Bruce Campbell has played many great roles in his career, but he'll forever be linked with the Evil Dead series. Campbell played Ashley Williams in three movies and a TV series that only recently ended, so the actor has been part of the franchise for his entire career. That sort of history likely creates a lot of memorable moments, but Campbell says that his best memory of being part of Evil Dead came way back at the beginning, when the first film actually made it to theaters, including the one where he grew up watching movies. According to Campbell...
Really, the main satisfaction came way back, first Evil Dead when the movie showed, I went to see it on a Saturday afternoon at the Showcase Cinema at Pontiac, Michigan where I saw The Poseidon Adventure as a kid. It's where I saw all of my formative years' movies, in that theater. To go there, middle of the afternoon, there's like 15 people there, I didn't care, to have our movie projected in the same theater, that was it. It was all gravy after that, because I never thought we could get to that. Have our movie showing in our movie theater? No way. No way.
The original The Evil Dead back in 1981 wasn't exactly a blockbuster. It was a horror movie made on the cheap by a bunch of friends, including Bruce Campbell and his buddy Sam Raimi who directed the film. It wasn't a movie that was going to fill a movie theater, but for Bruce Campbell, the fact that it was on the screen at all was the win. He sat in the same theater as a kid and watched movies and wondered what it might be like to be up there on that screen (because we've all wondered that) and then, a decade later, he's experiencing exactly that as he sits in the same seat. It's no wonder no experience has topped that one. How could it?
While nobody expected The Evil Dead to become a franchise, the original film became a cult classic which spawned a pair of sequels. The trilogy continued to be popular for years until it eventually spawned the series Ash vs. Evil Dead, which was just recently canceled. The actor also told Comicbook.com that he's happy he was able to take a more recent shot at playing Ash, as he always thought it was strange that he was forever associated with his very first film role.
Bruce Campbell isn't entirely done with the Evil Dead quite yet, as it was recently announced he would be lending his voice to an upcoming video game. Whether or not Bruce Campbell ever plays Ash again in the flesh isn't all that important to him, it's all gravy from here.
