“We didn’t have a script for shit”: the movie Bruce Campbell knew was doomed from the start
Few people embody the spirit of a ‘cult’ actor quite like Bruce Campbell, who, across his lengthy career, has rarely been involved in anything you’d call a blockbuster, and if he is, then it’s usually in a minor role, and yet, he is beloved.
That’s because he’s made so many small movies that have captured the imaginations of devoted fanbases; his starring role in the Evil Dead franchise has made him immortal, and there’s plenty more where that came from.
Unfortunately, this kind of career trajectory has brought Campbell, who recently announced he is battling cancer, into contact with his fair share of stinkers. There are far too many bad movies to get into now, but a quick scroll through his Wikipedia page reveals a treasure trove of inexplicable crap. Just the names of some of these projects are anxiety-inducing. Eddie Presley? The Demolitionist? The Ant Bully? What was he thinking?
Campbell took some time to reflect on one of his biggest ever flops in an interview with Collider. As he explained, this particular dumpster fire was a disaster from day one.
“I had just come from working on McHale’s Navy, which was a very dumb experience,” he said. “It was a very weak attempt at making a movie. We didn’t have a script for shit. We made up our lines all day long, and that thing was going nowhere fast…which is fine. We managed to have fun.”
Released in 1997, McHale’s Navy is a big-screen adaptation of a popular TV sitcom from the 1960s, where Tom Arnold plays the titular Lt Commander Quinton McHale Jr, son of Ernest Borgnine’s character from the original show, a retired sailor enjoying living the high life in the Caribbean. However, he is called back into action when an evil terrorist, played by Tim Curry, takes over an island, and Campbell plays a gunner called Virgil, whose main purpose is to try to sleep with everyone and everything onscreen.
In an outcome that shocked absolutely nobody, a modern remake of a cheesy 1960s sitcom starring the guy from Roseanne wasn’t very good, and as Campbell explained, it wasn’t given much of a chance.
It tanked at the box office, taking about 10% of its initial $42million budget, which is an insane amount of money to spend on this thing. Critics hated it too, with it currently sitting at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes me wonder who gave it a positive review and if everything is alright with them at home.
McHale’s Navy might have been about as popular as scurvy, but at least Campbell has the good grace to look back at it and laugh. As I mentioned earlier, this journeyman career model means having to accept jobs that you know aren’t going to go anywhere, even if it is just for the anecdote you can tell about it in the future. At the end of the day, this nautical nightmare didn’t kill his career, though it probably came quite close.
