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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - June 22nd

BRUCE CAMPBELL (actor, director) born in 1958

Even though he has appeared in 62 films in a 40-year career - and made appearances in 38 television shows - to an entire generation of horror fans, Bruce Campbell will forever be remembered as the wise-cracking, slow-witted, anti-hero "Ash" Williams from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, facing down the legions of Deadite's with his chainsaw hand and double-barreled "boomstick"!

Born in Royal Oak, Michigan, Campbell began acting as a teenager (his father Charles Newton Campbell also being an amateur actor) and soon starting making short Super 8 movies with his friends. After meeting Sam Raimi at Wylie E. Groves High School, the two became very good friends and started making movies together. Campbell would go on to attend Western Michigan University while he continued to work on his acting career. In 1978, Campbell and Raimi collaborated on a 30-minute Super 8 version of the first Evil Dead film, titled Within the Woods, a short film they hoped would help attract investors for a later feature-length version. Although they agreed they needed $150,000 to make the movie, after approaching several investors "begging" for money, only $90,000 was raised. And they decided to go ahead and make the movie anyway with what they had.

It was in The Evil Dead that we are first introduced to Campbell's Ash Williams (full name Ashley J. Williams). Campbell initially portrayed the character as being cowardly and incapable of dealing with the horrors presented to him, taking his predicament very seriously (rather than the more comedic manner he would display in the sequels). Over the course of the film, Ash gradually overcomes his fears and manages to fight off his possessed friends. When there wasn't any filming, Bruce Campbell would actually help out with the crew in prepping shots and moving props around the set, even after twisted his ankle on a root while running down a steep hill; Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert decided to tease him by poking his injury with sticks, thus causing Campbell to have an obvious limp in some scenes! At the end of a 'normal' day of shooting, Campbell would return home in the back of a pickup truck because he was covered in fake blood from head to toe, a low-budget concoction of Karo syrup, non-dairy creamer, and red food coloring. In fact Campbell was covered in so much of it that one time his shirt was so saturated with the fake blood that after drying it by the fire, the shirt became solidified and broke when he tried to put it on!

After completing principal photography in the winter of 1979-1980, most of the actors left the production, except for Campbell who remained to shoot the second-half of the film with various stand-ins (or "Fake Shemps") to replace the actors who left. Such was Campbell's faith in his first film, and in his friend Raimi, Campbell put up his family's property in Northern Michigan as collateral so that Sam Raimi not only could finish the film, but also blow it up to 35 mm film which was required for theatrical release. After a glowing endorsement from famed horror author Stephen King, The Evil Dead was sold to New Line Cinema, and, on it's release in 1981, grossed $2.6 million at the box office (almost $7 million in today's dollars) and Campbell received rave reviews for his performance.

Over the next four years, Campbell worked on a number of movies - including Raimi's follow-up film Crimewave (1985) - before playing Ash again in Evil Dead II. The sequel continues the story from the previous film, after a quick recap (slightly confusing to some) where within a few minutes we see Ash & Linda go to the woods, play the tape, Linda gets possessed, Ash decapitates & buries her. Then the evil spirit flies through the cabin and attacks Ash (just like the end of the first film). This time Campbell portrayed Ash as a much braver, more inventive character, capable of fighting off monsters and fashioning a crude chainsaw bracket for his stump; replacing the "possessed" hand Ash was forced to cut off earlier. Numerous stories about the strange happenings on the set started to filter out as filming continued. One story was how during the filming of the "recap" shot where the "evil force" runs through the cabin and rams into Ash, Campbell supposedly suffered a broken jaw as Raimi (who was operating a handheld cameras on a bicycle) crashed into him; when in fact it was a story concocted by Raimi and Campbell as a gag to see how many people would believe it actually happened! During the scene where the severed head of Linda bites Ash's hand, Bruce Campbell says the single line "work shed". This line was later re-dubbed in post-production due to the quality of the audio, giving it a strange, slightly "disproportionate" sound to the audio.

Campbell returned to the character again for Army of Darkness (1992), with Ash now in the Middle Ages after being sucked into the vortex at the end of the last film, along with his Oldsmobile - which Ash would later modify into the unforgettable steam-powered "Deathcoaster" during the climatic battle! Army of Darkness was a difficult shoot for Campbell who had to learn elaborate choreography for the battle scenes, which involved him remembering a number system because the actor was often fighting opponents that were not really there. Visual effects supervisor William Mesa remembers, "Bruce was cussing and swearing some of the time because you had to work on the number system. Sam would tell us to make it as complicated and hard for Bruce as possible. 'Make him go through torture!' So we'd come up with these shots that were really, really difficult, and sometimes they would take thirty-seven takes". During filming of the climactic sword fight at Arthur's castle, Campbell suffered a small gash to his face when a decorative pin on his cape cut him during a stunt. He was immediately taken from the Polsa Rosa Ranch location to see a plastic surgeon to assess the damage. At the examination the doctor had to have the actual injury pointed out amid the myriad special effect scars and cuts Ash's character had accumulated during the story!

Turns out that Army of Darkness was the first, and last, studio picture that Campbell would star in. Over the next 23 years Campbell played a variety of supporting roles in television and movies; such as, Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007), The Majestic (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Sky High (2005), The Woods (2006), his directorial-debut feature My Name Is Bruce (2007), and starred as Sam Axe (aka "Chuck Finley") in the TV series Burn Notice from 2007 to 2013. Campbell cameo-ed at the end of the 2013 remake Evil Dead, announcing his triumphant return to the character of Ash Williams in the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead in 2015 (which has since been renewed for a second season).

Speaking on the character that made him famous, Campbell has stated Ash is incompetent at almost everything except fighting the Evil Dead, adding that Ash is "a bad slow thinker and a good fast thinker". Ash ranked eleventh on UGO.com's Top 100 Heroes of All Time list, describing him as "An egomaniacal, complaining, misogynistic goon", but also the best "demon and zombie killer ever to be portrayed on the silver screen". Empire ranked him the 24th Greatest Movie Character on their list of 100, calling him a "truly iconic horror hero", and a "delirious, delicious, dimwitted" parody of action heroes. The character of Ash influenced many 1990s first-person shooters such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Blood. Duke Nukem quotes so many lines from Ash that Campbell stated that he was angered by not being paid for them - but like so many stories about Bruce Campbell, maybe it's just another story made up for his and his friend's amusement.