Ridgeshark, you’ve done a fantastic job on this! It’s my favorite version of Army of Darkness. The video is impeccable due to the good quality sources you used. On the whole, it beats the retail DVDs available now. I didn’t mind the switching from 1:66 to 1:85 that much, as I understand it was to preserve quality. The audio sounds great too and the added music fits in fine.

I love all the deleted scenes in this thing. Finally, Army of Darkness makes more sense. I have a feeling this is what would have resulted if the studios hadn’t so heavily interfered with this movie. All the deleted scenes from the Sci-Fi version hold up well, they do look better than the Director’s Cut Anchor Bay released if that tells you anything. The added Arthur scene in the beginning portrays Ash as stronger and gives us sympathy for him. The windmill scene also works excellently to clear things up. Perhaps the Henry scene should not have been reinserted because of low quality but it does look better than in the official DVD and the clean up is good.

I like the seamless branching feature of this. It really is a debate which ending is better and this edit takes care of all AOD fans. There is a slight pause at every chapter stop but it doesn’t bug me that much. The alternate beginning and end options just are spectacular. Personally, I watch it with the Original Deleted Opening and the Apocalyptic Ending. It seems much more Evil Dead-esque to me. At the end of Evil Dead movies, Ash normally gets screwed over… The S-Mart ending was too cheery for me.

Video: 10/10
Audio: 10/10
Editing: 10/10

Here the are, correct and in the order they appear on the DVD:

“Overdose” features the S-Mart beginning and Director’s Cut ending
“Follow the Doctor’s Orders (Basically)” uses the S-Mart beginning and ending
“Overdose With the Original Formula” uses the Director’s Cut beginning and ending

It’s a weird order to put them in, but there it is. I prefer “Follow the Doctor’s Orders (Basically)” because, although the DC stuff fun for an alternate take, I think the S-Mart beginning and ending are the best.

-NJM

I took Rideshark’s edit to a custom video shop, and for a few bucks, they removed the scene where Ash goes to meet Henry the Red. He also removed the Ridgeshark’s initial “warning” chapter, as well as stripping out the two edits I didn’t care about. I now have Rideshark’s masterful “Follow the Doctor’s Orders (Basically)” edit, minus the Ash visits Henry scene, on a DVD, and I am positively giddy!

I’m not quite done playing with “Follow” edit, though, and I’d like everyone’s help:

1) During the scene where Ash is on the castle wall telling the troops that they should “stay and fight it out,” he is wearing his blue shirt. In my new edit, we then go the scene where the Evil Ash introduces his new evil girlfriend, and now that I removed the daytime scene of Ash riding to see Henry, we go right back to the castle wall where Ash tells them that they can beat the Deadites……”with science.” I thought this would look much better, and it does. The problem is that the second time on the castle wall Ash is now wearing armor over the blue shirt. The following scene he is wearing just the blue shirt again as he prepares for the battle. Clearly the “with science” scene was shot AFTER the battle preparation segment, and was supposed to be happening just before the actual battle. Can anyone think of a better place for the “with science” scene?

2) when Arther gets up off the ground and hits Ash after Ash tells him to “just leave it be”, there is no sound effect for the hit to his face. Might have to add it in…..what should it sound like?

Anyway, I am forever grateful that you took the time and care to do this. I give it a 5 out of 5 stars as well……with one personal wistful observation: I would have preferred that the scene where he goes to enlist Henry the Red be left out for several reasons. First of all, it was not needed to improve the storyline. In fact, the mystery of whether Henry would come to the aid was actually lessened by the scene, since Henry acknowledged that he “owed” Ash. Second, it’s the only scene that is so vastly different than the rest in quality that it really stands out from the rest of the movie. Lastly, before the scene Ash was standing on the wall at night, addressing the troops. Then it cuts to day when he is riding for Henry’s help. Then it goes back to Ash standing on the wall at night, still addressing the troops. If you EVER attempt a re-edit, the “Follow” edit minus this scene would have been the perfect movie, IMHO.

Thank you so much for all your hard work!!!!

The problem with this awesome film is that it’s been edited into about 6 different versions since it was first released. There is a fair amount of material missing from the most widely seen U.S. Theatrical Cut – deleted scenes, essentially, but I think the U.S. theatrical cut was too severe in places, removing some worthwhile bits of comedy and narrative (the windmill scene especially!). Some of this material was added to the Director’s Cut released awhile back, but that cut also removed or replaced parts that fans had come to love (especially Ash’s poetic “Good, bad… I’m the one with the gun” line) The Director’s Cut also traded the theatrical S-Mart beginning and ending for those initially screened to test-audiences, who found them depressing, for good reason. As if that weren’t enough, the cuts of AoD aired on television contain yet another set of changes, omissions, and replacements.

To add to this confusion of versions, the only decent video transfer of Army of Darkness is the MGM Region 3 Director’s Cut DVD. Every other edition of AoD suffers from one kind of problem or another. The Anchor Bay releases are murky but have truer colors, the Universal releases have had the saturation boosted artificially, giving people odd skin tones. Both suffer from compression artifacts and have had some of the image cropped from the sides. Even the recent HD-DVD release is a poorly-transferred, artifacted affair with boosted colors and blown out shadows.

Ridgeshark delivers with this fanedit something I never thought we’d see! With this one DVD, you get:

1. An extended edition of Army of Darkness, with every bit of extra footage from all 6 different versions woven seamlessly into the film. Once you see how these deleted scenes work in the context of the story, the Theatrical Cut will seem lacking.

2. The best picture quality of any Army of Darkness release. Well, for 90% of the time, that is. Some of the deleted material does not exist in the same quality as the R3 Director’s Cut, unfortunately, but the quality never drops low enough that I lost enjoyment. In fact, it even adds to the overall cheapness of the film in a way, which is a lot of its appeal. Ridgeshark spent a lot of time improving this material as much as he could, and it shows.

3. Both openings and endings are available by choosing one of the menu options. “Overdose” uses the theatrical S-Mart beginning and ending, “Follow the Doctor’s Orders (Basically)” uses the S-Mart beginning and the Director’s Cut ending, and “Overdose with the Original Formula” uses the Director’s Cut beginnings and endings.

For me, “Overdose” represents the best cut of Army of Darkness available on DVD. Despite some video quality issues inherent in the project, this is a perfect release. Rumor has it that Ridgeshark is working on a version 2. I for one can’t wait to be one of the first to own it!

a fan edit by Ridgeshark

The amount of work that must have went into this would give anyone a run for their money. A super nice job was done in putting roughly all known versions together on one disc via seamless branch (not true seamless, read on)

VIDEO: For the most part the picture is pristine. You can see some video issues with the footage used from whatever source it was taken from. This is not the editors fault, and he did the best he could with what he had to work with.

RESTORATION: this is where things really come into play regarding picture quality. For a lot of the scenes a massive digital cleanup was exercised. Scratches or other film debris were digitally removed. A phenomenal job was performed on this.

AUDIO
audio was great though I do not have a 5.1 setup. Sounded fine on 2.0. However one scene from the TV version literally sounded like it was recorded from the television speaker itself. This is when Ash tries to persuade Henry the Red to join him and fight the deadites. Not distracting, but just odd. Other than that, the audio mixed well with all the versions and no volume issues from the various sources arose

TECH:
OK the goal of this was to use a seamless branch to put three versions of the film on one dvd. This is somewhat successful. However dvd lab pro (and like the older DVD Maestro) cannot do a true seamless branch. This is more of pgc jumping in the same vts title. This means the disc stops for less than a micro of a second (like a DL layer break) before it switches to whatever version you are watching. You would think this would be distracting after a while but I found that it did not hamper the viewing experience in the slightest, which is funny considering I am pretty picky with things like that. Perhaps playing this off your PC hard drive it would actually work seamlessly?

MENU: generic kind of menu that lets you choose which version you want. Sadly they are not given real details, so you kind of have to guess (ex: one is called “overdose with original ending”) which version you are getting and what footage is linked to it.

each version of the film starts off with a short info piece on what dvds/sources were used and some of the work that went into this. This short is actually part of each movie.

All in all I am giving this dvd a 4 out of 5 stars. Mainly because it is not a true seamless branch. Still a really good job was done and I highly recommend this edit.