Why is "Army of Darkness" title changed
 

Why is the third part of the Evil Dead trilogy "Army of Darkness," now called "Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness"?

In all the video guides I look at, the film goes by the original title. But it seems all DVD releases of it have been changed to the "Bruce Campbell........"

Like most of you, I have my DVDs alphabetized on the shelf. Now when I look for "Army," I'll always have to remember to go to "Bruce" instead.

Why was this done? Seems kinda silly to me.

Just file it under A, be the master of your DVDs--or be really be bold, and file it under E, with the other Evil Dead movies.

Sam explains the title issue on the commentary. It was the original title, but it was mostly a joke on Bruce.

Re: Why is "Army of Darkness" title changed
 

Only 2 versions (bootleg and boomstick editions) actually say "Bruce Cambell vs. Army of Darkness" on the cover. The other 4 out of the 6 R1 releases say "Army of Darkness". Like Ginwen said, be bold and just file it in the "A" section. I was feeling like a rebel and put all my 6 R1 versions together.

http://art.half.ebay.com/prod/1346118.jpeg http://art.half.ebay.com/prod/806363.jpeg http://art.half.ebay.com/prod/1217991.jpeg http://art.half.ebay.com/prod/802828.jpeg http://art.half.ebay.com/prod/1329766.jpeg http://art.half.ebay.com/prod/1897099.jpeg

I file mine under "E", so it can follow Evil Deads 1 & 2 as it is a trilogy (of sorts) ;)

Re: Why is "Army of Darkness" title changed
 

I never alpha my titles....it looks goofy and just wont work for me. my AOD is in the horror....tucked away with the other ED'. so simple.

They are proably trying to get previous AOD owners to buy it by renaming it.

Me too -smile-

Even corrected the sort title on DVD Profiler to make sure others get it right as well :D

Re: Why is "Army of Darkness" title changed
 

I disagree with that. The movie is, and always has been, called Army of Darkness. That title appears on the screen all by itself. The fact that there's a "Bruce Campbell" and "vs" before it means nothing. If it did, all other movies would be called (for example) Arnold Schwarzenegger Linda Hamilton Terminator 2 Judgment Day or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Presents William Powell and Myrna Loy in 'The Thin Man' (which is what DOES appear all on the same screen).

It just doesn't work that way. Usually. Okay, sometimes there are movies that do it a bit differently, but this case doesn't count, IMO.

Movie Title Screens Page: http://shillpages.com/movies (due for an update later tonight)

The "Bruce Campbell vs" on Army of Darkness means about as much to me as "Indiana Jones and" on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

LOL.........Exactly.

no, i'm pretty sure they're marketing that as the title for whatever reason

and it was given a few different titles overseas upon it's release

capt. supermarket
Evil Dead 3
Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness
and more

i forgot my favorite, the medival Dead

the "bruce campbell vs the army of darkness" actually first appeared as the title in '93 on overseas releases

Hey, it could be worse. I;ve got a Japanese language movie poster, on which the movie is titled "Captain Supermarket".

Or "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" or "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie." hmmmmm.

The difference is "Indiana Jones" was added for the video. "Bruce Cambell Vs." has been on every film print I've ever seen, and I know in the 4-5 times I've seen it in a theater over the last 10 years it couldn't have been a foreign print. Also, those examples of before the title credits are not the same as a "Vs." "In" or just the names does not imply a title, but "Vs." and "Meet" and even " 's" (as in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" "Felini's Roma") does imply a title.

does the video quality suck on all 6 R1 versions of this movie? I had the bootleg version and it was horrible.

Apparently they are all the same transfer, that is, Theatrical and "Director's Cut", respectively and only the packaging is different.

Then your example of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is wrong. That movie's real on-screen title is simply Meet Frankenstein. The names Bud Abbott and Lou Costello appear earlier on the screen.

Of course, who's to say the full title has to appear at the same time? Star Wars appears on a separate screen than Empire Strikes Back and yet it is an accepted title. I'm sure there's no law one way or the other, but simple syntax implies that names before the title saying "in" or "is/are" denotes that these actors are starring in the film or as the characters (like Reservoir Dogs). When it is something like "meets", it's different. The Abbott and Costello one is problematic because it actually says their first names, too. So one can either say that the first names are part of the title or just a stylistic combination of credit and title (the first names are in smaller type and could be considered de facto parenthetical).

Truth is, it is really a joke, but it certainly can be legitimately argued both ways. If I'm saying the title, I tend to say just "Army of Darkness". But then I never say, "Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope", either.

Now, the possessive 's can be argued. Most often, it is an affectation by the filmmaker, John Carpenter's The Thing (I think that was there). Sometimes it is an author's name and is part of the title, like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frank Herbert's Dune. Sometimes it isn't part of the title. I may be mistaken and I'm away from my DVD collection, but I believe the Exorcist is "William Blatty's The Exorcist" and no one says that is part of the title. Felini had some movies where his name is part of the title. I think I will concede that point I made earlier.

So, which version of the 6 is the best overall?

Depends on what you are looking for. As far as picture quality--they are all the same. They were all transferred from the same source. If you have a region free player go with the R3 MGM release. It was transferred from much better source material (to which I wrote Anchor Bay about and am still awaiting a response). Of the current releases the boomstick edition is the most complete for R1. Hope this helps.

I don't have "The Nightmare Before Christmas" alphabetized under "Tim Burton's...", nor do I have "Forrest Gump" alphabatized under "Tom Hanks is...". I have the original 2-disc "Army of Darkness" LE but if I had the boomstick edition it would still be alphabetized under "A". On-screen titles aren't always the "official" title of a movie. It's hard to provide "rules" but you just have to use common sense. For example, if you were too technical about on-screen movie titles, "Batman Forever" would just be "Forever" and "Apocalypse Now" wouldn't have a title. As I said before, common sense is key, and everyone should know that it's "Army of Darkness", not "Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness", regardless of what the packaging or title screen says.

If not the title screen then what? Someone's word for it? The title screen is as close to definitive as we have. It's what is physically present and attached to the movie. Posters are ephemeral and you can call any movie anything you want to, but in the end, the movie represents itself.

Batman Forever uses the Bat logo icon to stand in for the word "Batman". I can name 2 movies right now that validate that as a title. **** by Andy Worhol AKA Four Stars and http://pithemovie.com/pi.gif AKA Pi. Batman was successfully marketed by using little more than the Logo and the public accepted it to mean "Batman". It's at least as valid as getting Independence Day out of ID4.

Apocolypse Now does have the title. It's before the ending credits, if I'm not mistaken. It's gimmicky, but it's there. It's even buried 2+ hours into the film as graffiti. The 70mm showcase showings didn't even have closing credits. You were handed a program.

I believe Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas IS the full title. He didn't write nor direct it. He just suggested it's story and characters. The title was a deliberate attempt to evoke his ouevre. It goes in the Bram Stoker's Dracula catagory. It's all marketing.

Now, is Bruce Campbell's name actually part of the title? I dunno. It's certainly unique. I believe it's funnier if it is, but as we all know, it's probably just a joke and not really intended as the title. No one is going to arrest you if you file it under B or A.
It's just something to think about.




By the way, Shill. I checked your Titles page on Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, and for what it's worth, it DOES say their names on the same screen as the title. Your own screencap proves it. The only one that doesn't is Abbott and Costello meet the Invisible Man, but it does have an ellipsis suggesting that it is a continuation of the title. (Abbott and Costello...meet The Invisible Man)

True. I could say I meant "above" rather than "earlier" but I'll just say I mis-remembered, and didn't check first before posting like I almost always do. (I noticed earlier today when I finally did look.) :(

But there is no "and". :)

Apocalypse Now does indeed withhold its title screen until the closing credits. The Mummy Returns does the same.

A movie's "real" title should always be whatever it has on the copyright paperwork, but the public doesn't get to see that!

Still, the grafitti in the movie is given no designation over any other appearance of writing in the movie. As far an an uninformed viewer would know, the "Apocalypse Now" grafitti would be no more a title than any other text in the film, such as the Kurtz dossier, or the nametags worn by military officials. The title appears nowhere else in the film, be it the credits or otherwise, and even if it did occur during the credits, it wouldn't necessarily be considered "official" because the original 70mm roadshow edition of the film had no end credits sequence whatsoever. The film itself was originally exhibited with no opening credits (like the video version) and no end credits whatsoever. All credit information was listed in a program given to attendees. Anyways, as I said in my original post, there are no laws as to what constitutes an "official" title, you just have to use common sense. Nine times out of ten it's going to be the on-screen title but that's not always the case.

bruce campbell vs the army of darkness has appeared to be a title/or alternate title since the film was released

i'm not into alphabetizing my dvd's but yes that is a "B" movie.

Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas is also the complete title--- Nightmare before christmas is the wrong title

Walt Disney presents, or Walt Disney's- are also the correct titles for a number of disney films

Ah, yeah. They made the subsequent titles less awkward.

I like to place all my DVD's randomly on the shelf, and mix them up every week!

Under those rules, I'd like to present a list of some of the movies in my collection:
Jules Verne's 20000 Leagues Under the Sea Color by Technicolor
Columbia Pictures Corporation Presents The 27th Day
Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember
Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy
Peter Shaffer's Amadeus
Rene Clair's And Then There Were None From the Novel by Agatha Christie
Erich Maria Remarque's Arch of Triumph
Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace
Joseph M Schenck Offers Roland West's The Bat Whispers With Chester Morris
Lars Von Trier Breaking the Waves
David Cronenberg's The Brood
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. Presents Cat People
Twentieth Century Fox Presents the Day the Earth Stood Still
Ian Fleming's Dr No
Fantastic Voyage Fantastic Voyage Fantastic Voyage
Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key
Carl Foreman's Production the Guns of Navarone
(okay they get the idea)

And one of my favorites:
Cemetery An

Why do I never hear these movies referred to by their full titles?

I thought I'd already explained and conceded that one. It's marketing. Sometimes it's part of the title, sometimes it is just an attribution. The only director that I know of that has his name as an official part of the title was Fellini. Some films however do use the author/creator's name as part of the title. Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frank Herbert's Dune, are all the actual titles. Disney does use the Disney name in the titles on occasion. The animated films are not, but "Disney's The Kid" is. That was in the news for some reason. I can't remember why, because you can't copyright a title like that but it had something to do with the Chaplin estate fussing. They comprimised by calling it Disney's the Kid.
Tim Burton's Name is part of the marketing of that picture. They were specifically trying to use his name to evoke him. I know you can say that about all those you listed, but I still stand by this one. Just an observation: All the packaging, the posters, the merchandice, and all official references refer to it as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Is there any licenced use that does not refer to it by the full title? If there were, there might be some doubt. Other than obvious abbreviations (like calling it Nightmare), of course. In researching it (as far as is possible to online) anyone that ever bothers to point it out points it out as "the full title", including IMDB, Amazon and Roger Ebert. No, it's not incontravertable proof, but other than when the average Joe refers to it, it's always referred to with Tim Burton's name. The others are arguable, but I don't believe this one is.


By the way, if I haven't been clear, I concede the Army of Darkness title as a joke. The "Abbott and Costello"s became the actual titles but I don't think they really put too much thought into the awkwardness of the posted "but official" title for BA LC Meet Frankenstein. I'm sure no one intended it to be literally called "Meet Frankenstein".
And we have a confirmation on the Apocalypse Now title being before the final credits.

Oh, just for S&G's I went to www.loc.gov and clicked on the links to copyright research and found that the legal title is indeed "Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas". On some merch, they list Nightmare Before Christmas, but on anything referring directly to the film, like posters, press kits, books, etc, it lists it as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas ("the" is commonly left off, but it's still part of the title).


Army of Darkness is listed as just that.

It should also be noted that much like "a", "an" or "the", it's just flat-out proper alphabetizing to not include the author's possessory credit, end of story.

That's absolutely right. However, Tim Burton's name is part of the title and is not a possessory credit. He neither wrote nor directed it. It is represented as "his imagination" or "his nightmare", if you will. I looked up other titles in the Library of congress copyright database at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/ and none of them included possessory credits as part of the title. Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas did.

End of story, indeed.

But he did write the story and produce it. Producers often get such vanity credits; see, for example: Wes Craven's Wishmaster.

DJ

Yeah, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" would be alphabetized under "B". "Tim Burton's 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'" would be alphabetized under "N" because "Tim Burton's..." is a possessory credi and not an actual part of the title, regardless of his involvement in the movie (which was still considerable in the case of "TNBC").

Ok, I guess I'll have to bring out the big guns.


The Wes Craven Presents was vanity but is not on the copyright paperwork as the title.

Bruce Campbell vs. is indeed a joke and not official.

And finally, Ta Da!

I can't put in in a prettier bow than that.


I rest my case.

But your "big guns" are just what the attorneys working the for the studios happened to put on the copyright registration paperwork, which may or may not represent what the filmmakers or even the studio actually consider to be the proper title for the film. And, of course, you're ignoring all of the text after the "/", which is also listed as part of the title.

DJ

I'm sure that every director has a secret pet name for his project that got changed by the studio (like all those films named after popular songs) but that doesn't make it the title. And exactly why would a studio let a lawyer go willy nilly into a copyright office and make up any name he chooses on a whim? The whole reason you copyright a film is to protect it legally. The title it is copyrighted under officially identifies the film being protected. I'm sorry, but I'm going to call that line of logic silly. (*added) A quick look on the Wishmaster Copyright says it was originally submitted as "Genie". At some point they dropped the original title and made it Wishmaster, officially. I'd think if TBNBC did something like that, it would have been noted there, maybe.

And I am ignoring the text after the "/" !? Whoa! Come on. Admit when you are wrong. I did about the Bruce Campbell thing. The title is before the slash and the text after the slash further identifies the party who produced it then after the semi colon is the director. It's punctuation on a legal document. It's just like the slash after dvdtalk.com/forum.

I give up. I've given as close to a legal document as is possible. If you still don't want to believe it, then there's not much I can do. I don't see how you can get much more official than how the film is actually registered under the law that protects them in case of a violation of their property rights.

Ask George Romero how important that is. The reason Night of the Living Dead is in public domain is the original title was Night of the Flesh Eaters (Or Night of Anubis- I can't recall exactly which one). The distribution company changed the name to Night of the Living Dead but didn't resubmit the paperwork with the proper title so it fell into PD.

It's not a matter of lawyers going "willy nilly," it a matter of whether or not to trust the decision of lawyers on hair-splitting issues like whether Tim Burton's credit on TNBC is "just" a vanity credit or of it's part of the "real" title. The decision (if one was made at all) by Disney's in-house attorneys with regard to TNBC on that issue may not actually represent the studio's official stance or Henry Selick's or Tim Burton's (or anyone else involved) view on what the "real" title is.

You may call this line of logic silly, but I call it the real world. I have worked with the in-house counsel at a major entertainment-related corporation, and I personally dealt with copyright registrations. My line of logic isn't silly, it's just true. The titles placed on copyright registrations aren't meant to be somehow definitive declarations on irrelevant hair-splitting issues.

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And I am ignoring the text after the "/" !? Whoa! Come on. Admit when you are wrong. I did about the Bruce Campbell thing. The title is before the slash and the text after the slash further identifies the party who produced it then after the semi colon is the director. It's punctuation on a legal document. It's just like the slash after dvdtalk.com/forum.

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But I'm not wrong. All of the text after the slash is still on the "TITLE" field of the copyright registration. There are separate fields for "AUTHOR" information and for additional notes. Those words have purposely been included in the "TITLE" field. Nothing specifies that the words after the / are anything other than words that are part of the title. The / may just be punctuation, but it isn't punctuation that ends the "TITLE" field and starts a new field; it's still part of the "TITLE." If you think it's so meaningful what the legal titles are, then it's simply a fact that the full titles are the entire line of text, including the / and the words that come after it. You can't say that the "TITLE" field of a copyright registration has such meaning, and then decide to throw out parts of all of those titles because they don't fit in with your predetermined argument. Well, you could do it, of course, but you'd be wrong.

Again, you'll probably call my line of logic silly. But then again, I actually have experience dealing with this issues in real life. How many copyright registrations have you worked on?

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I give up. I've given as close to a legal document as is possible. If you still don't want to believe it, then there's not much I can do. I don't see how you can get much more official than how the film is actually registered under the law that protects them in case of a violation of their property rights.

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Because the title as listed on the copyright registration is only meant to be specific enough to refer to a unique work. This is why the registrations include further information such as the director in the title. Hair-splitting issues like whether Tim Burton's vanity credit is "really" part of the title isn't meant to be decided by the copyright registration.

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Ask George Romero how important that is. The reason Night of the Living Dead is in public domain is the original title was Night of the Flesh Eaters (Or Night of Anubis- I can't recall exactly which one). The distribution company changed the name to Night of the Living Dead but didn't resubmit the paperwork with the proper title so it fell into PD.

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False. The reason it fell into the public domain is because the original title card contained the copyright notice. When the title card was changed, the copyright notice was left out. Under the 1909 U.S. Copyright Act at that time, a failure to have a copyright notice on a work immediately put that work into the public domain. This had nothing whatsoever to do with registration and/or a failure to submit any paperwork.

DJ

Dude, you are reading way too much into it. it's there in black and white. It doesn't get much simpler. If it wasn't meant to be part of the title, it wouldn't be there. It would have been listed like that Wes Craven presents credit. They sometimes use the creator's name in the title if they have a specific reason to. Another example is the Ron Howard film Dr Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Dr Seuss' name is part of the title. Oddly enough, so is Wes Craven's New Nightmare (That film is indeed Wes Craven's Nightmare in the film, so the title makes sense) and Dee Snider's Strangeland. But almost all of those others mentioned in the thread are vanity acceditations and not part of the official title.

Dude, use some common sense. Look up the copyright on any book. The title field contains the Title and the Author. You know as well as I do what the heck a title is and what an author is.

For example:
Don't tell me the actual title is "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban / by J. K. Rowling ; ill. by Mary GrandPre. " because then you are playing a semantics game. The / is there for a purpose. To separate the author text from the title proper and to specify a work further. The post slash is informational.
Normally, I'd agree with you on such a line. But the name is there. It's on ALL the licensed merchandice and ALL the official references to it. It's all over the DVD. It's not like there is some doubt caused by inconsistant use of the title. The use of the full title by Disney and Touchstone is consistant. It's not a vanity tag, it's marketing.
Ok, here's another big gun. How about a George Romero quote:
from http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...filmmaker.html
Our stories are similar enough to not matter. "Paperwork" or not, the fact is the copyright was on the wrong title. The film itself had been submitted. The title was changed without the proper copyright so the film fell into public domain. My whole point (without spltting hairs over the details) was that the title identifying the specific movie does has some importance.

So in conclusion, what are you basing your position on? An assumption? I've submitted legal evidence and a challenge. Can you find any official notation of the film that is not an obvious abbreviation (like "Nightmare") that does not refer to the complete title? Or even any inconsistant use of the full title on packaging for the movie, merchandice, promotional material, etc.? I'm not talking informal use, like, say, an interview with Tim Burton. I'm talking official use. If you can, then we might have a real argument. So far I don't see it.