Alright, I am here to drop some science about The Chin; the man; the loud-mouthed braggart from Michigan; Bruce Campbell; and I’m not going to fuck around. The effect on my life of his work is no joking matter, and deserves laser scalpel-precision. I don’t possess that, but I’ll do the best I can.

Bruce and his crew, including the now famous Sam Raimi and his now infamous brother Ted, began making movies at a very young age, busting out 8mm Three Stooges-inspired crime caper flicks instead of getting laid in high school. At some point, the logical conclusion was to put all of their training and experience to use (you can read all about BC’s Summer Stock adventures in his wonderful first book If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor) and make a damn movie. No more shorts, no more pulling their dicks. They got a budget (mainly from the local dental mafia, as Angela already pointed out), got some equipment and actors, and cobbled together what kind of script? A horror script, of course. Why? Because horror was the surest bet to get the money back to their investors (which I think they did…eventually). Normally I would be offended at the reduction of my beloved genre to a get rich quick scheme, but goddamn, even if it was inadvertent, the boys produced quite possibly the greatest horror film of all time.

But my first experience with BC is that film’s sequel, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and it is no exaggeration to say that it was a turning point in my life. I do believe that I was all of thirteen years old, and my brother and I saw the movie on pay-per-view: except this was back in the Stone Age, when you had to actually call an operator and speak to a live person. Being the slightly more aggressive sibling, I was the one to make the call, and the very nice lady did not want to let my young mind be corrupted by such gore-soaked filth. I poured on the charm like I never have before in my life, and eventually she relented. We turned the lights down low, and had our minds blown. I had no previous knowledge that a movie could be like that. It was like a live-action version of the meanest, most fucked up cartoon ever conceived. I mean, that shit makes Itchy and Scratchy look like Family Affair.

The second big BC moment for me was, of course, Army of Darkness. It is not the best in the Evil Dead trilogy (though I am probably one of the few who appreciates the alternate ending to the original, slept-too-long conceit), and definitely suffered from the name-change (Medieval Dead was genius, suckers), but hell, it was a chance to finally see Big Bruce on the Big Screen, to see that mighty jaw muscle flexing in all its twenty-foot high glory. Sure, I had been ingesting a steady diet of Waxwork II, Maniac Cop, Sundown, and even the slight misfire that was Lunatics, but aside from a pathetically nanosecond cameo in Darkman, here was me, copping a squat at the Milford Fourplex, shoveling popcorn into my face and waxing poetic to my friends about Bruce and Sam and the Evil Dead.

At which point I was greeted by total silence and blank stares. I was surrounded by people who had no idea they were seeing part three of the mightiest horror trilogy to ever lumber down the pike. I swear to Christ, I wanted to piss in all of their faces. But I digress….

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