FAQ

Universal wanted to market the film as a stand-alone feature for audiences who had not seen The Evil Dead or Evil Dead II which is also the reason for the prologue. The rights to the franchise had also changed hands, meaning the name "Evil Dead" could not be used anyway. Sam Raimi as a result used the subheading, "The Medieval Dead". However some releases such as the 2 disc UK anchor bay edition has the title "The Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness".

Linda died, after being possessed by the demons and later killed by Ash. Both Evil Dead films prior to Army of Darkness depict this.

Sam Raimi's third part of the Evil Dead trilogy was released both as a R-rated version and an unrated Director's Cut. The latter features more than 100 differences totaling in over 15 minutes of more running time.

He got them in Evil Dead 2 after he went head-first through the windshield of his car.

Interesting piece of trivia: the scar on the bottom right of his chin, which is slightly L-shaped is real. They put blood make-up on it in Evil Dead 2 to make it look as if he received it in the movie and retained it for this film.

In the original ending of 'Army of Darkness' Ash miscounts the number of drops of the sleeping potion he was supposed to take in the ancient times and wakes up in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic London, presumably far in the future. The studio thought this was too depressing so Sam Rami shot a new ending where we see Ash has returned to his job at the S-MART store in the present day but still has to battle the occasional deadite. The obvious explanation is that they're both true, Ash triumphs over the deadites in the future and is then able to use magic to travel back to the present day, possibly being able to avert the future apocalypse occuring at all. He may not want to tell the story of his future adventures for fear of embarrassing himself. This theory is given credence by the video/DVD release where the film ends with the future apocalypse scene but includes the S-mart sequence after the credits.

A second theory is that the S-Mart ending was one of his many dreams when sleeping for centuries. In the apocalypse ending Ash is told each drop of the potion will cause him to sleep for a century. He is told to take six drops but ends up taking seven. This is flawed though because the 'present' for ash is the early 1980's so taking six drops would cause him to awaken in 1900 while seven would cause him to awaken in the year 2000. It should be noted that Ash fails to recite the proper words so it is likely the apocalypse was caused by the deadites while ash was sleeping.

The 2015 Starz TV series: Ash vs. Evil Dead is a continuation of the Evil Dead trilogy. It appears that it follows the original theatrical ending of Army Of Darkness with Ash returned to S-Mart.

The real-world reason is probably that when making Evil Dead II (1987), director Sam Raimi did not have the rights to re-use footage from The Evil Dead (1981) (as Evil Dead II was produced by another company). So the first 7 minutes of Evil Dead II (1987) are effectively a short recap of the entire first movie, featuring Ash and Linda but none of the other friends, to speed things up. The Book of the Dead also looks quite different, and its destruction is missing. This may have been done on purpose, because the makers had developed new ideas for the sequel, forcing them to retcon (retroactively change) the original backstory. In any way, as soon as Ash goes outside and is attacked by the demonic force, the story continues from the first movie. A similar thing happened during production of Army of Darkness (1992): the film was made by yet another production company, who wanted to make it as a stand-alone picture instead of an obvious sequel (the name 'Evil Dead' could not be used anyway due to copyright issues). The writers/director again used this opportunity to change the backstory, for the benefit of a more dramatic beginning of Army of Darkness. This explains why the opening scene of 'Army' is a reinterpretation of the final scene of Evil Dead II. Each of the Evil Dead movies has its own unique perspective, which explains most of the breaks in continuity. It has the added benefit that each movie in the series can be viewed apart, without having seen the other movies.

From an in-movie perspective, we see at the end of the second sequel 'Army of Darkness' that the entire story is being told in flashback by Ash to a bored and disbelieving co-worker (played by Ted Rami) back at his S-Mart job. This sequence is included as the final scene of the original cinema version whilst the video/DVD/Blueray release ends with Ash awaking in a post-apocalyptic world but then has him returned to S-Mart in his own time after the end credits. Therefore we must assume the events we see in the last 2 films are based upon Ash's recollection which is likely to be far from perfect given his numerous head injuries, undoubted post traumatic stress disorder and the basic imperfections of human storytelling (simplifying the story, skipping over parts too complex to explain etc).

In the script for Army of Darkness, though the sequence of Ash shooting the flying Deadite at the end of Evil Dead II is omitted, the knights hailing to Ash is included, as well as Arthur suspecting that Ash could be one of Henry's men. In the script, Arthur doubts the Wiseman's suggestion that Ash is the prophesied one, because according to the prophecy, Ash should not be bleeding. When he says that Ash should be thrown to the pit, it is mentioned that the pit could be a test for Ash.

Basically, there are three versions - the US theatrical version, the export version and the director's cut. But the latter isn't the same in all countries, so to cut a long story short: the DVD released in America by Anchor Bay is not just average in terms of quality, it's also incomplete. The slightly sexual scene in which Sheila gets her dress torn off is almost completely missing. A previous scene, the one in which Ash is holding the chainsaw over his evil twin, is already missing, but this is probably due to some sloppiness with the master tape used by Anchor Bay, because this scene was contained in the US theatrical version.

The German "Ultimate Edition" by Koch Media contains a US TV version on the bonus disc, in addition to the three known official versions of the movie. This is especially interesting because this version has two additional scenes that can't be found in any other version. The first of them comes up at the beginning of the movie and immediately brings out the conflict between Ash and Arthur with more detail, which then makes the latter's expression of respect at the end of the movie more appropriate. The second scene can be found when Ash is at the mill; it introduces his doppelganger. The TV version isn't only easier to follow at this point, it also is more "fluent", because all versions show Ash coming in through the door when he's running towards the mirror, but only this version shows him opening this door. Apart from that, this version was censored in some ways. In addition to simple cuts due to violence (which aren't that numerous in the by far tamest installment of the trilogy), there are a lot of alterations in the audio track, without changing the footage. In most of the cases, they had to dub some of Ash's cool one-liners again, in order to meet the requirements of the American TV.

It encompasses The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and the beginning of Army of Darkness. It can be viewed here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYxzgUIfGME