Bruce Campbell’s feature debut as a director is a comedy that suffers from the worst thing a comedy can suffer from – it’s not funny.
Based on Campbell’s Dark Horse comic the film is about a rich American who undergoes experimental brain surgery that leaves him with two personalities, his own and that of the brain donor, a Bulgarian taxi driver. Both men were “murdered” by the same woman, as was Campbell’s wife, who finds her brain transplanted into the body of a dancing robot.
The original comic was set in L.A. but for the film it’s transplanted to Bulgaria for budget reasons and the production looks cheap (it was a Sci Fi Channel original movie). Still Bruce is used to working on micro budget films and money isn’t what makes this a dud, that’s down mainly to the script.
With the exception of the films star the performances aren’t up to much. Stacy Keach looks embarrassed as the mad scientist Dr Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov but far worse is Ted Raimi as his imbecile assistant, Pavel. Raimi clearly thinks he’s funny, and one has to assume Campbell does too, but he’s groan inducingly bad.
Luckily Bruce is on hand and displays his gift for physical comedy. The restaurant scene and the bar room fight may not rank alongside the possessed hand in Evil Dead 2 but they’re the films finest moments.
I’m a big Bruce Campbell fan and I really wanted to like this film but it really isn’t worthy of the King of the B movies and has even managed to put a damper on my enthusiasm for My Name Is Bruce, on the plus side though the extras on the DVD are far more entertaining than the actual film.
There won’t be a Friday Night Fright next week as I’ll be at the FrightFest all-nighter (with George Romero!) but as it’s Halloween week all the other regular Mine Was Taller features (Animonday, Watching the Detectives, The Weekend Western and Sci Fi Sunday) will be taking a darker turn.
Horror and Western film buff, Marvel comic geek, music lover and occasional gamer. 