Cult figure and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell has written a book, and it's exactly what you thought it would be. For those not in the know, Campbell is the star of Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness, as well as The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr., and the immortal Maniac Cop. He has also appeared in The Hudsucker Proxy, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, The X-Files, and Homicide: Life on the Street. If Chins Could Kill is part biography, part history of his films, and part meditation on the actor's life.

Bruce Campbell, the author, sounds just like Bruce Campbell, the actor, and this conversational style is the strength of the book. The charm of Campbell is that he seems like a regular guy. His thoughts and reactions about his job and his life mirror our own, so the book reads like a bar conversation, and I mean that in a good way:

In addition to the basic humiliation of changing sexes, our "female" characters had to perform a strip tease-this meant that almost all manly body hair had to be removed. Here's a Kodak moment for you: Bruce standing buck ass naked in his Auckland bathroom, while a ghastly cream denudes him of precious hair.

This informal style does lead to a certain amount of choppiness, but that doesn't detract from the fun; the best conversations never stay on topic.

The early part of the book covers Campbell's childhood in suburban Detroit. Unsurprisingly, he was a rough and tumble child, one of three boys who terrorized the neighborhood and each other. They tortured hundreds of green army men, built secret tunnels, raided one another's rooms and stole enough housing supplies from various construction projects in the neighborhood to build a two-story tree house with wall-to-wall carpeting, a shingled roof, and even electricity (stolen from neighbors by means of a buried extension cord). By high school, he figured out that acting in local theatre productions and making 8mm and 16mm movies with his buddies was even more fun than torching army men.

Soon he and his friends had also formed the Detroit Mafia, an assembly of like-minded individuals like Rob Tapert, Josh Becker and the Raimi brothers with whom he would be associated both personally and professionally from then on. Campbell gives some of their filmmaking history, culminating in a very detailed description of how Evil Dead got made, from financing right through filming. This is the meat of the book for me-great behind-the-scenes stories from someone who was there. There are even details about how certain effects were brought to life, which just make you want to watch the whole thing over again. Campbell also gives us a lot of insight into how Sam Raimi's filmmaking process, which is fascinating to those of us following his career and eagerly awaiting that tiny little Spider-Man movie due out soon.

The rest of the book continues with the behind-the-scenes stories, but really focuses more on acting as a career, and what everyday life is like for an actor. There's some storytelling and philosophizin', the end result of which is: be a professional, be prepared, and don't get to thinking you're better than anybody else. In short, just what you'd expect from a guy like Bruce Campbell.

If Chins Could Kill is a fun book, and well worth the read. There may not be any earth-shattering revelations, but sometimes good stories well told is enough. Pick up the book and spend some time with the man himself. You won't regret it.