An appropriate directorial debut for Bruce Campbell, set in Bulgaria, and involving a mad scientist and his ploy to combine the brains of a street hustler cab driver and Campbell, in the title role, as a moneyed American dealmaker. The film is a decent execution of the camp its title suggests, and is only enhanced by a dumbly charismatic Ted Raimi in a supporting role. The result of the combined brains is an extended treatment of Evil Dead II’s best scene—which is to say it’s moderately engaging until you recognize the connection, which only serves to affirm the superiority of the former film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
22 Jun 2005 11:11 AM | Comments (1)
Great title, so-so movie. Bruce is great, but like Rumsey says, spends a lot of the film replaying the Evil Dead II possessed hand sequence. The story of a man contending with two personalities in his brain is so ridiculous that you have to laugh, and indeed, the crowd I saw it with roared in approval at multiple occasions, but as a whole the film left me wanting a bit more horror, a little less camp.
Thomas
22 June 2005
5:57 PM
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