WHEN director Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead was released in England in 1980 it was prosecuted for being unsuitable for public showing. Labelling a film unsuitable is the best form of publicity it can get and so The Evil Dead instantly gained a cult following.
It was shot on 16mm film (and blown up to grainy 35mm) and set new standards in outlandish screen gore. Raimi and his college friends made it for a mere US$400,000 (HK$3 million). It was released on video in a cut version and Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn followed in 1987.
The third film in this semi-professional horror trilogy is Army Of Darkness (Pearl, 9.30pm).
The gore continues, as does the hamming it up. Bruce Campbell returns to take on the forces of evil, which come in many guises. There are skeletons dressed up as Roman legionnaires and midgets armed with giant cutlery. The only weapon Campbell has is a good old-fashioned chainsaw. As the advertising slogan says: ''Trapped in Time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas.'' Army Of Darkness is less a horror film and more of a no-holds-barred parody.
Other forces of evil include animals spewing blood and bodies in various stages of decomposition.
When Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 were released in the territory audiences lapped them up. The two films took HK$4 million here and Army Of Darkness was snapped up so quickly by Hong Kong distributors that there was no time for Raimi to slap on the Universal Studios-sanctioned upbeat ending.