Geeks on Movies
B-Movie Icons: Bruce Campbell
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| “Shop smart … shop S-Mart.” This advice has been sponsored by your local evil undead ass-kickin’ chainsaw-wieldin’ boomstick carryin’ all around nice guy hero … who doubles as a grocery store clerk. |
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| Bruce Campbell is one of the coolest guys in the world. Sure, true indie/b-movie fans know who he is and probably a lot about him. He’s all over the web. I actually got to meet him once at the Tivoli Theatre in Saint Louis when he was premiering his movie The Man With the Screaming Brain. I spoke [very] briefly with him and shook his hand, but he sure did seem really cool to me. Of course, I also got his autograph. |
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Campbell got his start making movies for fun with his pal Sam Raimi … maybe you’ve heard of him? He and Sam and Ted (Sam’s brother) and a few other guys grew into film-fanatics together. Actually, you can read all about it in Bruce’s first book, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. The book tells of his experience making movies outside of Hollywood. Later on, Bruce wrote a second book (which happens to hold that coveted autograph) entitled Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. |  |
| After making several short films with Sam Raimi, Josh Becker and John Cameron, Bruce starred in a little cult favorite called The Evil Dead (1981). Essentially a slasher flick, made on a very low-budget, the movie became a stylistic b-movie icon. The story follows Ash and a group of his friends who camp out in an old cabin, only to discover a Book of the Dead, which unleashes unspeakable evil into their world. Bruce Campbell would return as Ash in Evil Dead 2 (1987). Basically, this was a remake of The Evil Dead, except with a slightly bigger budget. The gang also decided to pursue the story as more of a horror-comedy and it worked beautifully. |
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| Raimi tapped Campbell again to make Army of Darkness (1992) with a much bigger budget and a huge following. This time, Ash is thrown back in time to the medieval age, where he leads an army of peasants against an army of the dead, which in turn is led by his evil doppelganger. Yeah, just trust me and watch it … it’s tons of fun. Between Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, Bruce Campbell appeared in several b-movies, including Maniac Cop (1988), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1990), Mindwarp (1990), Maniac Cop 2 (1990), Lunatics: A Love Story (1991) and Waxwork 2: Lost in Time (1992). |
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In 1993, Bruce received his own television comedy. He starred in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. as Brisco, a sort of Indiana Jones character. In 1994, the Coen brothers cast him in The Hudsucker Proxy. In 1995-96, Bruce had television roles in Lois & Clark, American Gothic and Homicide. In 1996, John Carpenter cast Bruce as a demented surgeon in Escape From LA. In 1997, Campbell got really busy doing television again and was cast as the lead in a really cool project by another old friend. Josh Becker directed Campbell in Running Time (1997), a digital film intended to emulate the experimental technique of shooting an entire movie in one continuous take. This was first attempted with astounding success by Alfred Hitchcock with Rope (1948) which starred James Stewart. Running Time tells the story of Carl, played by Campbell, a small-time crook hoping to pull off one last bank heist. That same year, Campbell was cast as Virgil in McHale’s Navy. Between 1995-99, Campbell had recurring roles in both Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. In 2000, Campbell received another television action-comedy show call Jack of All Trades. |
| In 2002, Sam Raimi cast Campbell as the wrestling announcer in Spider-Man, and he made a cool indie film called Bubba Ho-Tep, which you can read more about in the Meet the Makers post on Don Coscarelli. Bruce returned to his busy schedule again, in both TV and movies and alos finds himself doing a lot of voice work for video games and animated projects. There comes a time, however, when a man feels he has to take hold of the reigns and steer his career in his own direction. Campbell decided to step behind the camera and become actor-director for a film called The Man With the Screaming Brain (2005).Bruce Campbell plays William Cole, a greedy executive who ends up dead. He is brought back to life by a mad scientist, but half of his brain has been replaced with that of a Russian cab driver named Yegor. These two personalities have nothing common, bickering with each other (funny just to think about), until they realize the one thing they have in common is they both were murdered by the same woman. The two begin working together to plot their revenge. Campbell treats his fans to a b-movie only his fans could love and appreciate, but experience teaches us everything. Who knows, maybe we’ll see another film from Mr. Campbell, the auteur director? |  |
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