Bruce Campbell interview: Hail to the king, baby

HERE are all kinds of actors who inspire devotion in fans. There are heartthrobs, such as Leonardo DiCaprio or Twilight's Robert Pattinson, who induce screaming hysteria whenever teenage girls are in their vicinity. There are screen legends such as Robert De Niro who can reduce serious movie buffs to paroxysms of chin-stroking sycophancy. Then there are the megastars such as Tom Cruise who can bring Leicester Square to a standstill by turning up and spending an hour being professionally famous.

If you haven't heard of Campbell, it's probably safe to say you didn't spend your formative years gorging on The Evil Dead trilogy. Square of jaw and prominent of chin, Campbell is the self-mocking star and co-creator (along with childhood friend and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi) of that legendary and highly influential series of blood-spurting horror films, which began in 1982 with the low-budget DIY-effort Evil Dead, continued with the hilarious Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987) and concluded with the bonkers Army of Darkness (1992). Armed with a chainsaw and an array of cheeseball one-liners ("Give me some sugar, baby", "Grooooovy") his character, Ash, become a horror icon and Campbell the ultimate postmodern B-movie star, acquiring a large, devoted (some might say extreme) fanbase.

How extreme? At a recent appearance at a cinema in Austin, Texas, Campbell had eight separate requests to sign various appendages. No big deal in itself – except that these fans wanted his signature on their body as a template for something a bit more permanent.

"What they would do," says Campbell, "is have a tattoo on their arm already, usually an Evil Dead tattoo, and they'd have a freshly shaved part below it for me to sign so they can then take it to parlour. I did eight of those in a row. That was my record. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise but I don't think he has that kind of fanbase. I don't see Risky Business tattooed on anybody's back."

It's not just in America that Campbell inspires this kind of dedication, either. When we meet, it's in an Edinburgh hotel room on a freezing February afternoon ahead of a special screening at the Cameo of his new film, My Name is Bruce. When his appearance was announced a few weeks earlier, it sold out in just 13 minutes, and with hours still to go until his post-screening Q&A session (which will turn out to be a raucous, hilarious event), someone has already made enquiries about the possibility of Campbell signing a body part for tattoo purposes.

Campbell, who is of Scottish descent ("my ancestors were harness makers who came over to upstate New York in the mid 1700s"), has a few theories about the Campbell cult. "I think they like irreverent stuff. I do too. The Evil Dead movies are also the classic collegiate, escape-from-home, smoke-a-joint-and-laugh-your-ass-off-at-a-movie experience. Plus, of all the horror series, Ash is the only guy who's a good guy. Jason (from Friday the 13th] and Freddy (from A Nightmare on Elm Street] are assholes. Ash is very much the average guy next door, so that might be part of it. And because I'm attracted to more off-kilter stuff, the stuff that I do is on a smaller scale and the people that follow what I do, they follow it more intensely."

As it happens, that fan intensity plays a big part in My Name is Bruce, which sees Campbell having fun with his fans' perception of him as a B-movie star. In it, he plays a jerk-like, egotistical version of himself in a plot that sees a devotee kidnap him from the set of his latest film because he thinks "Bruce Campbell" is the only person who can help save his hometown from an ancient demon. It's silly, knockabout stuff, and Campbell (who also directed it) jumped at the opportunity to feed more of his own experiences with his fans into it.

"I sort of get revenge on my fans through this movie," laughs Campbell. "Fangoria magazine called it a 'love letter to my fans dipped in poison'. I thought that was pretty accurate."

Campbell enjoys the interaction he has with his followers. He's been doing it for 25 years and knows how to deal with them. His Q&A sessions run like slick stand-up comedy shows, with fans setting themselves up for hilarious putdowns by couching their questions with insults. "They get it the worst," says Campbell, "because they're trying to be funny."

He doesn't get insulted at being referred to as a B-movie actor, however. On the contrary he wears it "as a badge of honour. I'm just an actor in my mind, but I don't apologise for B-movies, because all the A-movies are B-movies. If you dress up as a bat, and fly around a city called Gotham and fight a guy called The Joker, that's a B-movie." As for the A-list actors in those movies, he reckons they're kidding themselves if they think what they're doing is important. "It's fantasy, it's no more important than anything else. Everything they're asking Batman to do is the same thing they're asking some actor in a low-budget action movie to do: look cool in a dumb costume." Don't mistake this for sour grapes on Campbell's part. As he points out, "I'm more stereotyped outside the industry than inside the industry," and you need only check his diverse CV, which boasts everything from dramatic work on TV shows such as Homicide: Life on the Street to Disney movies and French films, to see he's speaking the truth.

Having broken through with Evil Dead, over which he and Sam Raimi had complete creative control because they raised the money themselves, he's simply never liked having executives sitting around analysing what he's doing. "I dip my feet in and out of the mainstream, but I'm not all that interested in studio stuff because I find it all gets watered down. The more expensive a movie is, the less risk they take and the characters get more bland."

Still, Campbell lucked out recently by signing up for what has become the highest rated cable-TV show in the US, Burn Notice. "That came out of nowhere really," says Campbell of the comedy-drama series which airs on F/X in the UK. "I was attracted to it because of what the show is not. It's not a cop show; it's not a lawyer show; it's not a doctor show. There's still plenty of action, but it's basically the human side of spies. When things aren't blowing up, the lead guy, Jeffrey Donovan, is helping his mother fix her garbage disposal. That's really what the show is about. My character, Sam Axe, is an ex-Navy Seal and he just wants to sleep with rich Miami women, and when he's not doing that he's drinking."

Campbell has a five-year commitment to Burn Notice, which is one more reason he's keen to squish internet rumours that there will be another Evil Dead film. "The bottom line for us is, we'd go through all that effort and people would watch it and go, 'It wasn't as good as Army of Darkness.'" With fans like Campbell's, that's probably a smart move.

My Name is Bruce and Burn Notice season 1 are released on DVD on 2 March.