Come to think of it, Bruce Campbell does have a game show host quality.
The Evil Dead star will prove that fact on Friday, April 21 when he brings his Bruce-o-Rama to Kemba Live. Two events in one, Bruce-o-Rama begins with the gameshow Last Fan Standing, followed by a screening of Campbell’s 1987 classic Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn.
Mr. Campbell had a chat with CU’s Hope Madden and George Wolf about the event and one of them tried to remain calm.
Bruce Campbell: I do appreciate your enthusiasm. You guys are in Columbus. We’re going to cruise through your fine town and we’re going to find some suckers…I mean, I mean, some contestants. Yes. To have this silly evening of half game, half movie.
George: It’s Bruce-o-Rama, right? April 21, we’ve got you in town at Kemba Live. For somebody that doesn’t know what’s going on, what do you have planned?
Campbell: It’s not as boring as a normal game show. It’s not geography and history. It’s sci-fi, horror, fantasy, action, carnage, superheroes. It’s questions that are semi-relevant these days. You know, it’s not so much your Wink Martindale stuff, as great as Wink was.
George: How did this get started?
Campbell: A buddy of mine had a game show for the troops and he tracked me down and says, “Hey, you want to host this thing at the Sam Houston base in San Antonio?” And I had a blast. And the format was really fun. How it develops and how people knock each other out of the competition.
So, people will come into the theater that night and you’re all going to play with your device and you’re going to cook it down. You literally are competing with the joker sitting right next to you. Speed and accuracy count. And then you go through elimination rounds until you have the last fan standing.
And they might get some swag from an upcoming horror movie that we did in April. So, it could be a fun night. Then we take a break and then I come back on and I’m going to do a little intro to one of the golden oldies and crack jokes and give out money and insults in equal portions and then get the hell out of there.
Hope: You’re going to be showing Evil Dead Part 2.
Hope: I’m curious what other films are in the rotation.
Campbell: You know what? It’s all up to these phony promoters of what they want to do. Whatever they think is the best. Bubba Ho-Tep will slip in there a couple of times. All the Evil Dead movies, Army of Darkness will play at some of these.
Hope: I never thought about it before, but you as a game show host, it does seem to really fit. Is it something you ever wanted to do before?
Campbell: I wanted to be a snarky game show host. Not your dad’s game show host. But I do wear the dumb gameshow clothes. I was influenced very much by Lawrence Welk. His outfits and his shows were at the same time the most horrifying and the most beautiful you’ve ever seen in your life. Like, I’ll kill a guy in an alley for a good polyester suit. Don’t light a match near anything I wear. Going to be trouble.
George: You’re here on April 21, so you’re asking us to choose between Bruce-o-Rama and the new Evil Dead movie! That’s the day it comes out.
Campbell: Oh, no, no, no. There’s no choice. You’re going to do both. You’re going to come to this show to see a game show and a movie. And then it’s, now let’s go see the 10 p.m., midnight show of this other movie. Same day. Or you sneak in during the day, catch a matinee at El Cheapo. And I recommend the matinee because if you see it too late at night, you ain’t going to be sleeping.
Campbell: Not a hearty ha-ha, this one. There’s no Ash cracking jokes here. We brought it into the big, bad city. We took it out of the woods, and we stuck it in a creepy Los Angeles high-rise after an earthquake. And you know, this is when mommy goes bad. This is like a little girl’s worst nightmare mother, who she looks up to protect and keep her safe. No, she’s trying to kill you, little girl. And so, it’s a crazy tale of survival, in an Evil Dead way. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Hope: It is one of the best trailers. So how involved were you in this film?
Campbell: I’m all over like a cheap suit. I’m not in it because my physical body is like, nah, we’re good. But as a producer, you know, I spent a month and a half finishing the movie in Europe last year. So, we’re involved. Sam Raimi is the puppet master to make sure it fits in the Evil Dead box. He picked the director. This new guy, Lee Cronin, he’s Irish and he’s a creepy storyteller and he did a really good job. And you never know when you hire these guys. They could be stiffs. But no, this guy, he really brought it.
These movies are hard to make. But our theory is, if the movie is hard to make, it’s easy to watch. A movie that’s easy to make – like, you’re sitting around cracking jokes all the time – you’re not working hard enough, and the movie is going to suck. In this case, everyone hated each other by the end. It’s going to be good. That’s how you know.
George: So, the movie’s coming April 21 as well. But in the meantime, you’re on the road with this show. You’re giving that other Bruce a run for his money.
Campbell: Which Bruce is out there?
Hope: Springsteen is touring right now. He just started his big tour.
Campbell: He’d better watch out because I’m going to bury him!
George: We solicited questions from some of your fans. And Melissa wants to know, is there still a dream project out there for you that you haven’t done yet that you’d love?
Campbell: I try not to play that game. I try and just take whatever comes, whatever falls off the truck. You’re trying to apply yourself and make sure you’re doing your part so it sucks the least. And then if it’s a good project, then you’ve got a better chance of making it good. If it’s bad, if it’s a lousy script, you just do what you can. But these days, I can smell a lousy script. Because if the script has this one line of dialogue, it’s a no. If an actor says to the other one, “Are you okay?”
Watch. How many movies have, “Are you okay?” It is stunning. Almost any action movie. “You okay?” You’ll get any drama. So, if it has, “Are you okay?” I’m out.
Hope: We have a second Melissa, actually, who wanted to know, were there any scenes as a kid that really scared you, stuck with you?
Campbell: There was a movie called The Beast with Five Fingers, and it was a black and white movie that I saw late night in Michigan some winter night. And it was this disembodied hand that was crawling around. I remember waiting for the bus the next morning, and my leg was kind of like bouncing up and down, nervous. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m thinking of that movie. How creepy.’
And the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre to me is always going to be hard to beat. We were really impressed by that one. Because once the horror starts in that movie, it never lets up until the very end. So disturbing and just good, raw filmmaking. The early images were enough to make me almost walk out of the movie. These creepy people dug up bodies out a graveyard, draped them over the tombstones in a grotesque way. And we’re seeing police photographs of them at the beginning, which are ugly and blurred and washed out. I’m like, “Oh, I don’t think I’m going to make it. This is the opening image. I don’t think I can.” And I tell you, Leatherface, top five bad guys.
Hope: Oh, definitely.
George: We can’t wait to see you in town. It seems like it’s about time you put “o-Rama” after your name, doesn’t it?
Campbell: Well, you do get certain distinctions if you’ve been around for a while.
Bruce-o-Rama – the 7 p.m. Last Fan Standing game show followed by a screening of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn – comes to Kemba Live on Friday, April 21. Tickets are on sale now.