Bruce Campbell doesn’t love horror movies, calls the ’80s “soulless”

The Evil Dead movies remain some of the greatest cult horror flicks ever. And a lot of that has to do with its star, Bruce Campbell. Yet, while he has remained a staple in the horror genre for decades now, Bruce Campbell is now aiming his boomstick right at it.

Speaking with the New York Post, Bruce Campbell said he doesn’t get as much enjoyment out of horror flicks as you might expect, although the right ones will trigger a reaction that is unmatched on the big screen. “I am not a huge fan of it myself. But what I like is that it’s one of the few genres that gets a visceral reaction from the crowd. Someone watches a drama, they’re eating popcorn, their face isn’t changing – maybe a couple of tears. Horror movies, they’re jumping out of their seats. You want the popcorn to go airborne, you know?…As a presenter, actor, filmmaker, that’s what you want. You want to get the audience engaged. So that’s the fun of horror.” Campbell added that he’s glad to see that horror has hit the mainstream with a stronger force now, as it was often the scapegoat for – well, pretty much anything – in the ‘80s. Well, there go any fantasies you might have of inviting Bruce Campbell to your horror movie marathon…

Of course, Bruce Campbell made his bones in the horror genre, coming up alongside good pal Sam Raimi courtesy of the Evil Dead movies in the early ‘80s. And what’s a better pairing for genre fans than horror and the ‘80s? But as it turns out, Campbell isn’t that wild about that decade, either…“You can shove the ’80s as far as I’m concerned…I thought it was a pretty weird repressed decade. You can have the hairstyles…I thought the ’80s were kind of soulless. That was a big cocaine decade, too, and cocaine is a soulless drug. So it was a weird decade, lots of repression and then lots of rebellion, which may have led into this satanic panic. Whenever you have a very closed-in society, you’re going to have your rebels.” Notably, when Bruce Campbell named his five favorite horror movies ever, none of them were from the ‘80s, with films like Night of the Living Dead and The Sixth Sense making the cut.

Outside of The Evil Dead franchise, what is your favorite Bruce Campbell performance in a horror movie?