Bruce Campbell might be known for chainsawing his way through Deadites with his trusty boom stick by his side in the long-running Evil Dead franchise, but there’s one successful movie series he would have liked to have been featured more in, if for nothing else than the paycheck. Campbell starred as Ash Williams in Sam Raimi’s original Splatstick trilogy, and while he’s mostly synonymous with the horror genre, the versatile actor also made a brief appearance in Disney’s Cars 2 in 2011, voicing the character of Rod “Torque” Redline.
Campbell recently sat down for Variety’s Know Their Lines? segment (seen below), reliving some of his most famous one-liners from his filmography, which encompasses a wide range of genres including horror, comedy, and family-friendly films like the Disney sequel. When it came time to utter some of Redline’s famous last words (“I was just wearing a disguise. You guys are stuck looking like this.”), the living legend laughed, revealing that he wished he had stuck around in the series because it’s one that kids will watch over and over, thus padding his bank account.
“It was a bummer that I died because those are great for residuals, so you really wanna live in an animated movie. ‘Cause kids will watch an animated movie a thousand times. They pay you 12 dollars to record it. You don’t do it for that, you do it for the seven years of residuals you’re gonna get from little Billy going ‘I gotta watch that again! Can I watch that this week?'”
Fans of Disney’s Cars trilogy will remember that Campbell’s character of Redline was unceremoniously dispatched by Professor Zündapp (Thomas Kretschmann) after being filled with Allinol and hit with an electromagnetic pulse which caused him to explode. While his appearance in the franchise may have been short-lived, Campbell is set to take on an enemy of a different kind in Peacock’s new horror series Hysteria! that debuts on October 18.
Starring as a small town police chief alongside a stacked cast which includes Julie Bowen (Modern Family) and Anna Camp (True Blood, Pitch Perfect), Campbell’s character of Chief Dandridge looks to unravel the mystery behind a series of occult murders that appears to be tied to a high school heavy metal band capitalizing on the Satanic Panic that’s gripped their community. Of course, not everything is as it seems, but it begs the question: Will Campbell meet the same fate Redline did in Cars 2?
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Had it not been for the tonal shift between movies, Evil Dead might not have stood the test of time.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d be killed off after being featured in a prominent role, having met his demise in films such as Maniac Cop 2, Congo, Bubba Ho-Tep, and another animated movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Thus, the possibility is very real that Campbell might not survive the devil in Hysteria!, but even if he doesn’t, fans can take comfort in knowing he at least plays a major part in the series, rather than appearing for only a brief cameo.
A group of high school outcasts rebrands as a Satanic metal band during the 1980s “Satanic Panic” after a quarterback vanishes. However, a series of violent incidents and paranormal reports lead to a town-wide witch hunt, which eventually points to the band.
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