My Name is Bruce

Special 2 Disc Edition

R4 DVD

Beyond Home Entertainment

Bruce Campbell is an actor who celebrates cult cinema. His popularity rose to fever pitch with Evil Dead and Evil Dead II and throughout his career he has continued to thrill his fans with his B grade output. While other actors have dreamed of the big time, Campbell knew which side his bread was buttered on and accepted pretty well every role thrown at him, from Manic Cop to Serving Sara. Obviously many of these roles were simply to “pay the bills” but he took it in his stride and made us laugh at his less than successful screen roles and shared his joy at his successes.

At the same time his directorial debut of the 2005 The Man With the Screaming Brain was pretty dismal and it did not bode well for the future. However, My Name is Bruce, certainly dispels these fears and is a truly hilarious film and a success on so many levels.

The plot is simple but effective. Bruce Campbell is confused with his onscreen persona of Ash from Evil Dead II and abducted and taken to the small mining town of Gold Lick in the boot of the car of a very young devoted fan. It seems some dumb teens have desecrating a graveyard and awakened the Chinese god of War, Guan-di.

Now Guan-di aims to kill all those related to those who have done this dastardly deed and in a small town like Gold Lick that’s about all of them. It is a small hick town and Bruce is not at all impressed when he first arrives. After a while Bruce comes to thinks this is a birthday prank from his agent (Ted Raimi) but when confronted with Guan-di he realizes the awful truth. He has been hired to be a real hero and fight a real monster.

This is a film packed with slapstick, fastpaced jokes, self referencing humour and lots of self depreciation. Campbell has the ability to laugh at himself and include us in the joke. Part of the humour is the way in which a real life monster drama is intertwined with the making of the film “Cavealien 2”. This mixture of fantasy and reality, the “real” life Bruce Campbell and the on screen actor makes lots of room for all sorts of humour. It also helps give free reign to D grade special effects including silly men in rubber suits; even Guan-di looks so bad, he is marvellous !

It is a remarkable person who can laugh at himself, make fun of his career and films and together celebrate the extreme, if not fanatical, devotion of his fans. Campbell is magnificent sending himself up as arrogant, drunken, indulgent and insensitive. There are only a few actors who can take such humour to the lengths Campbell does and make it work.

There are also lots and lots of in jokes from the two local hicks who are characters from “Brokeback mountain” to the literally hundreds of references to his and other Sci Fi and horror films.

There are also of extras including The Making of Cavealien, Waxing Philosophical with Bruce Campbell, the Making of and a commentary.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.4 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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