I was so excited to see that Bruce Campbell would be visiting a local theater to sign copies of his new book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, and to show his new movie, The Man with the Screaming Brain – and very few of you will probably understand why. My request for a companion for this awesome night was met with an almost universal “Who’s Bruce Campbell?” (fortunately, Scott is cool enough to know who Bruce Campbell is).
Campbell, for those of you asking this question, is the star of the Evil Dead series and assorted other B-movies, plus some bit parts in major movies directed by his friends. He wrote a very funny autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, and he generally seems like a guy who recognizes and embraces his position in the showbiz galaxy. Because of his Evil Dead heritage, he attracts a fan base made up of, in large part, comic-book readers and action-figure collectors. It was the kind of crowd where the people behind us in the line to get our books signed earnestly discussed their participation in the world’s largest Dungeons & Dragons game (which was actually the least geeky thing they talked about for the hour or so that we were in line – I couldn’t even figure out what role-playing games they were talking about the rest of the time), and one of the guys who sat in front of us in the theater, describing his vacation in Canyonlands to his friends, declared, “The only way I can describe it is… it’s like Tatooine.” (I trust I will come up with something better to describe it when I write up my travelogue of my recent vacation in which I passed through Canyonlands.)
Anyway, the signing was a little disappointing, only because Campbell was more interested in chatting with Scott, who hadn’t even been all that psyched to meet Bruce Campbell and hadn’t bought a book (I loaned him the one I was having signed for friends), than with me (based on a David Sedaris reading and signing that I went to a few months ago, I believed myself to be captivating to authors signing books), although he did call me “sweetheart,” which I don’t think he used with Scott. And he didn’t even write anything clever or unique in my book.
He did give an entertaining introduction to the movie, along with a post-film Q&A. It was his birthday, so his wife brought in a cake and we all sang to him. He ended the post-movie session with a passionate appeal to support Landmark Theaters, where this event was held, and other theaters that offer alternative fare, which made me forgive his lack of conversation during the signing.
The Man with the Screaming Brain, it turns out, is a Sci-Fi Channel production (in cooperation with a German tax fund), and it was slated to go straight to endless rotation on the Sci-Fi Channel, but Campbell, who also wrote and directed, insisted on being given a chance to get it shown in theaters first. It doesn’t really try to be anything but a cheap B-movie; there’s a lot of mugging for the camera, bad dialogue, and a mad-scientist plotline. Campbell, sporting a mustache, looks rather like John Cleese, especially once he dies and gets resurrected by getting a partial brain graft from said mad scientist, so he’s fighting for control of his body with the bit of brain from someone else, and it looks a bit like the Ministry of Silly Walks skit. Still, this is better than his image on the poster, in which he looks unfortunately like Hitler.
Oh, and did I mention that the movie was
“filmed entirely on
location in Bulgaria”? Aside from
Campbell, Stacy Keach (as the mad scientist), Ted Raimi (who Campbell
puts in
all his movies because “he makes me
look subtle”), and the chick who plays Campbell’s wife, the rest of the
cast is
Bulgarian. They’re actually decent
actors, but it’s kind of odd. You
certainly get the flavor of a depressed former Iron Curtain country,
I’ll say
that much.
The Man with the
Screaming Brain, much like Bubba
Ho-Tep, doesn’t really live up to its promise, but no worries –
you’ll probably be able to see it on the Sci-Fi Channel in the
not-too-distant future.
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