HD Review - Army of Darkness

**MatrixDweller** · **10-23-07, 09:25 AM**

Army of Darkness is amusingly humorous and has attained a large cult following. It's one of those movies you hear people quoting bits and pieces of to get a laugh. Catch phrases like "Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart" are guaranteed to get you into the club.

So now Army of Darkness has been released on HD-DVD. Eagerly I rented a HD-DVD copy of it and couldn't wait to get home and pop it in. The excitement stopped though once the movie began. I really wasn't impressed by the picture quality. It looked like a direct transfer from DVD to HDDVD (Actually I have DVD's that look much better). The 5.1 soundtrack was less than impressive as well.

Maybe I'm spoiled and shouldn't be so hard on this movie considering it was released in 1993. To sum it up better, compared to other older movies (pre DVD) I've seen on HD-DVD Army of Darkness is just average. I'd want to knock it down a bit considering there are a multitude of DVD releases of it.

The Bruce Campbell vs. Army Of Darkness: The Director's Cut - Official Bootleg Edition on DVD had a very nicely styled box. The HD-DVD release was as plain as they come. Stamped out in mass quantities and minimal extra work was put into it. I'm not one for extra features much, and Army of Darkness didn't disappoint. They really aren't any worth mentioning.

My over all impression of this title on HD-DVD is very low. I think it was pushed out quickly just to get more content out there. If you really want to see it I would rent it, it's not worth buying.

My bet is that when (if) HD-DVD has a stronger hold on the market and DVD is more in decline it will be re-released in better style.

**Sonnie** · **10-23-07, 02:00 PM**

It's disappointing when they release a movie on HD-DVD and it looks no better than SD-DVD.

Thanks for the heads up.

**toecheese** · **10-28-07, 03:52 PM**

The movie was very low budget (well, compared to ED, it was expensive) and Rami did what he could.

When DVD really caught on, there was a rash of VHS (actually I think they were video-CD) to DVD transfers that were really lousy and suckered a lot of people. Sad that they'd spoil HD with that.

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