The success of The Evil Dead series practically ensured that Bruce Campbell would have a cult following thereafter. While obviously talented and with a gleam-in-the-eye quality, Bruce Campbell has always had a sense of dumb luck to his charming career, a right-place-at-the-right-time feeling. Take regular collaborator, Sam Raimi, who even noted first-hand that Campbell got the main character role of Evil Dead's Ash simply because he was the most good-looking of their friends.

Updated: November 2022: To keep this article fresh and relevant by adding more information and entries, this article has been updated by Dylan Reber.

Since the release of the cult horror film Evil Dead in '81, Campbell has gone on to have an above-average career in his own right, headlining weird, off-the-wall pictures that have become cult classics. Campbell supplemented his body of work with fantastic TV roles, too; while the ridiculously popular Burn Notice might be his most well-known role, Campbell also fronted The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, with spots in Xena, The X-Files, and, more recently, Fargo and Lodge 49. The actor has worked with the Coen Brothers since their early days, and has directed some ridiculously fun and campy films himself (My Name is Bruce, The Man With the Screaming Brain) before returning to Ash's life in Starz's spectacularly likable Ash Vs Evil Dead.

As a self-proclaimed B-movie actor with a jaw that could rival The Crimson Chin's, Bruce Campbell has done very well for himself. Flirting with his low budget roots in The Evil Dead, Bruce would go on to play two U.S. Presidents (Reagan and Nixon), and even The King himself, doing a better old-age Elvis than anyone could imagine. With Evil Dead: The Game and Evil Dead Rise coming soon, let's take a look at the best Bruce Campbell movies.

10 The Spider-Man Trilogy (2002-2007)

Bruce Campbell Spider-Man
Sony Pictures Releasing

This one's kind of cheating, so we included all three. Playing the roles of 'Wrestling Announcer,' 'Snooty Theatre Usher,' and 'French Waiter' respectively, Bruce Campbell's scenes in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy may seem like mere throwaway moments of fun. Don't shoot down their impact, though; in an interview for CinemaBlend, Campbell notes that his ring announcer was the very first person to give Spider-Man his name (and debunks those Mysterio rumors as well).

9 My Name is Bruce (2007)

My Name Is Bruce
Image Entertainment

This is a bit of a weird one. Not only did Campbell star in My Name is Bruce; he produced and directed it, too. In some ways, it's a total disaster of a film, but this should not be taken as a reason to write it off completely. For fans of its lead actor and director, it has a lot to offer: a schlocky, silly story in which Campbell plays himself; a rowdy, ironical look back on his career as an actor; and a deliberate, "so bad it's good" approach to filmmaking. Look at it as a love letter to B-movies as a whole, and you're sure to get some enjoyment out of it. It's a must-see for Bruce Campbell superfans.

8 Moontrap (1989)

Moontrap
Image Entertainment

With puppets, bad sets, and rough acting, Moontrap is a '60s B-movie with 1980s effects. Campbell looks extremely fresh-faced as the co-pilot to (OG Star Trek's Chekov) Walter Koenig's captain, who discovers an alien pod concealing a robot that requires human flesh to live. With a home base on the moon, the two need to stop these aliens before they can get to Earth and take over the planet. Moontrap is very silly. With mini-uzis on the moon, alongside an alien sex scene, it feels like some VHS tape you find in the basement that you just know you shouldn't be watching. It makes for great midnight viewing and has one of the scariest "WTF" moments from Bruce Campbell's career, which we refuse to spoil here.

7 Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Elvis and JFK in Bubba Ho-Tep
Vitagraph Films

So this one's really just delightfully weird. Campbell plays Elvis Presley, who must stop a mummy from killing him and his friends (including a Black John F. Kennedy) and feeding on their souls. Despite its ridiculous, "how did this get made?" feel, Bruce Campbell puts in one of the best performances of his career as a more than believable Elvis facing his twilight years. Bubba Ho-Tep is really silly, but with some good laughs here and there, and some surprisingly moving moments about getting older.

Related: Why Elvis Proves the Oscars Should Bring Back the Best Dance Category

6 Maniac Cop (1988)

Maniac Cop
Paramount Pictures
Studio Canal
20th Century Studios

Thanks to the movie's opener of an innocent woman being killed by a police officer, Maniac Cop sits uncomfortably in the current political climate, and may be said to have aged poorly. However, looking at it purely as a schlocky, violent movie, Maniac Cop is a gleefully entertaining and twisted flick. The cinematography is superb here, offering a voyeuristic, constantly creeping view of New York's grimy streets. This is a cheap movie that makes the most of what it's got, with support from Tom Atkins, and Robert Z'Dar playing the only man in on-screen history able to rival Bruce Campbell's chin. Today, the always stylish Nicolas Winding Refn is working on an HBO TV adaptation.

5 The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

The Hudsucker Proxy
Bruce Campbell in The Hudsucker Proxy 

This underrated gem from director duo Joel and Ethan Coen features Campbell in a small but memorable role as Smitty, a goofy reporter with the Manhattan Argus. When star journalist Amy Archer gets assigned a story on Hudsucker Industries' new and wildly incompetent president, Smitty is there to help her along. It's likely that Campbell was brought onto The Hudsucker Proxy at the behest of longtime friend and collaborator, Sam Raimi, who wrote the film with the Coen Brothers. You may have noticed a theme here: that when Sam Raimi comes around, Bruce Campbell is never far behind.

4 Mindwarp (1992)

Mindwarp
Columbia TriStar

Mindwarp is a little-known '90s movie that feels like Total Recall in the world of Mad Max. Be warned, even in a list of movies featuring every Evil Dead film, Mindwarp is incredibly bloody, with some true moments of watch-from-behind-your-fingers terror. Forgive the "is it all a dream?" twists, and Mindwarp is a fun, nasty movie that has to be seen to be believed.

3 Army of Darkness (1992)

Bruce Campbell holds up a gun in Army of Darkness
Universal Pictures

The Evil Dead series went 'big-picture studio' here: it's a movie that retires the cabin setting and transports us back in time to a land of knights, wizards, and skeleton armies. Army of Darkness takes the franchise into truly unexpected, weird fantasy territory; queue the curses, magic books, and swordplay, coupled with Campbell's oafish Ash, and you have something so wild it beggars belief. Army of Darkness is a little overlong, but it's so strange and goofy — with some real bonkers slapstick moments, which shouldn't work but do — that it's a bona fide horror comedy classic.

Related: Bruce Campbell is Down to Voice Ash in an Evil Dead Animated Series

2 The Evil Dead (1981)

The Evil Dead
New Line Cinema

The first Evil Dead is the seminal dumb-kids-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods movie that the horror genre has been taking notes from ever since. Evil Dead is a masterclass in DIY, low-budget filmmaking, and, unlike its sequel, focuses on pure terror, dreadful "Deadites," and grotesque physical effects. Its stripped-back and incredibly simplistic premise is efficiently focused like a laser beam.

To raise the money for a feature film, director Sam Raimi and Campbell bought suits and asked any possible investors they knew (with dentists, for example, funding most of it, per Contact Music) to donate based on a proof-of-concept 8mm short called Within The Woods. Evil Dead shows Bruce at his most naive, but you can really believe in him as a leading man. He's gawky, square-jawed, and faces evil head on. The rest is history.

1 Evil Dead II (1987)

Evil Dead 2 (1987)
Rosebud Releasing Corporation

How can a sequel be this good? Evil Dead 2 ups the ante in every single way, and adds a brand-new element to the series (and to the horror genre as a whole): the decision to add slapstick comedy to what should be a bleak and horrifying place. The broad comedy here shouldn't work, but its total reinvention of the first film is inspired. Further, its physical effects are plentiful and at times out of this world (a personal favorite of fans remains the trippy live mirror reflection). But Bruce Campbell's all-encompassing descent into madness as Ash is what holds the movie together. It also has one of the most iconic "tooling up" montages ever. "Groovy" only covers half of it in this utter masterpiece.