What the hell is Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell doing here? It's not as if his rough-hewn talents merit wider praise. Remember those clunky, yawn-and-you've-missed-'em turns in Congo, The Hudsucker Proxy and Darkman? Acting isn't really the word for it. Campbell just kind of stands there and mumbles stuff.
Bruce, don't get mad! This is precisely why we love you. Because you could be one of us. Heck, you are one of us. An ordinary lug floundering, half-smitten, half-repulsed, in the belly of the beast. And you know what's really great? You know it. You're in on the joke. You can't believe some schmuck in a suit is actually paying you to do this.
Michigan-born Campbell never set out to become a geek pin-up. He wanted to direct blockbusters. In the late 1970s, Campbell dropped out of college to shoot super-8 shorts with hometown buddy Sam Raimi.
Still holding down day jobs, they crafted 1982's The Evil Dead, an endearingly amateurish splatter fest. Dead surfed to prominence in Britain when the tabloid press whipped itself into a lather of faux indignation over its amoral timbre and wall-to-wall viscera.
A cult phenomenon was born, and Campbell, daftly wooden as the monosyllabic anti-hero Ash, become a gore-hound idol.
Wowed by Dead's unit-shifting heroics, Italian mogul Dino de Laurentiis bankrolled a lavish sequel. Evil Dead II emerged as a schlock milestone - a hammy, cruddy and blisteringly funny z-grade masterpiece. Thereafter, Raimi and Campbell grew apart. The former's career trajectory went quasi-stellar. The latter stayed on the bottom rung, grubbing a living from straight-to-video bunkum. They reunited for a third Dead instalment, the energetic, inconsequential Army of Darkness. An expensive flop, AoD rang a death knell on the franchise. Campbell turned to television and scored his own show practically overnight. The Adventures of Brisco County Junior was a breezy Western romp that sought to recall the rollicking buddy-isms of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Campbell fans lapped it up but, head to head with a nascent X-Files, Brisco tanked after a single season.
Faced with ekeing pennies, Campbell took a bit part in a new Raimi project, a camp rethread of the Hercules legends. Playing the slimy thief, King Autolycus, Campbell proved a master of poker-faced delivery and became the series' biggest draw. Reprising the role on the rowdy spin-off project, Xena: Warrior Princess, he inched closer to the major league. A regular guest slot on the profusely unfunny Ellen threatened to make a proper star of him. Lamentably, it folded before the wider world caught a sniff of Campbell's genius.
Low-wattage TV movies and intermittent high-profile cameos have since proved his mainstay. In a world over-endowed with glitter and tat, his earthy pragmatism, his refusal to swallow the myth that fame makes you a better, more significant human being, is endearing and - yes - ennobling. Sincerely, big guy, we're laughing with you.
More on Bruce Campbell at www.bruce-campbell.com