What “hysteria!” Conjures up “Evil Dead” memories for star Bruce Campbell

Hysteria! is like a journey home for the icon evil Dead Starring Bruce Campell, as the Ash Williams actor’s new Peacock horror series is set in a tiny Michigan town outside of Detroit.

That’s because Campbell and his longtime friends and evil Dead The employees Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert come from Royal Oak, Michigan, which is even mentioned in Hysteria!

Premiering on Peacock on Friday, Hysteria! is set in 1985 in the fictional town of Happy Hollow, Michigan, where a “satanic panic” grips the entire town after a popular high school quarterback, Ryan (Brandon Butler), goes missing, presumably falling victim to a Satan-worshipping cult.

A trio of outcasts – Dylan (Emjay Anthony), Spud (Kezii Curtis) and Jordy (Chiara Aurelia) – seize a golden opportunity to become popular at their high school and reform their metal band to play satanic themes and capitalizing on the sudden interest in the occult.

Soon, strange events begin to happen out of nowhere involving some of the town’s parents, including Dylan’s mother Linda (Julie Bowen) and a religious fanatic named Tracy (Anna Camp), as Tracy’s teenage daughter Faith (Nikki Kahn) was with Ryan, before he disappeared.

Campbell plays the lead role Hysteria! as Happy Hollow police chief Dandridge, who tries to calm the town’s residents as more and more bizarre, inexplicable incidents occur.

Campbell – who first played Ash under the auspices of writer-director Raimi and producer Tapert in the 1981s The evil dead– said metal music wasn’t the only thing that made the general public paranoid in the 1980s. In fact, he noticed The evil dead had a difficult start because of the same fears that worried the public about the devil and metal music.

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For the uninitiated, The evil dead Films and its spin-off series Ash vs Evil Dead Focus on an evil, invisible demonic force that appears once certain passages from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, also known as the Book of the Dead, are read.

“We worked on horror in the ’80s, when horror was still a bit taboo,” Campbell recalled to me in a recent Zoom call. “So, the first three evil Dead Films didn’t have an age rating, and some groups didn’t like that because in the states you couldn’t advertise in the newspaper if you didn’t have an age rating. That’s what you risked in the US, because you had no classification, because you couldn’t say who you were. You could be a snuff film [for all they knew].”

What “hysteria!” corresponds to the tone of the time

Bruce Campbell, who lived through that decade, said the panic over so-called devilish influences in the ’80s was definitely real and the tone was clear Hysteria! captures it perfectly.

“[People] We were talking about satanic influences and you see, you’re talking about the core of what people believed, deep down in their hearts,” Campbell recalled. “They said, ‘Hey man, Satan is real and he’s coming back and he’s going to walk the earth’… That’s what they were worried about – that someone would break this thing on the earth and Satan would be out and pissed.”

Of course, one way to stoke these fears was to make music and films about those very fears, and Campbell, Raimi and Tapert were caught in the middle of the hysteria, so to speak.

“You know, when you mess with people’s core beliefs, that’s a good premise for horror,” Campbell said.

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While Campbell had fun taking a trip back to the 1980s Hysteria! to life, he admits that because of the problems he faced evil Dead films, he’s happy to leave the decade behind him.

“Yes, for me you can forget the 80s. I didn’t have much respect for that decade,” Campbell said with a laugh. “I was a working actor and things were very black and white and it was a very repressed time. It was a reaction to the ’70s – the liberal drug era of the ’70s. People said, “Let’s put an end to this, we’ll reconnect.” We’ll take the solar panels away from the White House and go back to good old America.

“So, it was interesting. It was the first attempt to go back to the 1950s,” Campbell added. “You know, the ’80s wanted to be the ’50s. For some reason everyone wants 30 years earlier.

Campbell says “Hysteria!” will surprise viewers

Created by Matthew Scott Kane with two of the series’ eight episodes directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island), Hysteria! is unique in that fans may think that the series will be a horror-comedy series given the talent involved.

After all, Bruce Campbell is the reigning king of horror comedy with roles in the top three evil Dead films and Ash vs Evil Dead, while Julie Bowen starred in the classic sitcom Modern family and Anna Camp played a key role the pitch perfect Musical comedy trilogy.

And during Hysteria! There’s a lot to laugh about, with several spooky horror scenes at the heart of the series – and Campbell can’t wait for fans of the genre to see the series and be surprised by the rattling atmosphere.

“That’s the cool thing about horror. “I can’t say I’m the biggest horror fan, but what I do appreciate is what horror does to audiences,” enthused Campbell. “It grabs you by the back of your neck and shakes you violently for an hour and a half and then leaves you sweating on your couch.”

Campbell knows that the horror genre has both fans and detractors. But no matter how people view horror films The evil dead or TV shows like Hysteria!, Campbell said there is one constant that keeps the genre thriving.

“Say what you will about horror films, but they are very effective at grabbing and holding attention,” Campbell said. “It’s an art to get the audience to lean forward, then back away and throw up the popcorn. That’s what you want. So it’s fun to be there and see the results. I’m going to New York Comic-Con and they’re going to show some clips from it Hysteria! and I can’t wait to see it in front of an audience.”

All eight episodes of Hysteria! Debuts on Peacock on Friday.

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Note: Some quotes in this interview post have been condensed or edited for clarity.