Not every famous actor has achieved fame through a conventional career, including typical Hollywood blockbusters and popular movies. Some who travel to Hollywood take a road less traveled, taking on independent movies or more daring niche genres like comedy-horror or found-footage films.Bruce Campbellis a famous example.
Bruce Campbell made a name for himself as an actor, producer, and sound editor in the realm of “B Movies,” or movies that are cheaper, more avant-garde, and don’t have much glossy publicity to back them up. He has worked frequently with writer and producer Sam Raimi, and their collaborative work is always unique and creative, even if big studios aren’t endorsing it. Throughout his long and interesting career, these are some of Campbell’s best movies.
5Escape From L.A.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
John Carpenter might be the only other director who understands Bruce Campbell as well as Sam Raimi does, which is why this small role has such a profound impact on the rest of the movie.Escape From LAdidn’t get the same love as its cult-classic predecessor,Escape From New York, but it still had a few memorable and iconic moments.
This time,our hero Snake, also known as Jake Plissken, has been sent to the city-wide prison of Los Angeles to rescue the president’s daughter. Utopia has rebelled against her father’s authoritarian theocratic regime and has delivered a weapon of war to her boyfriend, who happens to be the leader of the rebel forces amassing in L.A. and planning an escape.
Bruce Campbell enters the picture as the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills. The rumors of plastic surgery and body augmentation that were famous in this neighborhood are manifested in a gruesome but strangely hilarious reality. The Surgeon is harvesting body parts on behalf of his clients, who are using surgery and implants to try and stay alive, and he covets Snake’s stunning blue eye.
4Maniac Cop
IMDb Rating: 6.0
This isn’t the story of a cop who turned bad because of trauma or corruption, but a monster who came back from the dead to seek revenge on the ungrateful populace that he died protecting. Matthew Cordell was a cop who was following a paper trail of corruption that led him to City Hall. He was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, only to be mutilated and murdered in prison.
Maniac Copis another cult classic that made a name for itself with shameless, visceral gore, and overly dramatic acting. Bruce Campbell teamed up with Robert Z’Dar is a match made in horror heaven. Campbell plays the role of Jack Forrest, a fellow cop who has been framed for Cordell’s crimes, and has to catch the titular maniac to clear his name. It’s not just the undead cop that’s scary, but the corrupt police department that keeps trying to hide that he exists.
3Darkman
IMDb Rating: 6.4
Bruce Campbell’s name doesn’t appear in the casting, but he actuallyhad several important rolesinDarkman, which is one of Sam Raimi’s earliest and most popular movies. This was one of the first big-screen adaptations of a comic book, and like so many of Campbell’s other projects, it’s become a cult classic that withstands the test of time.
Raimi developed the comic book from a short story he had written about a man who could change his face and use his power to fight crime. He spent some time trying to bring the project to the screen. In keeping with his signature style, the story is dark, disturbing, and deeply compelling.
Campbell appears only once in the movie, as the disguised main character in the closing scenes. In the credits, he appears as “Final Shemp.” He also provided voice dubbing for Darkman and several other characters during the post-production process.
2Bubba Ho-tep
IMDb Rating: 6.9
On the surface, this film is a drama about two elderly men facing the end of their lives in a lonely nursing home. Underneath that dull exterior are none other than John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley. Together, they’ve joined forces to fight an agent of evil: the ancient mummy Bubba Ho-tep.
The staff in the nursing home accepts that the patient they know as Sebastian Haff has a delusionthat he’s Elvis, but Sebastian narrates a very plausible story about growing tired of the celebrity lifestyle and swapping with an Elvis impersonator. When a fire destroys his original documentation, followed by the high-profile death of the only other person who knew about the trade, the last person left who knows the truth is a doddering old man in a nursing home. And of course, nobody believes him.
It’s more comedy than horror, and it could be the most mainstream role on Campbell’s resume. It’s mostly a ghost story, with little to no gore, but plenty of unconventional toilet humor reminiscent of the frat-boy movies of the 1970s and early 1980s.
1The Evil Dead
IMDb Rating: 7.4
Even people who don’t like horror movies likeEvil Dead. It’s a true horror movie, but it’salso strangely unsettling, and hysterically funny. The tone and subject perfectly match Campbell’s acting style, and it all came together to make one of history’s best-loved and most popular cult-classic horror movies.
Ashley Joanna Williams, also known as Ash, is a naive everyman who ends up in the typical cabin in the woods with his girlfriend on a dark, moonless night. They’re accompanied by three friends, but as it goes with these stories, eventually Ash is the only one left by the time morning comes. When it seems he might be the lone survivor, a demon attacks him, but his ultimate fate remains a mystery at the end.
The movie spawned a whole franchise, including two direct sequels that also starred Campbell as the iconic Ash. Many of the movie’s inventive use of props and sets have also become cultural icons, such as the now infamous demonic book The Necronomicon, which is referenced anytime someone picks up an evil book.
