Bruce Campbell has played the beleaguered hero, Ash Williams, for nearly four decades—from the first “Evil Dead” feature, made on a shoestring in the late 1970’s, to the TV series “Ash vs. Evil Dead” broadcast from 2015 to 2018.
Campbell will be on hand at the Egyptian to introduce the films, participate in Q and A’s and appear Sunday for photo ops and meet-and-greets.
A native of Michigan, he’d been making short films for years with a friend he had known since they were teenagers--Sam Raimi. They decided to make a feature about a group of college kids, staying at a remote cabin, who play an audio tape that unleashes a horde of demons and spirits, possessing them one by one until only Ash is left.
Campbell said that the primitive filming conditions, at a remote location in Tennessee, were outrageous by today’s standards.
“It was kind of astounding what we were able to get away with. We just heard about this tragedy with Alec Baldwin on a film set. The original ‘Evil Dead,’ we used live ammunition, and not even blanks. I’m talking shotgun shells with 12-gauge shells in there. We went from completely irresponsible to, fortunately, by the time we got to ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead,’, the shotgun had no ballistic component. I’m happy that we put a kibosh on that years ago, of using actual projectiles. And we had to restore electrictity to this remote cabin. We had to clean it out. There was four inches of cow manure all over the floors. Ceilings were too low, we had to take it out. We combined rooms. The actors were slave labor when we weren’t filming. We were working on the crew.”
He said it was difficult to get actors for the film.
“This is for a horror movie. Horror movies were never, had the same regard that they do now. They’re not mainstream like they are now. They were pretty much one rung above porno, as far as how people perceived them. So we had women come to audition who brought their boyfriends cause they didn’t trust us. They thought we were these sleazy producers with our gold jewelry and our cigars. We were just trying to get people to act.”
He said the film was finished in 1979, followed by two years of anxiety, tweaking and adding additional scenes. But Campbell said he knew they had a real movie when it premiered one Saturday afternoon at his hometown theater, the Showcase Cinemas in Pontiac, Michigan.
“And I think there was eight people in the audience, but I didn’t care. Because we made it, we got in the same theater as real movies.”
Campbell said “Evil Dead” was a drive-in movie, not something you enter at festivals. But the film played out of competition at Cannes in 1982. It became a break-out hit, aided by a plug from Stephen King, who called it “the most ferociously original horror film of the year.”
“Evil Dead II,” released in 1987, was a sequel, but in some respects looked like a re-make, because it repeated similar events from the first film.
“It seems like a re-make, because we couldn’t get the rights to our own footage from the original movie. A different company was making the sequel. So we had different actors do the re-cap and people thought Ash was dumb enough to go back to this cabin again for a new weekend with new friends.”
“Evil Dead II” led right into another story, with Ash thrown back into medieval times.
But “Army of Darkness” didn’t come out until 1991. Campbell said it went over budget and bombed at the box office, but afterward gained popularity thanks to DVDs.
Today, Sam Raimi, who directed all three “Dead” movies, is known for making the first “Spiderman” trilogy and many other films.
Campbell said while the actresses suffered through the early “Dead” films, some are happy about the association now. Three of the women tour conventions as “the ladies of Evil Dead.”
Campbell said fans still ask if he will appear in another “Evil Dead” production. But he said he wrapped up the story in the series “Ash vs. Evil Dead.
“That was the full monty. That was what I call Ash’s last hurrah. I officially retired the character after three seasons on Starzz. It was a great way to round the character out, to kinda bring 25 extra years of acting experience, to finally apply what I know to an early character and try and flesh him out. We introduced his father, we met his daughter.”
He will return, though, as a voice in the new “Evil Dead’ video game.
The original “Evil Dead” plays at the Egyptian on Friday night.
“Evil Dead II” will be shown Saturday night. On Saturday afternoon there’s a showing of the 2007 film “My Name is Bruce,” in which Campbell, playing a comic version of himself, gets involved yet again in a battle with a demon. “Army of Darkness” plays on Sunday night.
For tickets or more information, call the Egyptian at 649—9371 or go to “parkcityshows.com”
