There Are No Walls in the House of Jearl - Mystery DVD #153
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Mystery DVD #153
My Name Is Bruce
The mining town of Gold Lick, Oregon is haunted by a Chinese guardian spirit, who is offended by clumsy teens who disturb his burial ground. The creature and emerges to do mayhem, and promises to kill off every soul in the town. Fortunately, B-movie stalwart Bruce Campbell is filming a terrible monster movie just a few hours away. One of the teens is a huge Bruce fan and does the logical thing: he kidnaps Campbell and beg him to lead them against the monster. The whole town endorses this plan. It is because everyone likes Bubba Ho-Tep. Unfortunately Campbell is just an actor - and as it turns out a coward, and generally a douche. He attempts to leave the doomed townsfolk but a spark of conscience compels him to return and try to help.
On the one hand, the movie is so exactly what it sets out to be that it gains a sort of nostalgia-based power-up. It approaches the Platonic ideal of a cheesy low-budget monster movie. You've got the horny teens unleashing a monster, you've got the ambivalent love interest, you've got the reluctant hero, the comical dismemberments, the 'choose your weapon' scene... Once the film gets to Gold Lick it's sweet in the purity of its vision.
But. Sorry. The 'Bruce Campbell as himself' character is so thoroughly pathetic and repulsive that it makes the main conceit of the film - that Bruce Campbell really acts like this, ever, and that he would react in this way to a demon invasion - really hard to swallow. If he'd played it more straight maybe I could have bought into it, but he was so obnoxious I kind of wanted the whole thing to just go off the rails. I wanted to be on its side, but it just didn't pull me in. And even though the whole film is this over-the-top character assassination, in the end they subvert that too by having a different Bruce Campbell as himself character pitch the film. Come on, its like you don't trust me or something.
The DVD extras - and sorry, Arranger, Blu-Ray discs take me longer, there are scheduling issues - the extras are all right. The 'making of' featurette is cheesy but full of love for the project. The guy who played the monster also made the mask for it and he seemed pretty awesome.
Tags: dvd review
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