The Campbell Chronicles

The Campbell Chronicles #8: Moontrap

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 12:12:00 -0500

Under the jump lies a review for the 1989 Bruce Campbell/Walter Koenig sci-fi film “Moontrap!”

1989 was an interesting year for Bruce. In spite (or perhaps because) of the cult success surrounding the release of Evil Dead II two years prior, he started taking on a lot of roles independently produced sci-fi cheapies, establishing both his fame as a b-movie actor and a supporter of independent cinema. The first example of this genre in Bruce’s oeuvre is ‘Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat’. The second is today’s subject, “Moontrap”.

It is immortalized in Bruce’s autobiography as having used powdered concrete on its sets to simulate the moon’s surface, but doesn’t get much notice otherwise. Perhaps this is because it doesn’t feature Bruce in a starring role; instead he’s something of a sidekick to Walter Koening, who portrays Jason, an astronaut and single father whose dreams of adventure have been somewhat thwarted by the unlucky fact of his age – too young in the ‘60’s and too old in the 80’s, as the narrative helpfully points out, to participate in long-term missions on the moon. During a routine exploration of the lunar surface, Jace and his partner, Ray, discover a previously unidentified object on the moon’s crust, as well as a corpse. After successfully retrieving those articles, they’re carbon dated back home by NASA - and discovered to be thousands of years old. The two are selected to head back to the moon to conduct a probe mission. Unfortunately Jason’s dreams are thwarted, as their probe ends up digging up a cybernetic alien life form – the sort that’s trying to enslave all of humanity.

Moontrap is an odd duck; it looks good, has good direction, and has decent cinematography for what it is, but the storyline doesn’t quite muster enough interest to match the committed performances of the actors involved. It tries to make a catchphrase of the line ‘We don’t take no shit off of machines’; that alone should give you an idea of the quality involved here.

Bruce is good as the fun-loving party boy Ray, who ends up becoming part of the aliens’ plot in an unexpected way - his scene in a strip club is hilarious. He’s only in about the first half of the movie, and disappears for a long stretch to make room for a romantic subplot between Jace and a lovely fugitive alien. Koneig is excellent; you can see him poking and prodding at his legendary turn in Star Trek and having more fun than anyone else on the set.

If you’d rather watch a cheese sci-fi epic with a higher Bruce quotient, try “Mindwarp”, but if you don’t mind a movie with a lower Bruce factor (or the idea of a Walter Koenig love scene), pick up “Moontrap”!

xxmandarxx: Moontrap (1989) Huge robot creatures are attacking...

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 20:49:57 -0500

xxmandarxx:

Moontrap (1989)

Huge robot creatures are attacking while Bruce ninja kicks a coffee vending machine… :)

“Hey, we don’t take no shit from a machine.”

xxmandarxx: A clip from Moontrap (1989).

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 20:49:35 -0500

xxmandarxx:

A clip from Moontrap (1989).

The Campbell Chronicles #7 - Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:10:06 -0500

Under the jump: My review of the 1990-released horror-comedy starring David Carradine and Bruce Campbell, “Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat”.

Sundown: The Vampire In Retreat should not be as adorable as it is. One of those pleasant, quirky little independent pictures that has never gotten the notice it deserves, it went directly to video without a theatrical release; even Bruce remarks infrequently on the shoot – and when he does, it’s to say that he had a great time hiking about the Mojave Mountains. But that’s shortchanging the picture – it actually does a good job putting a very unique spin on a very tired genre.

Don’t let the box cover fool you – this isn’t a dramatic horror picture, not does Bruce have the true lead. In tone, the rather in a similar vein as The Monster Squad and other horror comedies; it earns its R rating through some gore (including a memorable head severing), but it treads surprisingly close to being a genial family horror comedy; with a number of edits, you could even show it to your church group .

The plot focuses on the citizens of Purgatory, Arizona, all of whom are vampires. Wearing sunglasses, hats and gloves so they can roam the outside world during the daylight hours, they range in disposition from the genial Jozek Mardulakl, the town’s leader, who has encouraged his charges to remain peaceful and hide themselves from the rest of the world, to the firebrand Ethan Jefferson, who wants to return to their human-hunting, blood sucking ways. They drink substitute blood and generally enjoy their endless afterlife, though being cut off from the universe does bother them.

Two outsiders converge on the town at the same time; Robert Van Helsing (Bruce), the clumsy great-grandson of the legendary vampire slayer, who has decided to lay waste to the town’s vamps, and the Harrison family, summoned to fix the town’s artificial blood factory. David foolishly thinks this will provide his family with a great vacation, but his daughters soon become intrigued by Jozek’s world, and his wife becomes the quarry for one of Jefferson’s henchmen, who becomes obsessed with her. Meanwhile, Robert starts to fall for the pretty and soft-spoken Sandy.

“Sundown” is one of those delightful surprises that jumps out of Bruce’s usual oeuvre and grabs ahold of you. Neither an uberserious blood-letting nor a gigglefest, the movie offers up a couple of thoughtful moments among its 80s cheese (And a note on that – if you find religious material offensive you might not enjoy this one). It has a little bit of everything, and contains some pretty rootable heros.

David Carradine does an excellent job as the morally grounded Jozek, and Bruce and Deborah Foreman (she of Valley Girl and My Chauffer fame) sell the Robert/Sandy romance. Bruce is spastic to a wild degree in this performance, just what Robert’s nervy, twitchy persona requires. There’s very little to dislike in this flick, unless you like your gore less whimsical and more seriously-told; everything from the storyline to the production values are top-notch. Highly recommended, and quite worth digging up if you’re a Campbell fan.

The Campbell Chronicles #6 - Maniac Cop

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:05:00 -0500

Under the jump: A review of The Cohen/Lustig direct-to-video slasher pic, Maniac Cop.

(Warning: this review contains some SPOILERS!)

SO: Maniac Cop. Created in 1988 by Slasher-epic genius William Lustig (Maniac) and written by Larry Cohen (journeyman writer and director of many exploitation pictures, including the mutant-baby flick “It’s Alive!”.), “Maniac Cop” was another entry in the 80’s slasher genere, which featured lots of pretty girls screaming loudly in their underwear while their throats were sliced in two. Popular at the dawn of cable and the early days of VHS, many kids my age would sneak down and watch these snowy bits of exploitation cinema while their parents snoozed; these tended to be our first brushes with the genre, though most of us would likely admit that we were distracted by the actor’s assets. But Maniac Cop is unique for a few reasons, chief among them that it’s not scantily-dressed teenagers getting their throats cut here – our main protagonist is a man, and our antagonist is far more sympathetic than the so-called heroes.

The plot is simple: an individual dressed in a policeman’s uniform has begun murdering people indiscriminately in New York City. Assigned to the case is Frank McCrey, who vows to bring the man in. The case shifts focus when the emotionally unbalanced wife of Jack Forrest is murdered after witnessing Jack’s tryst with his partner, the 80’s-tastic Theresa Mallory. Jack’s put behind bars and branded the Maniac Cop; but, unfortunately, he quite quickly proves to be a red herring, and after several more bloody set pieces it’s up to Jack and Theresa to bring in the true killer.

We spend more time with Frank than Jack in this picture, which in a way proves problematic when Frank eventually dies – while Frank is a smart, upstanding cop, Jack is the kind of guy who sleeps with his blonde knockout of a partner – unfortunately crimped hair notwithstanding – because his wife is a neurotic mess who’s giving him a little extra stress on the homefront (gee, buddy, maybe she’d worry less about you being a murderer you’d stop lying to her about being on the duty roster to go knock boots with Theresa!). Some say this makes Jack more complex, but in fact, since we’re given no other impression of what kind of cop or person he is – just that he likes to cheat on his wife and is punctual when he’s actually on the duty roster – it makes him flat-out unappealing. In fact, once we find out about Matt Cordell’s past and the movie switches gears from action/horror to supernatural/horror, I find myself rooting for him to take out Theresa and Jack (Which – spoiler for Maniac Cop 2 – he eventually does).

Not everything the movie does is wrong. In fact, Maniac Cop plays with the strictures of the slasher genre and has fun doing it, which is one of the better reasons to see it. It also does a great job of establishing its New York locations and giving us a feel for the Big Apple’s teaming streets on its limited budget. Richard Roundtree is excellent in his limited role as a police captain, and Tom Atkins holds together the picture as Frank.

But as for Bruce, his role isn’t novel, it’s a rather very close to a tribute to The Fugitive. It’s his first movie as a bonified action star separate from the horror genre, but the part is an interesting inverse of the usual slasher movie tropes – it’s Bruce, and not his co-star, who is in several instances asked to stand still and look handsome. In fact, Maniac Cop has very little cheesecake on display (despite what the recent Blu-Ray re-release of the flick might suggest), but there are extended scenes in which Bruce is the one who’s topless. Jack is a surprisingly passive hero in several ways – though he tries actively to escape his fate, he’s often a victim of circumstance and of Matt Cordell, as much if not more than Theresa and various other female extras. That’s why the movie earns extra points in my book.

Maniac Cop went on to become a staple on Cinemax and other cable stations, which rotated it for years among their late-night offerings. Today it’s seen as a stand-out in the slasher genre for its uniqueness in thematic structure, choice of villain and some kinetic set pieces. In my opinion, in the grand canon of Bruce’s oeuvre, there are far better movies and far worse movies. Call this one middle-range, unless you really love slasher flicks or like your Bruce shirtless.

The Campbell Chronicles #5: Evil Dead II

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:00:00 -0500

Under the cut: A review of the iconic Evil Dead II

Evil Dead 2 exploded into existence in the summer of 1987 for several reasons. The biggest was that, as even Bruce himself has stated repeated, because he, Rob and Sam failed to interest Hollywood in anything that WASN’T Evil Dead after Crimewave bombed. So they returned to what they knew best: a cabin in the woods, located this time just under the Mason/Dixon - in the previous home of Celie from The Color Purple.

Filming was somewhat less chaotic than the shoot for The Evil Dead, taking place almost entirely in Wadesboro, North Carolina (with one shot, the force-POV in which Ash is possessed, taking place in South Carolina). Because Sam couldn’t get the rights to his own footage back from New Line Cinema in time, they re-shot the beginning of Ash’s saga, which has since lead to great fandom confusion. Yes, Evil Dead 2 is a sequel, not a remake – this from the horse’s own mouths. If you cut from the force pouncing upon Ash at the end of Evil Dead to Ash’s possession at the early point of Evil Dead 2, you will have the makings of a complete, single movie.

Evil Dead 2 is my favorite among the three movies in the series, mostly because it takes Ash through a rollercoaster of a journey physically and spiritually. The visuals are sumptuously arranged into a fantasia of paranoiac nightmares, and Bruce Campbell brings both emotional gravitas and goofy rubber-faced heroics to the role. It’s his most demanding outing for Ash, emotionally – for the first time, you feel the deep ache of his loss of Linda, and the maddening grip of his mental downward spiral.

Sam Raimi’s palette of darkness invading the light is consistent and beautifully wrought; blood-colors melting into the orange of sunsets, into the tans of the sepia-toned conclusion. It’s like a trip to Dorothy’s worst nightmare; an Oz where the evil’s coming from every side, and it won’t be satisfied ‘til you’re ripped apart.

Plotwise, the movie is even more simplistic than The Evil Dead; twentyish college kids Ash and Linda head on a vacation into the mountains, where they foolishly decide to play a tape recording of Professor Raymond Knowby’s translation of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis aloud. The result awakens the darkness hidden in woods, resulting in Linda becoming a giggling and soon-decapitated demon. Kandar then sets its sights on driving Ash insane in as many ways as possible. Their quest for world domination widens when the professor’s daughter, Annie, and her party of guides show up in search of her father.

Most of the emotion – outside of Ash’s revulsion and fear at being used so cruelly – are rendered with surprising subtlety. Ash’s initial romance with Linda, and his eventual camaraderie with Annie, are shot and written beautifully, with surprisingly quiet strokes of genius.

Of course, about Ash’s rise to bravado is the main story here. Bruce takes on the mantle of an action hero for the first time, and this is his first moment of manly, dangerous swagger. All of the self-assurance he’s shown onscreen since then explodes to life for the first time in this movie.

Evil Dead 2 is the best of the Evil Dead Trilogy for many reasons – it’s a smooth balance of many genres, beautifully rendered with a visual style you’ve never seen and will likely never see again. It’s an essential movie in Bruce’s oeuvre, and one you must see before you die.

The Campbell Chronicles #4: Crimewave

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:05:00 -0500

Under the jump is a review of the Joel and Ethan Cohen-penned, Sam-Raimi directed and Bruce-costarring action/romance/humor picture, Crimewave.

By 1983, Sam Raimi had finally secured financing for a script written by his pals (and editors on the original Evil Dead) the Cohen Brothers. Raimi’s first major studio production and the Rami/Tapert/Campbell consortium’s first swing at the big leagues, ‘Crimewave’ is a screwball comedy crossed with a thriller crossed with a Zucker Brothers farce married to a Three Stooges short. It saw release two years after filming completed, and sank quickly at the box office.

Filming entirely in Detroit Michigan and using several friends as extras (watch for a cameo by a young Ted Raimi), Crimewave concerns itself with a zealous nebbish named Victor, who wants nothing more than to date his dream girl, the pure-hearted Nancy, who unfortunately only has eyes for Renaldo, “The Heel”, who planning on swindling Victor’s boss Mr. Trend out of his fortune and turning his security firm into a strip club. Mr. Trend hires two ruthless killers to exterminate his partner, but the two men aren’t very businesslike in their practice; they’ll kill anything that catches their fancy, or anything that steps in their path. Their path of destruction is primed to crash head-on into Renaldo, Nancy and Victor’s night on the town, a dinner and dancing date in which the former hopes to win Nancy’s love for once and for all.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong with Crimewave – but one is tempted to say “everything”. The Cohens eventually successfully captured and yet parodied Frank Capra’s whimsy (In the underrated masterpiece “The Hudsucker Proxy”), but their similar attempt here crashes head-on into Sam Raimi’s nervy directing, and the result is a loud, overblown mess. Add grating lead performances and executive meddling that would dissuade the most hardened producer, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The only enjoyable performances – perhaps this sounds biased – are Bruce’s smooth, ridiculous take on Renaldo and Louise Lassiter, whose distressed damsel Mrs. Trend becomes the target of the exterminators after witnessing them in action. There is a great sense of there being too much packed onto the screen – of everything leaping and screaming and shouting for your attention all at once. It’s sensory overload, and while that works in many other Raimi pictures, here it causes the audience to wrinkle up their nose and recoil in repulsion. On one level it’s understood that they’re parodying the caffeinated comedies of the forties; on the surface lies the brassy overproduction of the movie itself, belying the entire effect.

It’s possible that all of this might have been tempered by a better lead performance. Why Embassy Pictures insisted on hiring the Reed Birney for the role of Victor (which was written for Bruce) it’s hard to determine; he provides a manic and yet bland performance that’s as bewildering as it is stultifying. Needless to say Campbell could have taken Victor’s story a notch higher, but could he have overcome the script’s imperfections?

Should we laugh at Vic’s plight? Are we supposed to sympathize with it? Are we to wink with post-modern irony? The movie can be taken as a madcap farce, even though it’s too grating to be enjoyed that way - in any event it’s too irritating to bother to try.

No one escaped the making of Crimewave unscathed; even Bruce himself said the best part of creating the movie was that the entirety of the making, post-production occurred in tandem with the conception and birth of his daughter Rebecca. Today the movie occupies an odd place in Bruce’s career pantheon, a DVD rarity, not quite quirky enough to be a cult classic.

* Please note that I’m skipping over Generations, as no footage of the soap beyond its brief clip in Fargo has surfaced on the internet. Michigan-native Brucefen who had VCRs in the early 80s: you know what to do!

The Campbell Chronicles #3: The Evil Dead

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:00:00 -0500

Under the cut: The review of the granddaddy of them all: The Evil Dead.

It is, perhaps, needless for me to write about the Evil Dead after the world has spilled so much ink about it. It’s, perhaps, the most documented movies Bruce has ever done; the shoot itself is a highly-chronicled thing of legend. Yet no BC chonicle is complete without a review of it, so here we go!

The premise is simple: five college kids from Michigan travel to Tennessee to partake in a booze-and-pot-soaked weekend. The revelers are the endearingly innocent couple Ash and Linda, the more worldly Scott and Shelly, and Ash’s artistic, resolutely sober sister Cheryl. We barely have time to get to know those involved before the mayhem begins – Scott finds a book made of human skin and a reel-to-reel tape recorder in the fruit cellar. Being a bunch of dumb kids, they play the recording, which awakens a bunch of evil demons, who possess all of the kids one by one, rotting them from the inside.

The movie is effectively horrific, not just because of the gory effects, or in spite of the somewhat amateurish performances of the leads (Bruce himself has often said he cringes at his performance for the first half of the movie, but there’s something powerful about his performance anyway.) but in spite of what’s on the written page. The secret strength of the Evil Dead is that the performances can be surprisingly touching.

It’s the details you have to really attention to. Ash and Linda’s relationship, stripped of all backstory, is given depth by the way Bruce looks at Betsy Baker. My favorite moment? Ash grabbing Linda’s hand when the recorder informs them of their impending doom.

Ash, of course, gets his first run here, but he’s not yet the character that would launch a million one liners and sell a thousand teeshirts - no, he’s sensitive, quiet and even naive. Sam Raimi (through the hindsight that is the Evil Dead comic book reboot) has tried, retroactively, to rewrite this version of Ash as a badass, but I find the idea of him growing into his brash cockiness more appealing. He starts out as a witness to his own life in many ways; by the end of Army of Darkness, he’s in the driver’s seat. But, appropriately, in his first outing he is a scared and eventually lonely man just out of his teenage years, unable to confront the powers of black magic, illicit sex and vicious death, eventually driven to and beyond madness by them. We feel bad for him, a sympathy that keeps him in good stead through Army of Darkness if you witness the trilogy as a whole.

There’s something almost depressing about viscerally watching the hopes and dreams of the young being dashed. Not to mention their lives and immortal souls. As Bruce has said before, the Evil Dead is about death – EVERYTHING, even the music, dies in the course of an hour. It’s the sort of movie you never forget -depending on your attitude, this may be a good thing or a bad thing. Personally, this is my least favorite of the three movies in the trilogy, mostly because it’s somewhat depressing to watch in spite of the entirely original direction and effective, claustrophobic building of suspense. Horror movies where the hero has no hope of saving his skin always prove a depressing affair for me; even though Ash survives (because Crimewave failed), we end on what’s supposed to be his ultimate doom - turning back into Ash, to dust. And that’s a sad way to go out for anyone.

The Campbell Chronicles #2 - Within The Woods

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:05:00 -0500

Under the jump is a review of “Within The Woods”, the test film Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Ellen Sandweiss made made to raise money for the filming of The Evil Dead.

“Within the Woods” is perhaps best known as being the ‘first’ Evil Dead by fans of the trilogy. What it actually is, of course, is a movie Sam, Bruce and Rob created to show advertisers that they meant business and had the chops necessary to bring in big box office.

The result was a Super 8 short based on a short story written by Sam for his college lit class called ‘Within The Woods’. While it serves as a template for bigger, better things, it also freezes the Campbell/Raimi crew as they stand poised at the cliff between adult responsibility and youthful enthusiasm. Everyone knows how that enthusiasm evaporated in the crucible that was the endless shoot for The Evil Dead; here, there’s the burgeoning sense of hope and excitement that these artists could be something, someday, even more so than with the various earlier short films.

The plot is formulaic and classic slasher stuff. Two couples go on vacation at a farmhouse deep within the woods. One set heads into the forest to have a picnic; the other stays behind to play Monopoly.

The first couple – played by Bruce and Ellen Sandweiss – flirt and bicker with a charming realness. In a blatant attempt at getting into ‘Ellen’s’ pants, Bruce’s character (uniquely enough named ‘Bruce’) tells her that they’re picnicking on an ancient Indian burial ground - but she shouldn’t worry, because he’ll protect her. While digging a firepit, Bruce discovers several Native American artifacts, proving that he spoke the truth. He thinks they’re safe, the graves undesecrated – but he’s wrong. Really wrong. When Ellen takes a nap, the spirits rise up, kill him and then chase a terrified Ellen to the farmhouse. It soon turns out that Bruce’s corpse has been possessed by the native spirits, who still want Ellen’s blood for participating in the destruction of their resting place.

‘Within The Woods’ isn’t as polished or claustrophobic as ‘The Evil Dead’, but it does afford several thrills and shocks. The performances are serviceable; from the excellent Ellen Sandweiss to an early example of Bruce’s tendency toward ham to the somewhat wooden turn of Scott Spiegel.

The plot was reused to some degree for The Evil Dead with several changes, including the exchange of a female protagonist for a male one. There are shades of what will happen to Christine Brown in ‘Drag Me to Hell’ in Ellen’s dilemma; she faces them with much more assertiveness than Christine displays, however, which makes her a more sympathetic heroine.

What really helps the movie is the fact that it’s not available in any gussied-up, remastered version; the grainy, jumpy, highly deteriorated cuts available on Youtube and in bootlegs adds to the eerie atmosphere. Every shot feels like that person’s last known picture, making the life-or-death struggles onscreen very, very effective.

The Campbell Chronicles #1 - The Early Bruce Campbell shorts

everyonelikedbubbahotep — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:08:05 -0500

Under here: a review of The Early Bruce Campbell Shorts, as distributed by Josh Becker at his website.

Hi, I’m Missy, bringing you the first installment of The Campbell Chronicles! In this series of reviews, I’ll be recapping Bruce’s career to this date with what is hopefully wit and passion. This series will eventually culminate in a weekly Burn Notice recap when the show comes back on the air, along with one-off opinion pieces on any further movies or projects he participates in!

To start us off, let’s go back to the beginning, which is, as they say, a very good place to start. As any Bruce biography worth its salt will tell you all about how Bruce and Josh Becker grew up together in suburban Detroit, where they (along with the rest of the Raimi gang) spent much of their high school lives making Super 8 films. The best known of these Josh Becker has recently released (legally) to the public for the first time.

Since it’s only fair to review the stuff that’s legally available versus the stuff that’s been bootlegged**, I’m going to review the “Bruce Campbell Short Collection”, which is available to everyone for a fee for purchase at Josh Becker’s official website; I encourage everyone to buy it there if you’re going to purchase a copy, since the profits go directly into Josh’s pockets that way.

The earliest-shot piece in the set is disc 4′s “Oedipus Rex”. A project shot for their shared 9th grade English class, it’s entirely silent, adorably amateurish, and valuable as a curio to show just how far Bruce and Josh have come in the arts; the sort of thing every hometown auteur has hiding in their closet at home.

When Bruce strolls onto the stage gesturing (a trait typical of his acting to this day), his presence is, of course, not yet commanding – there’s something goofily appealing about him, though. And there isn’t much else to say – it’s really only recommendable to the Bruce fanperson who has everything or who wants to have everything.

The next short is “The Final Round”, a boxing comedy in which Becker plays Noah Feinberg, the world’s whiniest armature boxer, who gets in over his head with two promoters who want to arrange an easy KO for their champ. Bruce, aged up with white sideburns, plays one of the crooked promoter with amusing, Groucho-like panache. Becker’s performance is the one that holds things together; it belongs in a Three Stooges short (and with this group, that’s no insult).

“Acting And Reacting” is my favorite among the shorts released in this set, if only because it features the following:

A: A tiny and already fierce Ted Raimi.

B: Sam Raimi pantomiming cheesily.

C: Bruce in Clark Kent glasses and suspenders.

And

D: Bruce’s character trying to pick up girls by staging a mini-Lightsaber battle with a knife and salt and pepper shakers.

There’s a plot? What plot? Okay, the plot involves a guy named Maury who wins friends and influences people by learning how to properly act and react to things. It’s amusingly existential, Bruce plays the socially inept guy to the hilt, and the whole production hits my squee button. (And if you make ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ jokes throughout the short, you are not alone.)

“Holding It” is actually an interesting suspense drama writ large on a small budget, and you can see the portents that lead to ‘Running Time’ within it; Bruce plays both a government agent and a villain who’s out to get an ordinary man who gets stuck holding the bag during a drop-off. Effective, but the milieu wouldn’t reach its full glory in Becker’s hands ’til Running Time is released in the mid-90′s (And I have to say that I glory in the extremely colorful and very 70′s wallpaper and clothing on display in this one.)

“The Blind Waiter” is, from beginning to end, a dead-on tribute to the Three Stooges, in which Bruce plays the titular character, pies are thrown and havoc is wrecked. Suitably ludicrous slapstick abounds in such a way that delights.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is “Stryker’s War”, a drama that features Bruce as a recently-returned to the States Vietnam Vet who marshals his unit to do battle with a gang of murderous hippies. Campbell’s Jack Stryker is a prototype for the men-of-action Bruce would eventually play in various TV movies and his performance is a little stolid, so the real surprise here is Sam Raimi, whose wild but effectively creepy portrayal of the crazed Chief steals the movie from right under Bruce’s nose.

Finally, “Cleveland Smith: Bounty Hunter” is a dead-on Indiana Jones parody crossed with a 30′s serial adventure, and it’s hyperbolic and as politically incorrect as any serial from the actual time period it’s parodying. Where else will you get to see Sam Raimi play a Nazi? Or imagine an entire group of headhunters singing the Token’s ‘Wimoweh’?

All good things must come to an end, and in 1985 the group of friends made their final short together (as of this writing), “The Sappy Sap.”

Josh eventually grew up to direct and write the gorgeous crime drama/suspense film “Running Time”, the Ted Raimi starrer “Lunatics: A Love Story”, the infamous “Alien Apocalypse” and various episodes of Xena and Jack of All Trades. He, like Bruce, has become a proud independent filmmaker.

The experience of watching these shorts is like a peak into the childhood dreams of their makers; the formative wit, the style, the drive, are already in place. It would just take opportunity for those seeds to flourish. Luckily, Bruce and Sam would get the chance to grow, but they’d have to make their own opportunities. But that’s another story for another time.

For a complete list of Super 8 Shorts involving Bruce, Sam and Co., visit the incredible Book of the Dead website!

*The exception is, of course, Within The Woods, which is the legendary precursor to Evil Dead.

** Yes, I’m going to make one exception and review Within The Woods, because it’s pivotal to Bruce’s career as an actor. And yes, you can get all of these shorts and more on YouTube, but I won’t link to ‘em out of respect to the makers.