Bruce Campbell Marathon

Well I finally finished watching the entire Bruce Campbell movie marathon that led up to the premiere of The Man with the Screaming Brain last summer on the SciFi Network (thank goodness for DVRs). Here's the lowdown:

Tornado: As you might imagine, a bad copy of Twister (and that's saying something). It follows the basic Bruce movie pattern: disaster (Tornadoes), hot chick Bruce gets (Shannon Sturges), and Bruce. Bruce is a washed-out meteorology student turned stormchaser. Saves the day, gets the girl. Not his worst work, but pretty terrible. Nice to see former Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson is still working.

Terminal Invasion: Disaster: Aliens. HCBG: Chase Masterson. Bruce: convicted murderer en route to prison. Tried to be like a very low-budget, present-day Alien or Pitch Black, and failed. Cheesy effects aplenty. Again, watchable, but pretty lousy. Look for a pre-Daily Show Jason Jones.

Alien Apocalypse: Disaster: Bug-Like Aliens. HCBG: Renee O'Connor. The worst of the bunch. Awful effects (watch for the same two-by-four pile falling on like 10 people). Everyone associated should be embarrassed, except Rosi Chernogorova, who is really, really hot. And naked in Shark Attack III: Megalodon.

Boogeymen II: Masters of Horror: Bruce was just the host of this interview show featuring the best horror film directors and effects folks. Pretty interesting stuff, if sort of dry. I miss that horror movies used to have lots of gratuitous nudity. It was, truly, half the fun. Watch Re-Animator if you disagree.

The Man with the Screaming Brain: Disaster: Death/Brain Patch-up. HCBG: Tamara Gorski. This is sort of a SciFi-flavored mash-up of two Steve Martin films: The Man with Two Brains and All of Me. Bruce also wrote the script and directed it from the original comic book material, which he also wrote. For wearing all those hats, things worked out remarkably well. It was easily the best movie of the bunch (although some would call that faint praise), and was both entertaining and worth my two hours minus commercials (again, thank you DVR). Ted Raimi was also fun to watch as always.

Bruce maintains his mastery of the B-Movie genre, and I think he's got no intention whatsoever of attempting to take over the world. In exchange for this concession, I'll watch all of his movies (and episodes of Xena and Hercules) and buy all of his books.