for Ash. He quests for the book, having bizarre and silly adventures along the way.

The movie is a departure for the Evil Dead films. While it still has the "splat-stick" gore comedy, the tone is much more comedic and embraces its medieval setting. There's plenty of horseback riding, swords, and arrows. The medieval characters all (or almost all) speak in Shakespearean style (even though Shakespeare was from the 1600s). Ash also develops into more of a hero, though mostly because he is forced to. He is a lot more competent at building things and chemistry (his car also came back in time, luckily he had a chemistry textbook in there!). By the end, he's become a leader/hero of the medieval people, fighting the Deadite army (that's what the locals call zombies) that attacks the castle. Of course, his incompetence at getting the Necronomicon is what caused the Deadite army to rise, so he's not completely heroic.

The plot is a bit haphazard, with many moments not making a lot of sense, even within the world Raimi creates. There is a director's cut of the film that fills in a lot of details and provides some more surreal and bizarre scenes, along with an alternate ending that is more in line with the way things go for Ash. From the commentaries and special features, it seems like the studio wanted a tighter film with a more upbeat ending. 

While the director's cut is more entertaining and makes more sense, the movie still has a lot of problems. The special effects run the gamut from impressive to dated, though the lower-budget effects stand out even more thirty years later. Ash's character arc is loopy, changing him from incompetent bungler to mechanical expert to sword-fighting hero with little credibility. He seemingly changes to suit the comedy or to move the plot along. Campbell gives a delightful performance, with plenty of comedy, often self-deprecating, making me delight in the absurd nonsense rather than chafe at it. Viewers have to be in a casual and indulgent mindset to enjoy the film.

Slightly recommended--when people ask me what my favorite movie is, I usually say "Ran is the best work of art, Raiders of the Lost Ark is the most fun, and Army of Darkness is my guiltiest pleasure." The movie is a big heap of dumb fun.

The Sequel Was Better? The Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead II

The Sequel Was Better? is a series of reviews looking at famous movies with sequels that are considered, rightly or wrongly, to be better than the original movies. Typically, sequels are a step down in quality, acting, and/or production value. But not always. See other reviews here.

The Evil Dead (1981) written and directed by Sam Raimi

Five friends (including Bruce Campbell as Ash) drive out to a remote cabin for a fun weekend out in the middle of nowhere. Too bad the cabin was previously used by an archeologist whose research into ancient Sumeria led him to discover The Book of the Dead, which includes incantations that bring demons into the world. The friends stumble upon the professor's research and play a tape he recorded, including the part where he recites the incantations. Outside the cabin, things start to go bump in the night (including the bridge they drove across, which is destroyed, leaving them stuck at the cabin). One by one, the friends get possessed and turn on their unpossessed companions. Bloody, gory mayhem and horror ensue with most of the cast dying in horrible agony as possessed monsters. Only Ash survives to the morning, but as he leaves the cabin the evil force runs him down on his way to the car. Yep, this is one of those horror movies where no one survives.

The movie is a cult classic that established Sam Raimi as a director and Bruce Campbell as a b-movie star. The gore level is so high that the film doesn't have an MPAA rating (it's certainly deep in NC-17 territory by today's standards). The budget was miniscule because, as Raimi's first movie, he raised money by pitching investments to almost anyone with cash to spare. The makeup is surprisingly fake and horrifying at the same time. The characters get possessed by demons and turn into white-eyed, grey-skinned, bloated versions of themselves.

What makes the film stand out is the creativity. Raimi uses a lot of weird angles and camera moves that enhance the atmosphere. The point-of-view shots of the evil presence traveling through the woods work especially well. Those shots are even creepier with the sound effects, which are generally excellent throughout the movie. The actors' voices are altered when they become demon-infested and that effect helps to sell the less convincing makeup.

The movie became infamous when it was released on video tape. The censors in England put it on the list of the video nasties, a list of films that were called "obscene" that had bypassed the UK's ratings board as they were released on video cassette rather than in theaters. The availability to children was the issue, since video rentals were much more readily available.

Evil Dead II (1987) co-written and directed by Sam Raimi

In perhaps the earliest example of a reboot, this sequel repeats the basic story beats of the first film in ten or fifteen minutes. Ash and his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler, the other three friends are nowhere to be seen) drive out to a remote cabin across a bridge. Their plans for a fun night end when he plays a tape left there by an archeologist that summons a demon that possesses Linda. Evil Linda has some fights with Ash. Ash survives to the morning, only to be run down by the evil force which possesses him on and off throughout the movie.

Meanwhile, the archaeologist's daughter has found more pages from the Book of the Dead and is rushing to the cabin to rejoin her father and mother to decipher more mysteries. She and her brother are stymied by the destroyed bridge and enlist a local redneck couple to guide them on a footpath to the cabin. They arrive to find an unconscious, bloody Ash and no parents. Naturally, they think he's killed them. Soon enough they discover the possessed body of the mother in the cabin's fruit cellar. Bloody, gory mayhem and horror ensue with most of the cast dying in horrible agony as possessed monsters. The movie ends with Ash being sucked through a portal to the year 1300, where he is enlisted to fight the "deadites" by the local knights, something recorded in The Book of the Dead (thus setting up Army of Darkness as sequel).

The movie benefits from a much larger budget and the same creative team working both behind and in front of the camera. They came up with new and creative ways to scare an audience but with a much more humorous and less sadistic edge.

So is the sequel better? Let's look at some points of comparison.

• SCRIPT--The first movie has a fairly lean script that's more about setting up horror scenarios and squalid scenes of suffering and death. It's almost like a haunted house amusement that has no restraints on what watchers can experience. As I said, the first movie is abridged and recreated in the first few minutes of the sequel, leaving out massive amounts of gore and three other characters. The story is then expanded with new and different characters, not just a bunch of late teen/early twenties horror fodder. The archeologist's daughter has more to do than just scream and be attacked by the possessed horrors (including her own mother, poor woman). She helps with incantations to get the evil out of the present day and back to the middle ages, where they had a more ready belief in demons and were more ready to deal with them. The second film has a lot more script to it, so advantage Evil Dead II.
• ACTING--The first film has a cast of mostly non-professional talent. They do a good job considering the circumstances and give good performances. The second film is more of a showcase for Campbell, who is more cartoonish and silly (and does a better acting job, too). His performance sets the tone for the film, which is a lot lighter than the first film. The other actors do a fine job with the more substantial roles given to them. Slight advantage to Evil Dead II.
• ADVANCES THE STORY/MYTHOLOGY--The second film swallows up the first's storyline and adds in a lot more content about The Book of the Dead. It references the film before and sets up the third film. The demons are more specific in their goals--beyond the sadistic torment, they definitely want to drag more human souls to Hell with them. The sequel also sets up more convincing ways to fight against the demons, making what little mythology there is in the Evil Dead franchise richer. Advantage Evil Dead II.
• SPECIAL EFFECTS--The low budget of the first film is most obvious in the makeup. While the all-white contact lenses are freaky-looking, a lot of the other makeup effects are less convincing. At the end of the film, some of the possessed characters rot away or disintegrate in obvious stop-motion gore that's disgusting but also a little unconvincing. In the sequel, Linda does a little bit of dancing which is reprised by her corpse after she is killed in a fascinating and creative stop-motion animation sequence. The dance sequence does not seem particularly realistic but does have a sense of humor. A lot of other visual effects (like ghostly apparitions or the forest coming alive) look much better thanks to the expanded budget. Advantage to the higher-budgeted sequel that uses its money well.
• VISUAL STYLE--The first film is very creative in its camera shots and various set-pieces designed to horrify the audience. There's a bit of humor but a lot more stuff to gross viewers out or make them jump from their seats or squirm in their seats. Occasionally the film seems too mean-spirited, especially in the infamous forest rape scene. The second film has a slightly lower level of gore and a much higher level of humor. The forest scene is reprised without the horrible ending. The biggest indication of the thematic switch is the scene in the sequel where Ash has to cut off his hand because "it's turned bad." While still attached to his arm, the hand tries to kill Ash (though smashing plates on his head is definitely more comic than horrifying). Ash uses a chainsaw to cut off the hand; he bandages his stump with some cloth and duct tape. He then has to battle his disembodied hand as it scurries around looking for some way to kill him. The scene is completely ridiculous and the filmmakers know it, so they play it for laughs rather than for shivers. The tonal shift toward humor makes for a much more palatable film. Advantage Evil Dead II.
• THE BIG FINALE--The first movie ends with an all out splattery, disintegrating goo fest that's more stomach-churning than legitimately scary. The very last scene of Ash being chased down by the evil force gives a bleak note to the self-described "ultimate experience in grueling horror" (Check the end credits, that's how they describe the film). The second movie ends with Ash being sucked into a portal that leaves him as a prophesied hero to the band of medieval knights who find him. Ash definitely thinks he's in a horrible finale but it is definitely less worse than being possessed by the evil force. Advantage Evil Dead II.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I watched The Evil Dead for only the second time in order to write this review. While the creativity is impressive, the film goes over the top as much as it can with the gore and the squirm-inducing horror. I admire what they accomplished on a micro-budget but can't really say that I enjoy the film. Evil Dead II I watched for the fourth time. The lighter tone makes it much easier to enjoy and a lot of elements (the effects, the story, the acting) are of a higher quality. Unless you prefer gut-wrenching gore, I don't see how you could prefer the first film.

Book Review: Hail to the Chin by Bruce Campbell

Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell with Craig Sanborn

B movie icon Bruce Campbell picks up where he left of in If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. The year is now 1997 and Bruce moves to Oregon to get away from the rat race in Hollywood. The book covers about twenty years, starting with the first (and only) season of Jack of All Trades in 1998 and getting all the way to the first season of Ash vs Evil Dead in 2015. The first part deals with a lot of indie work, including Bubba Hotep, a couple of Syfy channel movies, and My Name Is Bruce. Work became much steadier when Burn Notice took off as a series, leading to a spin-off movie and a good-will tour of Iraqi military bases with series star Jeffery Donovan. After another stint of television pilots and small films, he helped produce the big screen remake of Evil Dead and readily signed up to return to his first big part, Ashley Williams, for TV.

The book is full of many entertaining anecdotes and insider info on Campbell's career. I've followed his career with joy, so it's nice to revisit highlights (I need to watch Bubba Hotep again, shamefully I have not reviewed it, nor the first book). The book is full of little photos either from his life or gags about his experiences (the best was the movie marquee that reads, "APPENDAGE-SEVERING DOUBLE FEATURE: BRUCE CAMPBELL, EVIL DEAD 2; JAMES FRANCO, 127 HOURS"). The book is a quick read and promises a third act but we'll probably have to wait another fifteen or twenty years for that. I'm sure it will be a fun wait.

Highly recommended for fans of Bruce Campbell. If you aren't one, why not? If you aren't, you probably won't enjoy this book much.

TV Review: Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 2

Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 2 (2016) produced by Craig Digregorio

Ash (Bruce Campbell) tries to live the good life in Florida, with booze and women aplenty. That life is disrupted when a local hottie turns Deadite and starts wrecking the place. Soon enough, Ash is on his way back home to Michigan to help Ruby (Lucy Lawless) deal with Necronomicon-related problems. On arrival, he discovers you really can't go home again. The locals call him "Ashy Slashy" and consider him a boogey man. He did kill four of his friends at that cabin in the woods thirty years ago, didn't he? Ash also sees his dad, Brock Williams (Lee Majors), who is a boozy womanizer with little understanding of and sympathy for others (guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree). Deadites start showing up all over the place (including the local morgue and the bar where Ash's old friend Chet (Ted Raimi) works). Mayhem ensues.

As I predicted in my review of Season 1, I forgot that I really didn't like the first season and gave season two a try. The return to Ash's home town brought up a lot of interesting possibilities and some paid off quite well. The overall story arc is better crafted and more engaging in this season. Still, the series suffers from too much reliance on over-the-top gore as comedy (which I know is a staple in the Evil Dead but there's a difference between campy bad taste and no taste at all). I honestly wish I could unwatch two particular scenes that were so extreme as to be unenjoyable in any way. Also, splashing blood (or other gory fluid) in people's faces isn't that funny--certainly don't do it every episode! The other comedy (Ash's bumbling, his history, and the generally smart-alecky nature of all the characters) works well.

Not recommended, unless you're an Evil Dead completist.

TV Review: Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 1 (2015)

Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 1 (2015) produced by Craig DiGregorio

Ashley Williams (Bruce Campbell) is still living the same life. He works at a local department store barely getting by. He lives in a trailer where he keeps the Necronomicon locked up...most of the time. Unfortunately one night he's smoking weed with a cute blonde who is into poetry. He decides to read some Kandarian poetry from the Necronomicon, which releases evil on earth yet again. This time, Ash is helped by Pablo, a fellow store employee, and Kelly, Pablo's upstairs neighbor whom he helped get a job at the store. They have an encounter with evil in the store which sets them off on the mission to destroy the Necronomicon. Meanwhile, a cop has a run in with the unnatural evil summoned by the book, which puts her on a collision course with Ash and the gang. The cop is joined by Ruby (Lucy Lawless), a woman also in pursuit of Ash though her motivations are suspect.

The set up seems a little complicated but the pilot episode was directed by the director of the first three Evil Dead movies, Sam Raimi. He has a good grasp on the material and knows the style backward and forward, so he does a fine job both establishing new characters and showing what level Ash has sunk to. His treatment of women is at an all-time low, using his missing hand as an excuse to get some pity-sex from a woman at a bar. That particular scene made Ash a little too unlikeable in my book, especially as it is played for comedy.

The rest of the series is a slow journey through various set-pieces to get Ash and company back to the original cabin where they can get rid of the book. Unfortunately, many episodes were too similar--a little story advancement, a big battle with some Deadite demons, lots of blood and guts all around. The comedy appeal of getting soaked in blood (which admittedly is a staple of the Evil Dead movies) gets very thin after a couple of episodes. Having a larger variety of kills is also less appealing and interesting as the series goes on.

The last three episodes get better as they return to the cabin where everything started. The blend of familiar elements with new twists works better there. The sort of demon fighting they do is more plausible in a remote forest rather than in "modern day" locations where much of the story takes place. The story doesn't really end which is a bit frustrating. They were clearly hoping for a second season, which is broadcasting right now. I'm not impressed enough to seek it out...maybe when it comes out next year on DVD I'll have forgotten my disappointment with this series and rent the next set of discs from the library.

News I Wish Was True

As an April Fool's Day prank, the venerable Bruce Campbell posted this image in his Twitter feed:

Holy Awesome, Batman!

Read an article about the reaction here. I would start watching Doctor Who again if this were true! Replace those Sonic Sunglasses with a Sonic Chainsaw...Groovy!

In case you don't know, there's a Catholic version of The Onion which is called Eye of the Tiber. They had an article about a recent superhero movie that has performed poorly at the box office...

This is what happens when you have two popes at the same time

Like the Batman vs. Superman movie, I'd probably wait for this one to come out on video and then rent it from the library (so I can see it for free if it was real). The popular movies at the library usually have hundreds of requests, so often I wait two or three month before I get the DVD. By the time I reach the top of the queue, I sometimes have lost interest. I know I've returned unwatched DVDs to the library but I can't even remember an example (other than I almost returned an unwatched Jurassic World but then had an unexpected free evening and wound up watching it anyway).

As for actually true news, Everyday Einstein podcasts about a report that eating chocolate can make you smarter, in addition to the other benefits science claims for chocolate eating, e.g. better cardiovascular health and less chance of stroke. Like we need more reasons to eat chocolate! Sadly, no information is provided for people who want to volunteer for future studies concerning chocolate consumption.

So at least one bit of news really is true.

TV Review: Burn Notice Season Seven

Burn Notice Season Seven created by Matt Nix

Burn Notice is a television series about CIA agent Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) who was "burned" or dumped from active service because he was suspected of wrongdoing. He wound up in Miami where he reconnected with some old friends (an ex-IRA girlfriend (Gabriel Anwar) and an ex-Navy Seal best friend (Bruce Campbell)) and his mom (Sharon Gless). The story started as a semi-comic drama about his life helping out people as he tries to find out who burned him so he can clear his name and lead a normal life. Of course, if he does find the person and clear his name the series would end, so he never quite manages it. By season seven, the show lost most of the comedy (but not all of it, possibly due to Bruce Campbell being there) and fell into a rut where Michael would infiltrate some secret organization by working with some semi-crazy person. That person would get killed when Michael found out about and started working for that person's slightly more crazy supervisor. Some seasons had him go up quite a few levels to get to the big boss at the end of the season.

By the start of season seven, Michael and his family and friends have been imprisoned by the CIA. Michael agrees to work for them so that his people can get out of jail. His assignment is to infiltrate a terrorist organization running out of the Dominican Republic (so at least they get out of Miami for a lot of episodes). He works his way up the chain throughout the season. It is a bit of plot recycling much like the last few seasons of Alias and was a little disappointing to me. The story does take Michael to the point where he might actually join the terrorists, giving a lot of melodramatic scenes for the cast. Sometimes the cast does a good job of selling those scenes, sometimes they don't. The last two episodes of the series are very exciting and give a dramatically satisfying end to the series, also much like Alias. Unfortunately, viewers need to watch the episodes leading up to those last two. The plot is so complicated that it might be hard to understand what's going on without all the set up. If you think the Alias finale was worth watching the last season, this last season of Burn Notice is worth it (and only half as long at thirteen episodes).

Movie Review: Evil Dead (2013)

Evil Dead (2013) directed by Fede Alvarez

Here's another film I meant to see last summer, though unlike Pacific Rim, World War Z and Much Ado About Nothing, I debated long and hard about whether I wanted to see this one or not. Too long, thus I missed it in the theatres here.

It used to be in Hollywood, aspiring film makers could break into the scene by making a low-budget noir thriller (see Blood Simple) or horror film (see Night of the Living Dead).  Sam Raimi and his friends got into the business by making The Evil Dead, a low-budget horror movie famous (or infamous) for pushing the boundaries. The movie is pretty raw. The story is fairly basic--five 18-to-25 year-olds go to a cabin in the woods where they plan to have a lot of fun but unleash a demon who starts possessing and killing them one by one. The special effects were the best they could do on a low budget and work for the most part. The violence and gore and scares are so extreme that they sometimes become comic. Bruce Campbell's over the top performance as Ash begins his amazing career. The movie became a cult hit and was also banned in Britain during the video nasties scare of the 1980s.

Fast forward 30 years. A high-budget (comparatively speaking) remake is made with the backing of the original film's producers. The story is mostly the same, except that the five young people come to the cabin to help one of them kick her drug addiction (which helps explain why they don't run away immediately when she tells them about the crazy evil things happening to her). The special effects are top-notch, to the fault of being too realistic. The violence and gore and scares are extreme but don't cross the line into comedy. Jane Levy's solid performance as going-cold-turkey Mia carries the viewer through the excruciating horror. The movie, while not a big hit, performed well enough at the box office to get a sequel greenlit.

This movie has a lot of visual and audio references to the first film (and its sequels), which is to be expected, but has nothing iconic of its own to offer. I liked the set-up which makes their reluctance to leave more plausible, though both this film and the earlier one show that escape is impossible regardless of the characters' decisions. So the set up is a welcome but not necessary addition. The change in tone, losing the humor and the over-the-top rawness, is a big problem. Without the humor to buoy up the viewer, the gore gets too grim and unbearable. The realistic depiction of the gore doesn't help. When Bruce Campbell cuts his evil hand off in Evil Dead II, the filmmakers play up the ridiculousness of what's happening (at the end the hand goes scurrying away like Thing from The Addams Family). A similar scene in this film has a woman (not Mia) chopping most of her arm off with an electric kitchen knife, but it's just an unpleasantly realistic-looking experience--gore for its own sake, which is repulsive in every possible sense. Mia's plight is pitiable but truly unpleasant. Perhaps there's heroism in her survival to the end but watching the movie is more like a forced march than a triumphant arrival. The film has almost nothing to offer but a lot of unpleasantness.

Cool Stuff Around the Net

Here's some cool stuff you can find on the 'net!

Congrats to Sean from Just a Catholic Dad for his eleventy-first podcast! I don't remember half his podcasts half as well as I should like and I like less than half his podcasts half as well as they deserve. By which I mean to say he's really good and you should give him a listen.

A wonderful discussion of the classic Western The Magnificent Seven is available on A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast. I forgot how quotable that movie is: "I've been offered a lot in my life but never...everything." "We deal in lead, friend." "We don't need that man with the scar, we need the man who gave him that scar!" etc.

A series on Tarot cards, debunking the magic/fortune telling and looking at the games people played with them, can be found beginning here.

A cool video explaining the whole United Kingdom/Great Britain/England confusion:


 h/t to my friend Brian for this!

Some pics worth sharing--sadness for Doctor Who and silliness for Bruce Campbell:

If you eat this, you might get possessed by a Kandarian demon!

Celebrity Silliness

I guess that's the Scotch Refutation, which sounds like an awesome name for a Robert Ludlum book.

h/t to Michael Flynn and Mark Shea

If Bruce isn't enough for you, how about some Chuck Norris?

h/t to Craig Summers on Facebook 

According to the wikipedia page on Mr. Norris, he was actually born on March 10, 1940. They have a footnote citing Chuck Norris's biography, if that can be believed. On the other hand, wikipedia has this to say about the German surrender in 1945:

At 02:41 on the morning of 7 May, at the SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies.

Snopes.com has no refutation of either picture. I did run across this funny false story about how Pia Zadora was so bad in a stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank that when the Nazis appear an audience member got up and shouted, "She's in the attic!"

h/t to myself

Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Day, Parody of

It helps to appreciate this if you've seen Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness, or both!

Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams

Dismember, dismember the undead of November,
Chainsaw shotgun and graveplot.
We see no reason why
The undead can't re-die
When off the head is chop't.

Bruce Campbell did shout
And blow their brains out.
Three Evil Dead movies would show
How medieval Ash could go.

The Necronomicon's curse
Made Ash's hand worse.
So, holler Ash, holler Ash, chop it off fast.
Holler hand, holler hand, for you won't last.

And what did he do with it?
Blast it!


Original text:

Guy Fawkes by George Cruickshanks

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England's overthrow.

By god's mercy he was catch'd
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.

And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!

Home-made Zombie

I finally gathered all the ingredients for the zombie cocktail mentioned previously. The only problem was finding passion fruit syrup. I won't claim it doesn't exist in England but I haven't found it yet. I did find passion fruit juice, which is probably close enough. Oh, and I didn't have a mint sprig for a garnish. Here are the various parts I used to construct my very own home-made zombie:

You'll notice I didn't have to raid the pineapple tidbits to get some pineapple juice (though a chunk of pineapple would be a great garnish, especially if dyed blood red). You can't see it in the picture, but the bottle of 151 proof rum (i.e. 75.5% alcohol) has all sorts of warnings about how flammable it is. That made my wife a little nervous. Amazingly, all of the ingredients are available in local grocery stores. I love living in England. Here's the final product:

Unfortunately, I've never accumulated proper bar glasses, though this frosty mug did a good job holding my liquor. The cocktail shaker is one of those wedding gifts that never sees enough action in our home. I suppose that will change now with a new favorite drink. I like the drink a lot!

To go with the drink, I watched Evil Dead II, which stars Bruce Campbell and features plenty of zombie mayhem. I would review it for the blog but I'm frightened of listing all the gore in the movie. To start with, I noticed bodily fluids came in four different colors, maybe in tribute to the four bodily humors theory, except the yellow bile came out green in the movie. The movie is just as much comedy as it is horror, earning its "splat-stick" reputation with gallons of blood and other ooze flying all over the set. There's lots of other comic violence and mayhem that probably isn't to everyone's taste, but I enjoy it more than I should. That's what a guilty pleasure is all about!

I hope you all had a great Halloween and are looking forward to the next big holiday. Here in the UK, the next big celebration is Guy Fawkes Night, November 5. Lots of fireworks and bonfires are scheduled, seemingly one in every town around us. We will probably attend at least one. I will be sure to blog about it!

Till Death Do You Part?

I ran across this video and had to pass it along because, hey, it's Bruce Campbell at a zombie-con.



Zombie wedding vows seem backwards to us since you don't become a zombie till after you have kids. On the other hand, the video is called The Evil Dead Wedding Renewal Ceremony, so renewing your vows after zombification is okay with us. All my wife and I need to do is invent a time travel device so we can go back to this event. That'll be tough with our lack of brains. I'm sure the kids will help out.

Smell Like a Monster, Monster!

In case you have been living under a rock or without access to any pop culture at all (which would be odd since you must be on the internet, right?), there is an extremely popular series of Old Spice commercials, that have been parodied by none other than Sesame Street. In case you haven't seen the original ads, here's the object of parody:



And here's the parody featuring Grover:



Why is this on the Zombie Parenting blog, you might wonder? The parenting connection is obvious, but what about the zombie connection? Well, the only thing that detracts from the awesomeness of the "Smell Like a Man, Man" ad campaign is the replacement of the previous Old Spice spokesman, the greatest zombie killer the silver screen has even known. That's right, Mr. Bruce Campbell, hero of the Evil Dead movies:



Hat tip to BJ (Facebook friend & zombie parent) for the Grover video.