The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 87

'Amy' stomps to commoc beat Skeletons swarm a fort and monsters make wisecracks in the latest slapstick-terror from "Evil Sam Raimi. By Bob Ross ASH IS HIS name, and horror-comic swashbuckling is his game. Bruce Campbell, the rugged star-survivor of "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead II: Dead Before Dawn," takes his most incendiary trip yet in "Army of Darkness," a hilariously extravagant sequel to those low-budget, tongue-in-cheek fright flicks. Campbell 3 3 1. 1 4 Army Of Darkness CRITIC'S RATING: MOVIE BOARD RATING: (profanity, violence) STARS: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi PLOT SUMMARY: Time-traveling smart aleck battles the forces of evil.

RUNNING TIME: 79 minutes WHERE: For locations, see Movie Shorts, Page 11; see Page 8 for movie times. Movies are rated from zero to four stars. serves as a handsome front man (and co-producer) for longtime collaborator-partner Sam Raimi, who directed and with his brother Ivan co-wrote this zany, over-the-top mix of slapstick and the supernatural. The plot is your basic demon-horde war: After escaping "Evil Dead II" with no permanent damage except a missing right hand, Ash opens this 7 fX 1 The yoke's on them: Ash (Bruce Campbell, left) and chapter with a Satanic whirlwind sucking him 600 years into the past. It seems that the forces of dread are still ticked off at him, and this time he cannot save himself unless he finds the magic Book of the Dead and defeats Satan's army.

If he ever wants to see the 1990s again (and, judging by the superstitious clods who infest the 1300s, he does), our wisecracking action hero must fight medieval ignorance, hideous monsters and the most entertaining battalion of walking, talking skeletons since pioneer-wizard Ray Harryhausen invented those clickety-clack creatures in his 1958 masterpiece, "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad." Armed with only a rude mouth, quick wits, a chain saw and a double-barreled 12-gauge, Ash foils one ghoulish enemy after another in this gleefully twisted time-travel terror tale. Henry (Richard Grove) are in big trouble. straight from the 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still." We even get a quick tribute to "Gulliver's Travels." But the final reel of this brisk (79 minutes, including almost five minutes of credits for an army of animators, model-builders and other assorted technicians) comedy is devoted to a pure special-effects showcase an epic, climactic battle between the evil skeleton army and the besieged humans. Imaginative war weapons include catapults, explosives, arrows and a beautiful maiden (South African discovery Embeth Davidtz) who turns into a blood-curdling she-beast. Ash even has to defeat his own evil twin.

And the laughs fly almost as fast as the severed heads and limbs. When a skeleton crew uses a battering ram, their squad leader tells them to "put some backbone into it." If you love such sick jokes and bloody battles, the "Army of Darkness" wants you. when the devilish vortex throws him into the middle of a 14th-century inter-village squabble. "Into the pit," his captors declare, and Ash faces his first fight, against a rotted-corpse kind of critter that turns its victims into blood-red geysers. The chain saw helps get Ash out of the hole.

The shotgun helps keep the awestruck locals from tearing him apart on principle. Indeed, the village wise man (Ian Ab-ercrombie) suggests that Ash is the gleaming savior predicted in their legends. A mutual respect develops. The townsfolk call Ash "the promised one" and he calls them "primitives," "primates" and "screwheads." The poor farmers can't appreciate such sarcasm and satire, but audiences can. Raimi counts on it, loading this "Darkness" with movie jokes.

The magic words Ash must recite at a crucial moment, for example, are "klaatu barada nikto" swiped CO JO to u. 5s a First, he has to escape the shackles he tumbles into Deneuve occupies Vietnam 1 XV tc A romantic epic told from the French perspective, "Indochine" offers a painful history lesson. By Bob Ross BEFORE WEDNESDAY morning, "Indochine" would have drifted quietly through the Tampa Bay area, unnoticed except by the area's few French-film fans especially those who are also Catherine Deneuve devotees. After all, there's an extremely limited audience these days for soapy historical melodramas about what a tough time French colonialists had maintaining their high standards of living after Southeast Asia's natives got the crazy notion that they deserved to run their own affairs. But two days ago the Academy Award nominations were announced: Deneuve is in the race for a best actress Oscar and "Indochine" is up for best foreign film.

That should put a bulge in the box-office curve. There's no question that the breathtaking Deneuve delivers a prize-worthy performance as the beleaguered owner of a sprawling rubber plantation. Whether she's enjoying a brief, torrid fling with a young naval officer named Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez), frantically searching for her missing adopted daughter Camille (gorgeous discovery Linh Dan Pham), or seeking solace in an opium den, Deneuve's Eliane always looks amazingly refined, ageless and, basically, Continued on Page 23 Indochine CRITIC'S RATING: Vz MOVIE BOARD RATING: PG-13 (violence, sexuality, drug use) STARS: Catherine Deneuve, Linh Dan Pham, Vincent Perez, Jean Yanne DIRECTOR: Regis Wargnier PLOT SUMMARY: Love and politics complicate life in Indochina. RUNNING TIME: 154 minutes; in French and Vietnamese with English subtitles WHERE: For locations, see Movie Shorts, Page 1 1 see Page 8 for times. Movies are rated from zero to four stars.

ii Catherine Deneuve received a best actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a rubber plantation owner..