Long live the King

By Charles Purcell
February 18, 2005
Bruce Campbell faces the scariest being of all - an undead Liberace after his jumpsuit.


Elvis isn't dead; he's fighting the undead. Cult-film hero Bruce Campbell drew on all his Evil Dead experience.

Director: Don Coscarelli
Stars Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce
Rated M
Opens Thursday

Bruce Campbell is living in the woods. You'd think that'd be the last place the hero of the Evil Dead horror movies would be hanging out. After all, the last two times his character Ash stepped into a remote forest cabin, all his friends died horribly. He only escaped thanks to his talent for wasting the undead, armed with one-liners, a chainsaw and a shotgun.

"I'm living in a very remote area in Oregon," Campbell says.

He's not looking for the Necronomicon, the evil book that can summon demons and raise the dead, is he?

"No, there's not a Necronomicon in sight," he says. "Although I do use a chainsaw a lot up here for brush clearance. I'm OK with it."

Does he own a shotgun to blast the undead? His "boomstick", as he called it in Evil Dead 3?

"No, no guns for me," he says. "I'm the only guy in the entire valley who has no guns. They have guns for critters, guns for home protection, guns for the sake of guns, guns for skeet shooting, guns for hunting. I'll leave that to my brother ... he's the gun guy in my family."

What if skeletons attack Campbell's house? Will he run or quip, Ash-style, "Come get some"?

"They can't get up my driveway," says the man with the killer chin. "It's too steep."

Campbell fights the undead again in the horror-comedy Bubba Ho-Tep. He plays Elvis Presley, who switched places with an impersonator decades ago and now lives in a Texas retirement home, griping about the odd growth on his "pecker". Despite his sideburns and shades, no one believes he's the King.

No one, that is, except for former US president John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis), who also lives in the home. To protect his identity, JFK has had his skin dyed black. And his brain was stuffed with sand. And he has a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald above his bed.

When a Egyptian mummy starts sucking out the souls of the residents through their backsides, the pair team up to kick undead butt.

Campbell does a good job channelling the "thin" Elvis in the quirky, low-budget comedy. He even got to wear jumpsuits custom-made by the company that supplied Elvis.

"There's a really easy way to speak [like Elvis] - you just let your lips go rubber-like," he says, slurring his words in a more-than-passable imitation of the King.

"The jumpsuits were oddly comfortable. They grip and grab you in all the wrong places, but you really kind of feel put together. I could see that when Elvis started to bloat out a little it was a good suit to keep him in place."

Bubba Ho-Tep explores how this Presley, tired of his life and so-called friends, trades places at the height of his fame. Campbell says the real Elvis might have appreciated the idea.

"He really did get tired of it. It was physically demanding, so that's why he got into the little pills to bring you up, little pills to bring you down, little pills to make you happy. And you can't take a shit, so you need pills for that. The guy died at 42."

On the toilet.

"Yeah, straining at stools. That was a quote."

The standing gag is that Elvis, the former king of rock'n'roll, is now using a Zimmer frame. How was using a frame all the time?

"It actually helped a lot because you could lean on it all day long," he says.

Does he recommend frames for all actors?

"Bring it on," says the 46-year-old.

Campbell has high praise for his director, the relatively obscure horror-fantasy director Don Coscarelli, and the late veteran actor Davis.

"Who better than Ossie Davis to play a completely insane man?" he says. "He was really cool. It was like Kofi Annan on the set."

Campbell, a self-described "B-grade actor", says he is working on a few film projects, as well as a book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. How does one do that? With chainsaws?

"Fictitiously," he says. "You do it by writing a novel. Faking every minute of it."

The actor says Sam Raimi, director of the "splatstick" Evil Dead series and Spider-Man, recommended him to Coscarelli for Bubba Ho-Tep. The Raimi connection also scored Campbell roles in Spider-Man and its sequel. In the first movie he plays a wrestling MC who introduces Peter Parker as "the Amazing Spider-Man". In the second he's a surly theatre usher who refuses to let in a late Parker.

"I named [him] in the first one, and in the second one I'm the only character that defeats Spider-Man," he says. "Even Doc Ock didn't defeat Spider-Man. In part three, watch out."

What is Raimi like to work with?

"He's like a little general," Campbell says. "He's very boisterous. He always tends to grab the megaphone from the assistant director's hand and shout out at the extras, 'You over there, pick up the pace, pick it up.'

"He always wears a suit, but his tie is always sideways and his hair is going in the opposite direction. He's a real character."