First of all, head on up there to your Yahoo search bar and type in “Bruce Campbell Army of Darkness.” There he is; chainsaw attached to his mangled stump, shotgun at the ready, arrogant smirk pasted on his face.
That, my friends, is the look of a man who alternately can handle anything and has no idea what’s actually going on. His name is Ash (or Ashley J. Williams, if you want to get formal), and over the course of Sam Raimi’s three Evil Dead films, he’s terrorized by an unseen, unstoppable evil that is unleashed by his discovery of the Necronomicon, or “the Book of the Dead.” It’s an evil that manifests itself in everything from zombified human bodies to trees to, in Evil Dead II, Ash’s own hand.
Sure, there are a lot of guys who would throw in the towel after a having a day like Ash repeatedly has. He loses all his friends in the first film, his girlfriend and his hand in the second one, and nearly dooms an entire civilization in the third film, Army of Darkness, not to mention losing his girlfriend AGAIN.
Ash doesn’t give up, though. No, all he does is strap a chainsaw to his stump-arm, grab a shotgun, and start kicking tail and taking names, all while spouting off memorable and hilarious one-liners (“You see this? THIS is my BOOMSTICK!!!” “Well, hello, Mr. Fancypants!”).
Does his mouth write checks his body can’t cash? You betcha. Does he make huge mistakes that nearly cause his demise, several times? Absolutely. Does he think he knows a lot more than he actually does? No doubt.
And I guess that’s why I like him; Ash is a human, fallible hero. He gets hurt, gets scared, makes mistakes, and keeps fighting. He makes me laugh, I never get tired of seeing him, and it feels good to know that, no matter how bad my day has been, there’s a guy out there whose day was far, far worse.
Actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi created a hapless everyman, then beat the stuffing out of him, then made him into an unlikely hero. And as Ash himself suggests we do after he vanquishes a demon that’s terrorizing his beloved S-Mart, I don’t hesitate to “Hail to the king, baby.”