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Army of Darkness - The Primitive Screwhead Edition (Released) — Page 3

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Originally posted by: RidgeShark
Going through all the officially released versions of this film and noticing so many differences has got me wondering about the workprint for Army of Darkness. Has anyone here actually seen a copy of the workprint for this film? I read somewhere that it was nearly 2 hours long. Were there any brief scenes or anything like that which didn't appear on any of the dvds? The special edition DVDs feature workprint footage of the original opening, the fight between Ash and Arthur, the original windmill sequence, and Ash recruiting Henry the Red - but was there anything else interesting in the workprint? - even brief trivial shots that aren't in any other version and lasted just for a few seconds?

If anyone has any information, then please post the information here or contact me.

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Troy - I appreciate you trying to help out, but I don't think you understood what I was saying. I was asking if anyone has actually seen the early workprint - the rough cut that is supposedly 2 hours long. Obviously it includes something over the 96 min director's cut. If you were to take the 4 deleted scenes from the workprint which are featured on Anchor Bay's or MGM's special editions in the deleted scenes section and edited them into the 96 min director's cut, then all you come up with is a movie that is roughly 104 min long - about 16 minutes shy of 2 hours. That includes all of those deleted scenes - the original opening with no S-Mart footage at all, the Ash and Arthur confrontation, the original windmill sequence (which is much longer than the version the SciFi Channel shows - the rough-cut version has extra stuff like more shots of Ash wondering around outside the windmill at night), and Ash recruiting Henry the Red. I believe that all of that is footage from that 2-hour rough cut.

So let's recap -

The Director's Cut - 96 min
Director's Cut extended with the 4 deleted scenes from the rough cut - 104 min
The Rough-Cut - supposedly 120 min

So all I'm saying is that I wonder what kind of extra footage was in the rough cut. I'm pretty sure it was just a bunch of pointless shots - like the extra shots of Ash wondering around the woods outside the windmill that aren't featured in the TV cut of the film - but just maybe there's something significant. I'm a huge fan of this movie, and I wish I could see every scrap of footage shot for it and include it on my DVD - I know that isn't possible, but wouldn't that be great? Anyways - I doubt anyone here has seen that rough cut, but I figured why not ask just in case?
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I thought I did understand, I know you wanted to see if anyone had seen it but I also thought you wanted to know of any other scenes which was what I thought I done. There is some mention in those pages about the 2 hour cut but obviously not anything that is of use to you. Oh well.
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THAT'S SOME GREAT WORK THERE MAN. I WONDER IF THE DVD SIDE OF THE HD-DVD IS MERELY A MORE COMPRESSED VERSION OF THE HD SOURCE. IF THAT'S THE CASE, IT MIGHT BE THE ONE TO GET AGAIN (AND TO THINK I ONCE OWNED THE LIMITED EDITION AND GOT RID OF IT - STUPID ME).

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In future, type properly or not at all, please.

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There was apparently more material in S-Mart - Ash had a boss who was a jerk, or something.

I doubt there was THAT much.

No workprint has ever turned up for AOD. No workprint now even exists for Evil Dead 2 as far as we know, even though the special features on the laserdisc and DVD showed a huge amount of intense deleted creature FX.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
No workprint now even exists for Evil Dead 2 as far as we know

I'm actaully getting what the trader purports to be a workprint in a trade very soon, it should be on its way to me this week. His description referred to scenes not seen anywhere else. I'm very curious as to the authenticity of it.

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Originally posted by: ReverendBeastly
Originally posted by: ocpmovie
No workprint now even exists for Evil Dead 2 as far as we know

I'm actaully getting what the trader purports to be a workprint in a trade very soon, it should be on its way to me this week. His description referred to scenes not seen anywhere else. I'm very curious as to the authenticity of it.


Wanna know something. The Evil Dead 2 workprint was even mentioned in The Evil Dead Companion book as well.

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Originally posted by: bigrob
Originally posted by: ReverendBeastly
Originally posted by: ocpmovie
No workprint now even exists for Evil Dead 2 as far as we know

I'm actaully getting what the trader purports to be a workprint in a trade very soon, it should be on its way to me this week. His description referred to scenes not seen anywhere else. I'm very curious as to the authenticity of it.


Wanna know something. The Evil Dead 2 workprint was even mentioned in The Evil Dead Companion book as well.


Well most movies do have a workprint, it's just not all the time a dub is made and eventually VHS copies making their ways into out grubby hands. Hope that Army of Darkness WP is legit, I got stiffed on a big trade for the ED 2 WP recently:-(, hope it's not the same fellow.
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I just thought I would let all you guys know that I produced the review of the AoD: DC MGM DVD for the DVDActive website ...
(http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/army-of-darkness-directors-cut-mgm-edition.html)

I used to "work" for DVDActive (which was previously DVDAnswers and originally DVDBlokes) over a period of 3-4 years and I made over 100 DVD reviews in that time. I also did a few articles as well, including a screenshot comparison between the major DVD releases of AoD. You'll immediately see how crappy the Anchor Bay DC release is ...
(http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/army-of-darkness-video-shots--dvd-releases.html)

And since I am a trivia geek, between the two weblinks above I created a brief but comprehensive history of not only AoD but also ED1&2 as well as all the differing DVD and LD releases for all three movies.

And if you're still interested in what I used to do for DVDActive (which has nothing to do with AoD now), I also interviewed two of the major players from Red Dwarf ...
(http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/interviews/doug-naylor.html) Doug Naylor (creator)
(http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/interviews/andrew-ellard.html) Andrew Ellard (assistant)

Please forgive me for all the rather cheesy-sounding dialogue I created here.

Hope this helps. WG.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
There was apparently more material in S-Mart - Ash had a boss who was a jerk, or something.


I've never heard of an AOD workprint doing the rounds - but there were deleted scenes at S-Mart starring Charles Napier as Ash's boss, according to The Evil Dead Companion.

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THis is a great project. Can't wait till it's finished. I didn't know there were so many alternate versions of scenes in this movie (like with the background music and without). Great, keep up the good work!!!

Same Make. Same Model. New Mission.

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Looks like the SciFi Channel is airing their version again on Dec 5 at 11pm eastern time. Again, if anyone has the equipment to directly capture the MPEG 2 satellite stream, then please do so and send me a copy. I would be eternally gratefull and this project would greatly benefit from it.

The SciFi footage that I have is fairly decent, but it has gone through a bit more compression and processing than I would like. Consider this - the video that I recorded first started out as a digital MPEG 2 signal - in order for me to record it, the digital MPEG2 signal was converted to analog in my DirectTV receiver. Chances are the conversion to analog wasn't that great - the components in the DirectTV receiver are probably cheap to keep manufacturing costs down and profits up. So anyway - the analog conversion probably wasn't as good as it could be - and that converted analog signal got transferred to my Digital 8 recorder with an S-Video cable. My Digital 8 recorder records in MiniDV format - which adds all new video compression artifacts to anything I record from tv. So in the end, the SciFi Army of Darkness footage has been degraded quite a bit from the original MPEG 2 signal. I wish there was a way for me to bypass the analog conversion and additional MiniDV compression, but I currently do not possess the necessary equipment to capture the original MPEG 2 signal.

Even if I cannot obtain a copy of the digital MPEG 2 signal, that doesn't mean that the SciFi footage will look bad. I have spent months researching different techniques to filter the SciFi footage and I have recently reached a point where I feel happy with how the footage looks. Still, I know it could look better if I was working with a direct capture of the MPEG 2 satellite signal.
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This will be THE version to get
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Was one of the dvd's really taken from an actual vhs tape. It wasn't even a standard tv studio format like betacam? I was wondering how OCP recorded to a Hi8 tape, was it with a (D8, hi8?) camera video imput?

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OCP's setup was probably similar to mine. The outputs on my Digital 8 camera - S-Video and RCA - also work as inputs. I just hooked up the the camera to the S-Video and RCA outputs on the DirectTV receiver and I recorded some high quality video and audio. Despite it being high quality, the video is still degraded from the original MPEG 2 signal being sent to the receiver.

EDIT - Also - I'm not sure if the ugliest footage on Anchor Bay's bootleg cut was taken from VHS or not, but there's no denying that it's a horrible looking transfer.
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Just a question about the edit.

There is a scene in the theatrical cut that appears differently in the director's cut. It's only a change of dialogue, but I like both

After Ash blows his evil ego away on the cemetery:
"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."
or
"I'm not that good."

I like both lines. The first one shows dark humor, the other one shows a darker side of Ash.

Which one is being used in this fanedit?

Same Make. Same Model. New Mission.

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Second one. The first one just doesn't sound right in my opinion.
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Originally posted by: maurice2029

After Ash blows his evil ego away on the cemetery:
"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."
or
"I'm not that good."

I like both lines. The first one shows dark humor, the other one shows a darker side of Ash.

Which one is being used in this fanedit?


Hopefully, the first one, because it's funnier and reflects the entire "tongue-in-cheek" nature of the movie.

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Originally posted by: BrikHaus81
Originally posted by: maurice2029

After Ash blows his evil ego away on the cemetery:
"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."
or
"I'm not that good."

I like both lines. The first one shows dark humor, the other one shows a darker side of Ash.

Which one is being used in this fanedit?


Hopefully, the first one, because it's funnier and reflects the entire "tongue-in-cheek" nature of the movie.


I remember from the script that they even had another intention in mind. In the script it goes like:
Good Ash. Bad Ash. I'm the Ash with the gun.

It would have sounded like:
Goodass. Badass. which would have been funny. But the next part would have sounded like an idiot: I'm the ass with the gun.

Same Make. Same Model. New Mission.

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I'm definitely using "Good, Bad - I'm the guy with the gun." When I first saw the Director's Cut, I was highly disappointed that this line was replaced with the alternate "I'm not that good."

Also - this information is present in my original bloated post.
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While I still haven't been able to come up with anything as to the existence of a bootleg of the AOD workprint, I did look through Bill Warren's book The Evil Dead Companion recently and found a few excerpts detailing scenes that were shot but still haven't made it out on TV or DVD. Bear in mind though, that Warren seems to be talking about the 81-minute theatrical print in most of the book, so some of this information might need to be taken lightly:

pg.146: "Unfortunately, most of Evil Ash's blunders didn't make it into the final cut..." There's an on-set quote from Bruce describing scenes where Evil Ash gets frustrated at his soldiers because they're too "over-confident".
pg.148: More scenes with Bill (TCM2) Moseley as the Deadite Captain ("We're secured the courtyard m'lord!").
pg.151: According to Rob Tapert: "We originally had a much bigger scene at the beginning, with Charles Napier as Ash's mean boss, who was hollering at him all the time, but he got cut out completely." Bridget Fonda also had more screentime in the initial version. "We had a whole scene there talking about his banal life," Sam recalled. "How the boss was really mean to him, and how the stock boy was someone Bruce was mean to. But it took too long, and we want the kids to get to the goods, so there's now only a passing flash of him in his former element."
pg.154: Lists more cuts, but these seems to all be scenes restored on the DVD.
pg.232: "Originally," says Bruce, "the king pulled out his sword, came racing by and sliced Ash across the chest. Later, you'll see a cut on my chest that I never had before." The fact that Ash bleeds makes Arthur doubt his validity as prophesised saviour, although everyone was happy to believe it at the end of Evil Dead II.
pg.242: On the scene where Good & Bad Ash "split" in the forest: "An elaborate stop-motion effect was filmed for this sequence*, with a little puppet double Ash running through the forest, but it was cut - more for reasons of timing than because the animation didn't work. Part of the sequence appears in foreign versions of the film."

* might just be the "Oh Suzanna" shot from the Director's Cut where Evil Ash punches Ash right before the final "split".
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That last one is the scene from the director's DVD. I can't remember where I read it or heard it, but I remember Bruce Campbell saying that the stop motion scene had a weird rendition of "Oh Susanna" in it. It can also be seen in the original trailer.
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So, the Sci-fi version comes on tonight, anybody going to capture it? I wish I had the technology too it myself.

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Originally posted by: C3PX
So, the Sci-fi version comes on tonight, anybody going to capture it? I wish I had the technology too it myself.



Yes it is on right after wrestling on SciFi.




I wish I was making this stuff up.
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I don't know if anyone else has ever had this idea, but since I don't plan on doing an extended AOD cut anytime soon I'll throw it out there.

There is away to use both endings to AOD.

Here is how, You start with the Original ( unused ) ending, Ash drops one tomany drops, falls asleep, Then fade into the smart ending. As the smart ending fades out it crossfades into ash awaking as he dreamed it all up. Then ofcourse he gets out of the cave realizing he is in a post apopcolyptic future.