Oh boy, here we go. It's about to get real now. I have recently landed the 5-disc
Definitive Collection of Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness from Madman, the Australian DVD company. The set has 2 blu-rays and 3 DVDs, and no, it isn't the case where two of the DVDs are identical to two of blus, except for one being in standard def and one in high def. They're all different. What's more,
Army of Darkness is infamous for being possibly the most frequently re-issued film on DVD and blu of all time; and I've got a bunch of other versions on hand. There are a ton of different cuts of the film, sets of extras, and quality of transfers. I've also got info on other releases, including an alternate Ultimate Edition from Germany. Now, the fact that each set has at least a little bit that the other doesn't tells me neither is quite fully definitive; but they've both got more
Army of Darkness than even a serious fan will ever need.
Update 5/23/15 - 10/14/15: Hail to the king, baby! Scream Factory has just released the ultimate, most definitive
Army of Darkness
set yet! It's a 3 blu-ray set with 4 cuts of the film, an all new 4k
scan and all new extras, as well as all the legacy stuff! It's been
added to end of the comparisons below, so read on or just scroll all the
way down to the new content.
Update 10/5/22: There's a new definitive king in town, but it's still from Scream Factory. This time they've taken the film to a whole new format: 4k Ultra HD, with their brand new, 4-disc Collector's Edition. To find it, just scroll wayyy down.
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| Notice some print damage (on her forehead) in this shot from the US blu-ray. |
Army of Darkness, of course, is the third - and as of this writing, final - in the
Evil Dead series of films, originally meant to be titled
The Medieval Dead, and in some markets, unfortunately known as
Captain Supermarket. The delightfully ludicrous ending of
Evil Dead 2 seemed impossible to follow up, with our protagonist (
Bruce Campbell,
of course) having opened a portal to send the demons back to their
time, centuries ago, but accidentally getting sucked in with them. So we
begin with our character taken from a contemporary "cabin in the woods"
horror film trapped in the 1300s with knights and kings, still battling
the evil dead. Like
Evil Dead 2 shifted the tone from the original
Evil Dead
to be more humorous and crazy, this one shifts the tone even further,
to be a bizarre, darkly comic fantasy adventure. And it's one Hell of a
good time.
Because it was a bigger, and less of a scary, film, the studio seemed to
envision a broader audience for this film, selling it not just to
Evil Dead fans, or horror fans in general, but to the mainstream market. And so they chose not to market it as
Evil Dead 3,
and meddled an awful lot in the creative process, resulting in a very
short film with an alternate ending and all kinds of changes.
Consequently, we have that version, a very different director's cut, and
various alternate cuts with missing or additional scenes that were sold
in different parts of the world. And it's also been incredibly popular
in the home video market. So we've wound up with a whole ton of releases
of this film. Anchor Bay in particular seemed to go completely hog wild
releasing and re-releasing this and other
Evil Dead films over
and over. Some editions were completely redundant and unnecessary, but
others had real, compelling reasons for fans to up- or side- grade.
Which are which?
Well, let's compare twelve different versions of this film and start finding answers.
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| Anchor Bay's 1999 DVD, the director's cut. 1.64:1. |
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| Anchor Bay's 1999 DVD, the theatrical cut. 1.66:1 |
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| Anchor Bay's 1999 DVD, full-screen version of the theatrical cut. 1.33:1. |
These first three shots are all from Anchor Bay's original, limited
edition 2-disc set from 1999. Now, this is not the first time the film
had been released. Universal released a disc first in 1998. But it
didn't have the director's cut, it didn't have any extras. This Anchor
Bay set had plenty, and has kept a place in my collection right up to my
getting the
Definitive Collection. The transfer's not so hot, and curiously in an anamorphic 1.66 ratio (
Sam Raimi may've had a hand in that decision, since he's a bit notorious with making creative decisions in the
Evil Dead
trilogy's early releases). It also has a full-screen version of the
theatrical cut, which is pretty unique to this edition, and is at least
interesting for being somewhat open matte and therefore showing us more
picture in the top and bottom. But it's also pan & scan. Notice how
it gives us the full right side of the picture, which even the
widescreen director's cut transfer fails to do (it being tragically
zoomed in on all four sides), but cutting more of the left side off.
This edition also has some great extras, including a commentary by Raimi, Campbell and
Ivan Raimi (who
joins the proceedings near the end). These guys always do great
commentaries, and this is no exception. It's always fun, informative and
insightful. And their commentary also carries over to four deleted
scenes, which you can watch with the commentary or not. The scenes
aren't featured in either cut of the film, and are quite worthwhile.
There's also storyboards, the trailer, the original ending (which is
already there on the director's cut, but here so you can watch it
separately as well), and some bios. Oh, and perhaps most importantly
(for reasons we'll come to later), a very good and fairly substantial 18
minute featurette called
The Men Behind the Army, which is narrated by Bruce Campbell and focuses on the work of
KNB Effects
for the film. And while this film was technically "limited" to
individually numbered copies, they made 30,000 of them (mine's #16229),
so this version is still not too hard to find today.
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| Anchor Bay UK's 2003 DVD, 1.64:1 |
So, like I said, Anchor Bay took a lot of stabs at subsequently
releasing this film, like the Boomstick Edition and the Bootleg Edition.
Specifically, between 1999 and 2003, they put out four, not counting
the original 2-disc set above. That's more than one new edition every
year. And the differences were really minor, like one was released just
because they added THX sound. Another was a single disc release, and
then the Boomstick edition was just them going back to 2 discs again. So
some had just the director's cut and some had both; but they all
presented them in the same 1.66:1 transfers (technically, the director's
cut is more like 1.64). And they all basically had the same extras...
but only the original 2-disc set above has that
Men Behind the Army feature. For whatever reason, that was an exclusive.
But if you read the caption, you already know the screenshot we're
looking at here isn't from any of those four Anchor Bay releases, it's
from an Anchor Bay UK's release. Specifically, it's the disc from their
4-disc
Evil Dead Trilogy boxed set, brazenly labeled "The
Definitive Evil Dead Collection." Their treatment of the film isn't any
better: it's still the zoomed in, 1.64:1 transfer of the director's cut.
It's got the same commentary and deleted scenes, and no
Men Behind the Army
(even though a previous, 2002 Anchor Bay UK release did include it).
But it's a pretty compelling set because it has a bunch of exclusive
extras that are only available in this set only to this day. Almost all
of them pertain to the previous
Evil Dead films, though, so I'll save those details for another post. But one exclusive doc, called
The Living Love the Dead,
does cover all three films, so a lot of talk is dedicated to part 3.
It's pretty poor, though, and doesn't include anybody involved with the
making of the film.
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| MGM's 2003 Hong Kong DVD, 1.79:1. |
Yay! Now we're talking. Anchor Bay stopped putting out DVDs of Army
(they were getting a lot of flack for it, plus the rights reverted), and
it started coming out from other studios. And this official MGM Studios
release in Hong Kong was the one to own! First of all, as you can see,
it looks better than any of Anchor Bay's versions. And this isn't the
theatrical cut, this is the director's cut. They've got that version
without that ugly zoomed in effect. And it's got the most accurate
aspect ratio to date. The box claims 1.85:1, but it's more like 1.79.
That still trumps all the 1,66's, though, and the picture is so much
cleaner and less compressed. Oh, and it's even a little bit more
complete than the previous director's cuts, including a shot of
Embeth Davidtz's
dress being torn that Raimi decided to cut out from his cut for Anchor
Bay (though it's in the theatrical cut). To be fair, I can see why he
would want to cut it, and it's really not that important... but besides
just being generally better for being more complete, the shot is
valuable because it makes the subsequent wide shot, where her dress is
visibly torn, make sense. In the past editions, the top of her dress
just disappears from one shot to the next.
The MGM disc also has the commentary, the deleted scenes, the trailer,
photo gallery and the alternate ending. In this case, that ending is the
theatrical cut's supermarket ending, because this disc features the
director's cut with the original ending. It's a first class DVD
from MGM, that just didn't make it to the US because they didn't have
the rights to put it out here.
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| Universal's 2009 DVD, 1.85:1. |
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| Universal's 2009 blu-ray, 1.85:1. |
So now we jump ahead six years.
Army of Darkness releases were
finally dead, even though the US never got anything like Hong Kong's MGM
disc. But in 2009 we'd entered the blu-ray age, so it was time to bring
Evil Dead 3 back. And who had it now? Universal. So they
released the Screwhead Edition from a new HD transfer. I was a late
adapter to blus, so I picked up their DVD edition back then. So now I've
wound up with the DVD and blu versions of the Screwhead edition to
compare, even though they were simultaneous separate releases, not a
combo pack. So we get to look at both. And unsurprisingly, they're
identical, except for one being in standard definition and one being HD.
But even the DVD looks better than MGM's. And it's finally fully matted
to the 1.85 OAR. Just one problem, though; Universal has only released
the short, theatrical version. So, naturally horror fans have felt a
little unfulfilled with this release, despite it still being the only
blu-ray edition released in the USA.
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| Madman's 2013 DVD, director's cut, 1:64.1. |
It has new extras, though, which made me a little happy. Only a little,
because there really isn't much. The main thing is a new featurette
called
Creating the Deadites. This focuses on KNB's work for the film, very much in the same vein as
The Men Behind the Army.
In fact, a lot of the same anecdotes are told and footage is shown.
They're different, though, and they do have some good, unique content,
so fans will want to have both. But one is sort of like a remake of the
other. And since it was recorded to fit the longer director's cut, the
commentary is not on this version, and neither are the deleted scenes.
Really, all the Screwhead edition has is the
Deadites feature,
the trailer, and the original (director's cut) ending, plus some bonus
BD Live trailers and a silly "U-Control" thing which makes production
photos pop up throughout the movie, if you have the blu-ray version.
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| Madman's 2013 blu, director's cut, 1.78:1. |
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| Madman's 2013 blu, theatrical cut, 1.85:1. |
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| Madman's 2013 DVD, theatrical cut, 1.66:1. |
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| Madman's 2013 DVD, TV cut, 1.33:1. |
And so we've come to the Definitive Collection, and it's pretty sweet.
There's some odd stuff going on here, though. Two of the discs are the
director's cut on blu and the director's cut on DVD. So you'd think
they'd be the same transfer, just one in SD and one in HD, right? Nope.
Totally different transfers, with the director's cut DVD going back to
the old, zoomed in transfer of the old Anchor Bay discs. Weird, but I
guess it's preferable to duplicate content... Basically, if you want the
old 1.66:1 transfer of the theatrical cut, that's here, on the DVD. And
if you want the 1.85 one from the Universal discs, that's here too, on
the blu-ray. That's why this is a Definitive set, folks; you're getting
all the options.
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| Madman's 2013 director's cut blu left; MGM's DVD right. |
The director's cut blu-ray version - the one the majority of us are
probably most concerned with - is 1.78:1, like the MGM DVD. And like the
MGM DVD, it has the dress tearing scene intact. Now, cynically yet
nervously, you may ask, is the new blu really just the MGM disc slapped
onto a blu? Happily, no, this is a legit upgrade with an all new
transfer of the director's cut. The image is cleaner, the colors are
better, and it doesn't have all the SD pixelation it would have if they
just took the DVD as their source, and that the MGM does have. This is
the best the director's cut has ever looked.
Now, does it look as good as the theatrical version looked on the
Screwhead blu? That's debatable, I suppose. The Screwhead edition seems
sharper and has more vivid colors, but it also seems to have been
tinkered with more in post, using maybe some edge enhancement and
unsharpen mask. I'd say the Director's Cut is objectively better. I
suspect the theatrical will please many fans, however, while leaving
purists preferring the less doctored director's cut. But hey, this set's
got the theatrical cut on blu, too; and it's exactly the same as the
Screwhead disc. Like, literally, it's the same disc with a new label on
it. So you don't have to choose.
This set also introduces the TV cut into the mix. It's full-screen and
basically matches Anchor Bay's old full-screen framing, but with the
brighter colors of the more modern transfers. It's got a little ghost
framing going on, though; I guess it came from a PAL source. But it's a
TV version, you kinda expect it to look crappy. Anyway, the TV cut is
what it sounds like, with lots of language and stuff edited for
television, and it's missing some things. But what makes it interesting
and worth including, besides maybe the novelty of overdubbed lines being
made clean, is the fact that it also includes some deleted scenes and
footage not in the other cuts. And the scenes are in much higher quality
here than they have been on past discs, when they were just deleted
scenes, which had all kinds of marks, fading and print damage on them.
And extras? It's definitive, baby - it's got everything! Yes, the
commentary is on the director's cut, and yes the deleted scenes are here
with the optional commentary, too. Yes,
Creating the Deadites is on here AND the elusive
Men Behind the Army.
The trailer, galleries, and even the silly U-Control feature from the
Screwhead blu is on here. Oh, and there's more. There's a short,
clip-heavy 'making of' documentary, and a series of interviews with
Raimi, Campbell and producer
Rob Tapert. The 'making of' only
features clips from the film and clips of these interviews, though, so
if you don't want to watch the same content twice in a row, I'd say just
watch the interviews. There's more in the interviews that aren't in the
'making of,' too.
Also, the original ending is on here as a separate extra (even though
it's also in the two director's cuts, of course), and there are
additional trailers. Oh, and it's not listed on the back with all the
other extras, but there's also a "Behind the Scenes" featurette made of
footage shot during the making of the film. It's short but interesting
and noteworthy, because it looked like that was one thing the German
Ultimate Edition had that the Australian one here was missing. But, no,
it's on here, too; they just forgot to list it.
Yeah, the German set. I don't have it, but I've read up on it, so I can
explain the differences fairly well. The German set is from Koch Media
and actually six discs. The two sets have mostly all the same stuff
(yes, their director's cut also has the dress ripping shot), but there
are discrepancies. Most notably, the German set has a whole additional
cut of the film, known as the International cut, which is kind of a mix
of the director's and theatrical cuts, but with some little details that
make it unique as well. For me, I had to ask myself, how many times am I
going to watch just slightly different versions of the same film?
Another cut at this point is just overkill. But obviously some
collectors won't feel that way at all and will want that sixth disc; and
I totally understand 'em. The German set also has a very brief animated
"tribute" extra, which apparently comes from the internet. And they
have a nice (German only) booklet.
But it's not all Advantage Germany. The con to their set is that they're missing the
Men Behind the Army
feature. And their DVD transfers are identical to their blu-ray
counterparts (besides the SD/HD difference, of course), so you lose out
on the 1.66 and 1.64 transfers. I'm not sure how keen fans will be for
those, especially in old standard def transfers. But if Raimi prefers
the 1:66, that could be a good reason to hang onto those, plus it's
definitely Raimi's choice to have the dress tearing scene out of the
movie, so the director's cut DVD indulges that as well. So,
technically,
the Australian set has more versions (5) than the German set (4). The
German set consists of 2 blus and 4 DVDs. So they have the same two
editions on blu, and both their TV cuts are DVD only, as is Germany's
unique International cut.
The story continues, though as
Scream Factory has entered the race and kind of killed the debate over
the most definitive of the foreign sets. Scream Factory's 2015 set is only
3-discs, but all three are blu-rays, giving us the three major cuts -
Director's Cut, Theatrical and International - in HD, as well as another
low-fi print of the TV cut. It's got fresh, new scans, all new extras
and the old ones. It's still not 100% perfect, as we'll see; but it's
easily the preferred option out of everything.
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| Scream Factory's 2015 blu, director's cut, 1.78:1. |
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| Scream Factory's 2015 blu, international cut, 1.78:1. |
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| Scream Factory's 2015 blu, theatrical cut, 1.78:1. |
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| Scream Factory's 2015 blu, TV cut, 1.33:1. |
Mmm, that's an all new 4k scan from the inter-positive on the
international cut. And it mostly is on the theatrical cut, too. Scream
seems to have used their 4k of the international cut for all of the
footage that's identical in the theatrical cut (which is most of it,
after all) and just used Universal's weaker transfer for the missing
bits. That's why the two shots above look identical. And the director's
cut looks similar to the previous director's cut blu-rays (which was
quite good... in fact the best up until this new scan). The back of the
case says that the director's cut is matted to 1.85:1; but actually it's
at 1.78:1 just like the others. Well, except for the 1.33 TV cut, of
course, which looks pretty much like it did on the Madman set except
even softer.
Scream's director's cut is also a little lower in contrast than
Madman's, which brings up the occasional hint of detail in the shadows
that was crushed out of the older scan.
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| Scream's 4k scan left, Universal's theatrical print middle, and Madman's director's cut right. |
Getting in close, you can see how this new scan looks even clearer and
more defined than the best HD transfers before it. It has the stronger,
warmer colors of the previous theatrical cut, though a bit more natural.
And it's free of the edge effects and compression junk, giving it the
best of both previously available worlds.
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| Scream Factory's 2015 blu, international cut, 1.78:1. |
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| Scream Factory's 2015 blu, theatrical cut, 1.78:1. |
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| Madman's 2013 blu, theatrical cut, 1.85:1. |
Still, like I said, Scream's Theatrical cut does still use some footage
from Universal's older master. So here we can see that difference in
quality, even though this theatrical version does look better than the
older theatrical blu-rays. But it's still splotchier, more contrast-y,
over saturated and just less natural looking overall than the fresh scan
of the international cut. It's also a bit over-cropped, zoomed in to
miss a little info on all four sides compared to the new 4k. The 1.85:1
version has similar vertical cropping, without any on the sides. And the
colors look a bit more natural, at least (Bruce's face is downright
yellow on the older theatrical). ...By the way, considering this shot is
in both the theatrical and international cuts, I'm not sure why they
didn't use the 4k scan for this shot, too. But, whatever.
All three cuts have excellent, DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 stereo options (the TV
cut just has 2.0), and they each (again, minus the TV version) have
optional English subtitles.
And extras? Scream has added a brand new, feature-length (97+ minutes)
documentary on the making of the film, interviewing pretty much all of
the principle players. This far, far, far outshines any of the previous
featurettes on any of the past editions. With that said, all those past
featurettes are on here, too. Yes,
The Men Behind the Army is included here. So is the
Creating the Deadites
one, the vintage 'making of,' the extended interviews, the deleted
scenes with optional commentary, the alternate endings isolated, the
audio commentary for the director's cut (that's an important one), plus
the multiple trailers and galleries. Basically everything. And remember
that short "behind the scenes" footage feature from a couple of the past
releases? Well, Scream's blown that out to a 50+ minute collection of
KNB's behind-the-scenes footage, which includes all of that plus
infinitely more. So that's another pretty sizable addition.
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| shot #1 (left) missing from theatrical cut; shots #2-3 missing from international cut. |
A few more important details: The director's cut on the Scream set is
the more complete one with the dress tearing scene intact. That's great.
Not so great, however, is that the theatrical and international cuts
are missing a couple brief shots. I can't take credit for this
discovery; it's been
pointed out on the blu-ray.com forums...
but I can confirm that it is present on my retail copy. When Ash is
being chased through the woods and comes upon the windmill, the shot
where he jumps over a small stone wall is missing from the theatrical
cut. And when he's fighting the mini-Ashes inside the windmill, two
shots are missing from the international cut. To be honest, I did notice
something was off with this scene, but since the mini-Ashes scene is so
notorious for being poorly edited in the international cut, I just
chalked the choppiness up to that. But apparently, the international
cut's scene wasn't
that poorly edited, and those two shots should be there. Well, Scream has said they'll address this soon, so we'll see.
Update 12/15/15: We've seen! Scream started a replacement program in November. If you bought the set, you can fill out
this form on their website,
send them proof of purchase in a separate email (yes, even if you're an
international customer), and they'll mail you the
corrected versions in a cardboard mailer and paper disc envelopes - good
show, guys! All of the missing shots mentioned above have been
restored. The triple screenshot above was taken from the replacement
discs, so that's 100% confirmed. And you can tell the difference between
the two discs by looking at the
product number on the edge of the disc itself. The new versions have
added "-V2" at the end, as shown in the picture above.
It's also worth mentioning that Scream's set has reversible cover art,
however I actually kept the front one this time, as I actually like
their new art - it doesn't have that cheap, independent comic book vibe
like some in the past. It also has a slipcover and if you order it
directly from Scream Factory, comes with a poster of the same image. And
if you ordered it in October like I did, you also get a free set of
horror movie drink coasters.
That had been the end of the story, but seven years later, Scream Factory have come back to this classic to take another stab at it, bringing it to the UHD era with a new 4k scan of the original camera negative. And according to the packaging, it's been approved by Sam, DoP
Bill Pope and editor
Bob Murowski. This one's a 4-disc set (1 UHD and 3 BDs), and includes all the alternate cuts and special features as the 2015 edition. In fact, discs 3 & 4 are essentially unchanged except for the labels, because they're still using the previous transfers for the alternate cuts. Only the theatrical cut has been updated, which is a little disappointing. But at least they've used the scan for the 1080p blu as well as the UHD. So let's take a look at those.
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Scream Factory's 2022 blu, theatrical cut, 1.85:1.
|
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| Scream Factory's 2022 UHD, theatrical cut, 1.85:1. |
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| Scream Factory's 2022 blu, theatrical cut, 1.85:1. |
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| Scream Factory's 2022 UHD, theatrical cut, 1.85:1. |
Interestingly,
Scream seem to have changed their minds about the AR. This time the
theatrical cut's in 1.85:1, when it was 1.78:1 on the 2015 release.
It's crazy how much Sam & co. keeps changing it for this film. But
anyway, this new wider framing does reveal more on the sides, and even a
sliver extra vertically. But then again, that's basically just what
Madman's 1.85 framing did. Anyway, the colors now are at once more
vibrant and life-like than ever. For example, the bright highlights in
the second set of shots look overexposed on the 2015 release compared
even to the 2022 BD. Fine detail is improved, though I have to say,
even on the UHD, grain looks a little soft, especially in the first set
of shots. But there are certainly no compression issues or pixelation,
and this it easily an attractive improvement over everything that came
before it.
The audio options, subtitles and special features are
all excellent but unchanged from the 2015 edition. This one's released
in a standard amaray case with a slipcover (and surprisingly
non-reversible art) or a steelbook. Pre-ordering direct from Shout also
included a rolled 18"x24" poster and an enamel pin set.
Honestly,
there's still room for yet another edition to come along and
claim the "Definitive" crown... Especially if they could get
some of the other cuts - at least the director's cut, even if it has to
be a composite cut if the film elements for that version are unavailable
- out on UHD. But
for now, Scream Factory's 2022 4-disc set is the absolute best on the
market.
