Bruce Campbell has five years, give or take, and a film to tour: 'Live with it, not die from it'
Bruce Campbell told Adam Carolla, in a podcast episode posted last Thursday, September 3, that the cancer he disclosed back in March comes with a number attached. "I'm in a five-year prognosis," he said. "This is what the type of cancer that I have, which I don't want to get into, is the current thing is a five-year deal." When Carolla asked whether that meant five years to live, he answered: "Give or take." He is 67. He did not name the cancer, so neither will we.
What he wanted to talk about was the schedule. Campbell is on the road with Ernie and Emma, the comedy-drama he wrote, directed and stars in. He plays Ernie Tyler, a widowed pear salesman driving around southern Oregon to scatter his late wife's ashes in the places she chose before she died. It premiered at the Holly Theatre in Medford, Oregon on February 14, his first time directing in almost twenty years, and the 18-date Alamo Drafthouse tour that opened last Friday, September 4 in Los Angeles runs to November 14 in Littleton, Colorado. Campbell is in the room for all of it: "I'll be live in these cities to introduce the movie and discuss it afterwards," the tour page promises. Ted Raimi turns up as a dance instructor, which is the most Evil Dead thing about the whole picture.
So yes: a film about a man carrying his wife's ashes across a state, taken on tour by a man who has just put a figure on his own time. Campbell would rather you did not treat it as a wake. On the longevity crowd trying to cheat death, he told Carolla: "You're not really living. You just have a new hobby that you're obsessed with. What is the quality of these extra years?" The cancer forums, the rooms full of people with the same diagnosis? "You can go into focus groups of 10,000 guys who have what you have. I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole." And where he stood, in his own words, when he sat down to record: "Right now, I'm between wax. I feel perfect."
Which leaves forty-five years of work, and an argument fans have had since 1992 that suddenly carries a bit more weight: which Ash is the Ash.
Which Ash is the Ash
There are four screen versions of Ash Williams and they are barely the same character. In The Evil Dead (1981) he is a frightened kid in a cabin, and the star of the film is Sam Raimi's camera, hurtling through the woods at knee height. Ash survives, but he does not yet exist.
Evil Dead II (1987) is where Campbell invents him. Raimi restages the first film in a few breathless minutes and then lets his lead go to pieces: the room that laughs at him, the possessed hand he takes off with a chainsaw, the chainsaw he then bolts to the stump. It is a physical-comedy performance dressed as a horror film, Campbell throwing himself into walls and taking gallons of blood to the face, and it is the only Ash who is scared and funny at the same time. That tension is the character.
Army of Darkness (1992) sends him to the Middle Ages and gives him the lines everyone quotes. It is the most fun of the three, but Ash has become a cartoon of himself by then: all boomstick, no panic. Then Ash vs Evil Dead (2015 to 2018) brings him back thirty years on, a trailer-park lech with a bad back and the same chainsaw, and it is the best late-career work of his life. Three seasons is exactly the right amount.
The crown goes to Evil Dead II. Army of Darkness is the one you put on for a room full of friends. Evil Dead II is the one that made the room want to be there.
Beyond the boomstick
If you only know Campbell as Ash, start with Bubba Ho-tep (2002), where he plays an elderly Elvis in an East Texas nursing home fighting a soul-sucking mummy. It is the funniest premise he ever got and the most serious performance he ever gave, a man taking stock of what he has left. It plays differently now. So does Burn Notice (2007 to 2013), seven seasons of Sam Axe drinking mojitos on a Miami balcony, which is where more people met him than ever saw a Deadite. And Evil Dead Rise (2023) is the proof that the Evil Dead series can run without him, which is a compliment to the world he and Raimi built rather than a replacement for the man.
Here is the order, then. Evil Dead II tonight. Army of Darkness with company. Bubba Ho-tep when you want to see what he can do with a quiet scene. And if Ernie and Emma is coming to an Alamo Drafthouse near you before November 14, go while he is still in the room for it. "I got a movie to promote," he told Carolla. "I'm free and clear when I promote this movie mentally." Take him at his word.
