my name is bruce

Forgot to post this yesterday!

A while back I bought a film called Elvira: Mistress of the Dark on DVD.

I'm still a little unsure quite why I bought it. I think part of the reason was that I'd seen the film years and years ago, but I'd kinda convinced myself that it didn't actually exist. When it randomly popped up on Amazon I therefore bought it.

As reasons go that's pretty damn weird for the sake of full disclosure, I should perhaps mention that the film also has boobs in it. That was undoubtedly a contributing factor too.

Anyway, the point is that the film was... odd. I mean, it wasn't bad, but it also didn't quite work. I think the idea was that it was supposed to be an affectionate send-up of cheesy B movies. The problem was that it also wanted to be a cheesy B movie, so the tone was odd.

Also, the acting was unusual. I dunno, I don't want to say it was bad, it was more like it was too self-aware. It also felt like it was "pausing for laughs" as if it was a TV show with a live audience, except of course it wasn't, it was a film.

So why am I bringing that up? Well because My Name is Bruce was bizarrely similar.

In both films, the lead is kinda involved in the B-horror film world and ends up in the middle of a real life B horror film. In both the feel is weirdly mixed - part affectionate send-up of B movies and part B movie. In both the dialogue is slightly over-worked and there's a feel of "pausing for laughs".

The reason I rented this was because I quite like the Evil Dead films and a while back I bought Bruce Campbell's autobiography. Reading that I hadn't realised there were so many Bruce Campbell films and this was a fairly recent one so I put it on the old rental list.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I did enjoy the film, despite the slight cheesiness. There's also an entertaining commentary, which was nice.

I think, however, that you need to have seen more of Campbell's stuff than I have to really enjoy the film. There were a lot of references to films and things that I don't know anything about, so I'm guessing proper Campbell fans would get a bit more mileage.