Although Campbell's rugged good looks, tall stature and square jaw fit the bill, Ash is not your typical hero. He's actually a big jerk. He's rude, selfish, egotistical, condescending, and an impatient loudmouth. But Campbell still somehow makes us root for him, not only because he is a total badass, but because Ash spews some of the greatest movie lines of all time. In fact, Ash's quotes are so legendary that one was featured in the Warcraft III video game. Here are some examples of Ash's quotes in Army of Darkness, courtesy of the IMdB.
[In a passionate moment of romance]
Ash: Gimme some sugar, baby.
King Arthur: Are all men from the future loud-mouthed braggarts?
Ash: Nope. Just me baby... Just me.[To a female Deadite]
Ash: Yo, she-bitch! Let's go.
The version I reviewed is an HD-DVD and DVD combo, which I wasn't too crazy about since these disks are about $10 more than the plain HD-DVD version. I suppose the idea is that if a person wanted to watch the movie on a computer or on a portable DVD player, he or she can do so without having to buy two different kinds of disks. However, they should still at least have the film available on just HD-DVD for people who plan to only use their HD-DVD players for film viewing.
When I popped in the disk, I didn't know what to expect. AoD is an old film, and I recall that the picture was rather grainy and a little murky the last time I watched it. Thankfully, the transfer was well done, for the most part. The picture overall looks brighter and crisper. You can see every pore and wrinkle on Ash's face, and for the first time his blue shirt really looks blue rather than a muddy brown. However, a few scenes retained their grainy look, primarily during the Evil Dead II recap at the beginning of AoD.
Article comments
1 - Iloz Zoc
Super review. I didn't know AOD was released on HD. I'm a big extras nut, so looks like I'll wait until Universal comes out with an HD edition that includes them. Surprised they just didn't add the existing ones from previous editions at least.
And with a great tagline like "Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas." This film is lots of fun.
2 - Matt Paprocki
"The only thing I can think of is that they'll put in these extras for some lame, "Special Edition" copy so they can sell more disks."
Ding! We have a winner. A new format launch and a popular movie means sales regardless of the extras. How many standard DVD versions were there? Six, seven? I wouldn't expect anything less here.
3 - Kaonashi
Iloc- Thanks! Yeah, I found out AoD was on HD-DVD when I was looking through Amazon for HD-DVDs to buy.
Matt- You have a point about the multiple DVD versions of AoD. Ridiculous! The funny thing is that so far, the other HD-DVDs I have are chock full of extras. Maybe it's just Universal that's stingy with the extras, because Warner Bros. sure isn't, and neither is Paramount.