How *long* is the German R2 fullscreen version, though? There's a fullscreen R1 version but it's only 81 minutes long.
I didn't really do any visual fixing -- there were only a few scenes where I put the shots through color-correction -- most of my changes were "hey, I managed to insert this alternate line AND keep the original line!" or "hey, I managed to reconcile the two alternate endings!" Like I said -- the goal wasn't to make it visually seamless, the goal was to include as much footage as humanly possible.
Okay, so here goes:
The movie opens with a deleted scene from AOD: Ash, in closeup, narrating tensely about a living evil. As he finishes, music fades up -- it's an extended beginning of the very first piece of music you hear in AOD, and it was taken from the CD. (This is the full piece -- the version in the film had this beginning cropped off.) Fade to black, and a skull-faced bat from ED2 flies up and off. It's the only place I could find to put this shot. :-)
Fade up to the regular opening to AOD: Ash's normal narration about being a slave in 1300 AD, and how it wasn't always like this. The film begins to flash back, and when Ash gets to his reminescence about his girlfriend Linda, I cut away to the shot of Ash and Linda driving to the cabin from the flashbacks in ED2.
This was one of the scenes that was reshot for ED2 -- rather than open that film with a straight recap of ED, they made it look like Ash and Linda travelled alone to the cabin -- not with three friends. Rather than toss this scene, I placed it *before* the opening of ED, and hoped people would assume that Ash and Linda were alone in the car, discussing the cabin, and *on their way to pick up their three friends* (who we see in the car in the next scene). ED confirms early on that, although Scotty's driving, it IS Ash's car -- which is unfortunately the only thing the film does to support this assumption. There's kind of a logical leap left unsmoothed here, which is why I put the title sequence in-between the shots. :-)
As Ash and Linda drive over a bridge, we fade to "Bruce Campbell Vs." from the titles of AOD, then fade to the large block words "EVIL DEAD" from the titles of ED2. This looks much better than it sounds, because both title sequences have the words coalescing from smoke. Music from the title sequence of AOD fits here, and we fade down to:
The very beginning of The Evil Dead. Fade up and all five friends are now in the car, and this movie runs more-or-less undisturbed for its entirety, with a few small scene additions.
First, I boosted the audio in some spots where the characters' dialogue is almost inaudible.
Second, whenever possible I used shots from the recap at the beginning of ED2 to fill out and add to the ED sequences they were meant to be recapping. For example, during the recap shots where Linda attacks Ash, it's almost a shot-for-shot remake of the original scenes -- but with two new shots added (a closeup of Ash's face, and something else which I forget). I added those two shots where they would fit in the original versions of the scenes, and looped the background music to fill the audio holes.
Also, the ED2 recap shows Ash planting a cross over Linda's grave after burying her, which I placed right after he buries her in ED -- and it shows Ash staring at Linda's necklace in his hand, which I placed during a tense scene where he's barricading the door inside and finds Linda's necklace in his pocket. The ED2 shot took place outside and the ED scene that I placed it into took place inside, so I had to run some color correction on the inserted shot.
ED2's recap also has a scene where Ash and Linda flirt. I had to cut some lines about Linda feeling funny about *being all alone* in the cabin, but I left the flirting and inserted it into a quiet moment in ED. This scene also establishes that Ash and co. didn't rent the cabin after all -- they snuck in. The opening of ED claims that they rented it -- but ED2 works on the assumption that they snuck in, and it's good to place this scene *during ED* to reconcile the contradiction -- and "establish" that the boys were lying to the girls about renting the cabin earlier in the film.
The final scene from the ED2 recap that I was able to salvage was Ash finding the tape recorder and listening to the recorded words that raised the Deadites. Although this shot is, on the face of it, contradictory to the way Ash and Scotty find the tape recorder in ED, I made it work by cutting out all references to Ash "finding" the tape recorder -- the way it looks now, he's walking past the tape recorder they were listening to before, and he decides to listen to more of the tape. In the original ED, there's a lag between the time the kids play the tape recorder and the time the Deadites attack. I placed this "second airing" of the tape just before the first attack -- now it seems like the Deadites *began* to awake when the tape was first played, and *fully awoke* when it was played *again* -- and *immediately* attacked.
I had to change the audio on the tape as well, because a lot of it rehashed things we'd already heard the first time the tape was played -- sometimes word-for-word. In the scene, Ash rewinds the tape before playing, so I wanted to have him listen to a different portion than the kids heard in ED. So I took all the dialogue that *wasn't* a rehash, and combined it with expository dialogue from the omniscient narrator at the start of ED2 -- creating a "new section of tape" that explained to Ash things about the Deadites that, previously, only the audience had heard through narration. At the end of the tape, the sacred words are read again, and the Deadites fully awake -- and I immediately cut to their first attack in ED, assaulting Shelly in the woods behind the cabin.
I also found, and included, a single extra scene into ED. One of the DVD releases contained a full reel of raw footage, and on it was a 1-2 minute shot of Ash sitting outside the cabin, crying. He gets up, kicks and shatters a window, and stalks off. This scene didn't make it into the movie -- but I helpfully inserted it anyway, right before he goes to the woodshed to try, and fail, to chop up his dead girlfriend. It works really well there.
The end of ED flows naturally into the beginning of ED2 -- Ash is smacked in the face by the Evil Force, which picks up in ED2 with him being flung hundreds of yards away. I cut from the original ED shot to the ED2 shot at the moment of impact, combined the screams, and you can't tell a thing.
ED2 runs completely uninterrupted until Ash is dragged through the hole in time back to 1300 AD. At that point I had to reconcile the ending of ED2 with the opening of AOD. Both movies show Ash falling out of the sky and landing in 1300 AD, but ED2 has him surrounded by knights who are ready to slay him until he shoots a winged Deadite. Stunned, they begin to worship him as the Promised One. However, in AOD he falls out of the sky and is surrounded by knights who simply arrest him as one of Duke Henry's men, after Lord Arthur rejects the wiseman's suggestion that he *might* be the Promised One.
Going by the mandate of "save as much as possible", I had Ash fall from the sky (combining both films' shots of him falling to make for a longer fall), and be surrounded by knights who are about to slay him (including shots from AOD of the knights riding up, which I had to color-correct). He then shoots a flying Deadite, but although the knights back off and stare at him, they no longer begin to worship him -- I cut to AOD, where Ash is surrounded by wary knights until Arthur rides up. It's not seamless but it works a lot better than you'd expect -- and in this context, the wiseman's suggestion that Ash is the Promised One seems a lot less of a logical leap.
As they arrest him, I cut to a longer deleted scene of his capture -- including a shot and a line that only appeared in the Sci-Fi Channel's 88-minute version of AOD.
I used the horrible Anchor Bay Director's Cut as a visual and audio template for the rest of AOD, and laid my restorations down on top of it. Whenever possible, I would replace their fuzzy, zoomed-in, cropped-on-all-four-sides shots with the clear crisp shots from the Theatrical Cut DVD. But only about 50% of the Theatrical shots still matched their original length from the Directors' Cut -- so a large portion of the film uses the Anchor Bay visual.
(THIS is why I want to re-do the film, using the MGM disc.)
The film plays uninterrupted until the windmill scene, where I dropped in the deleted, extended version of the scene. In most versions of the film, Ash looks over his shoulder, sees his reflection in a mirror, thinks it's an enemy and charges -- smashing the mirror that's two feet behind him. The Sci-Fi channel version included a portion of this deleted scene -- where Ash hears something outside, goes into the woods to look around, and discovers to his relief that it's just his horse -- but then sees an enemy standing in the windmill doorway and charges -- running into the mirror where he's just seen his reflection from afar.
Sci-Fi used only a portion of this scene -- the full scene includes a lengthened version of his initial entry into the windmill, and a longer time out in the woods, and involves a two-minute-long single shot of Ash tensely listening. Luckily, when SciFi added the portion of this scene, they created a sound mix for it that's not present in the "work print"-quality deleted scene -- so I was able to expand on that sound mix using Ash's cleaned-up dialogue from the Sci-Fi scene, the full version of the music track that Sci-Fi used a portion of, and sound effects taken, and cleaned up by me, from the work print. It's not beautiful but it's better than silence, inaudible dialogue and occasional creaks. I had to color-correct a few shots here too, as when Ash steps out of the windmill it looks like daytime, but when he starts off into the woods it's clearly nighttime. (These *were* color-corrected in Sci-Fi's version, but I couldn't use their shots because they weren't full-length -- the workprint was longer in almost every single shot.)
I also included the shot from the other, "regular" versions of the scene that shows the reflection in close-up -- although, stupid me, I left out the evil laughter that's barely audible in that shot. I'll correct that if and when I do a version 2.
When the mirror cracks, small versions of Ash's evil reflection leap out of the shards and torment him. In the original director's cut this was accompanied by slaspstick music, which was released on the CD. The Theatrical cuts of the film have a shortened version of the scene and a shortened version of the music -- but all of the remade Director's Cuts, including the MGM disc, have left the music out. I put it back in -- the track from the CD lines up with the full-length scene *perfectly*.
While I was at it, I put back two shots that were accidentally left out of the Anchor Bay Director's Cut. They were later included in the MGM Director's Cut, so if I redo the film this is one mistake I won't need to correct.
When Ash is about to shoot Bad Ash in the face, I replaced the director's cut line "I ain't that good" with the "Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun" line from the theatrical cut. It's more famous, it's *longer* (which fits my mandate) -- and I just plain like it better.
I added back in the "Bad Ash rips Sheila's dress" scene, another shot omitted from the Anchor Bay Director's Cut but included in the later MGM disc, and another mistake I don't need to worry about correcting again. (Which is good, because I had to use the Japanese laserdic version of the scene, and it had subtitles -- so there's ONE SHOT in my film where I switched sources in MID-SHOT, fading to a different source just as the subtitles were about to appear.)
I added all of the "Ash recruits Henry the Red" deleted scene.
Just before the battle, a skeleton scout reports the location of the Book of the Dead -- and there are two different versions of his line out there. I was able to combine them into one long sentence -- and since the guy's a puppet, I didn't need to worry about lip-synch issues. I also added in the line "Bring forth the scout!" that was only in the theatrical cut.
During the battle, I fixed two several-second instances in the Anchor Bay director's cut where they couldn't find a particular audio segment so they looped in audio from elsewhere -- I replaced it with the correct audio from the Korean laserdisc. This mistake was also corrected in the MGM Director's Cut.
At the end of the film, as Ash is riding away from Sheila, I included a narrated voiceover line that's only present in the Sci-Fi version.
I tried to reconcile the two different endings -- one, Ash is sealed in a cave, swallows too much of the sleeping potion, and oversleeps, waking not in his own time but in a post-apocalyptic future -- and two, Ash swallows the potion, says the incorrect magic words, and is transported home -- but Deadites follow, attacking him at work.
The "returning to work" ending never specified HOW the potion got him home -- and having him *ride* away from Sheila if the potion would *instantly* transport him home, no matter where he was, has always been odd -- so I decided that I could use segments of the "sleeping for 600 years" scene. I had him ride away from Sheila and seal himself in the cave -- I cut out the "drinking too much" bit and faded from him beginning to drink the potion to him sleeping for 600 years. When he awoke, I faded from him pushing out of the cave to him at work, explaining how he got home to the bored clerk that he's been telling this entire story to (remember his narration at the very beginning?). From there the rest of the "returning to work" ending plays out -- it's revealed that he said the wrong words after he drank the potion, a Deadite attacks him but he defeats her, and he manfully kisses the damsel in distress he's just saved. Hero Ending, roll credits.
The credits, by the way, are also combined -- all three credit sequences have been chopped up and edited into one, and it ends with the "buzzing fly" noise heard at the end of the original ED.
Grand total is something like 4 hrs 29 minutes 29 seconds. Not bad. I also created a featurette at the end where I showcased every single piece of material that I *couldn't* make fit -- that came to around 7 minutes. I also created a version that's *just* an extended version of Army of Darkness -- which came to 108 minutes, 12 minutes longer than the Director's Cut. That made me pretty happy. :-)
However -- I have to admit -- in addition to not making the movie fullscreen (preserving MORE of the image than if it were widescreen, oddly enough), I made (gasp!) THREE MISTAKES!
I left out a sound effect (Bad Ash's laughter over the "reflection" close-up, mentioned before) ... I let the Sci-Fi channel logo slip into the corner of one shot (bad Jeph!) ... and I forgot to put up the "Dino DeLaurentiis" logo under the black and sound effects of the first five seconds of the film.
Hopefully one day I'll get a crack at doing this again, be able to fix those things and fix the aspect ratio, and I'll have the foresight to put it on DVD this time.
Wow, this post kind of got away from me ... apologies and congratulations to anyone who had to slog through that.
I've included at the end a list of all known versions of Army of Darkness, written a while back for an Evil Dead forum, if anyone's interested. Enjoy!
-Jeph!
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In case anyone's curious -- as far as I know, these are the only DIFFERING versions of AOD out there:
- Theatrical cut, available on DVD and VHS, 81m. Widescreen (two versions, 1.85:1 and 1.66:1) and fullscreen.
- Anchor Bay's inferior "Director's Cut", available on VHS or DVD, 96m. 1.66:1 widescreen.
- MGM's superior Director's Cut, available on Region 3 DVD only, 96m. 1:77.1 widescreen.
- the TV version, only available when taped off of Sci-Fi or USA Network, 88m. Fullscreen.
- a Japanese laserdisc entitled "Captain Supermarket", 87m. Fullscreen, burned-in subtitles.
- a Korean laserdisc, known as the "Jea Wei disc", which is actually a bootleg of a VHS of Sam Raimi's ORIGINAL director's cut from 1991, 96m. Fullscreen, burned-in subtitles.
- And of course my "version", 108m. Varying aspect ratios, varying quality.
The Anchor Bay director's cut is available in four different formats -- the original 2-disc set, a "Director's Cut" 1-disc release, a "Bootleg Edition" 1-disc release and the "Boomstick Edition" 2-disc set -- but it's the same exact film each time. Both 2-disc sets are packaged with Anchor Bay's theatrical cut (which is itself matted differently than Universal's DVD release of the theatrical cut).
The Anchor Bay "director's cut", unfortunately, is missing several pieces of audio as well as a few shots, and most of its scenes are either blown up and cropped on the sides, or are of terrible video quality (they used a VHS copy in some spots to recreate the film). If you have a multiregional DVD player I'd recommend ditching the Anchor Bay version in favor of the MGM disc (which has the same exact deleted scenes and commentary at the end).
The only difference between the Korean laserdisc and the MGM director's cut is that the MGM disc is matted to 1.77:1 (the film was shot in 1.33:1 fullscreen), and the MGM disc drops out the comedy music behind the Little Ash sequence and the throwaway line "I'll rip his balls off". Oh, and I have no idea what the video quality of the Korean laserdisc is, but my VHS bootleg looks awful. (That's right -- I have a VHS bootleg of a laserdisc that was created from a VHS bootleg. Whee!) The MGM disc, however, looks great.