Quick Take
- Narration: Bruce Campbell reading his own memoir is the only version worth hearing. His comic timing, self-deprecation, and sheer voice performance are irreplaceable.
- Themes: B-movie legacy, creative reinvention, Hollywood’s margins as a viable career
- Mood: Rollicking and self-aware, with genuine warmth underneath the wisecracks
- Verdict: An ideal audiobook for genre film devotees who want their memoir delivered with the same energy Bruce Campbell brought to Ash versus the Deadites.
I was halfway through my evening walk when Bruce Campbell started describing the experience of playing an aging Elvis Presley with cancer on his penis in the film Bubba Ho-Tep, and I stopped walking entirely, standing on a sidewalk laughing at nothing visible to passersby. This is the experience of listening to Hail to the Chin: regular, unscheduled stops caused by Campbell doing exactly what he has always done best, finding the absurdity in his own professional life and delivering it with the timing of a man who has spent decades cultivating that specific skill.
This is the sequel to If Chins Could Kill, Campbell’s first memoir published in 2001, which covered his early career in independent and exploitation cinema. Hail to the Chin picks up in his maturing years: the journey from Evil Dead to Spider-Man to Burn Notice, his decision to leave Los Angeles for rural Oregon, and the particular career path of a man who has made creative self-determination a higher priority than mainstream visibility. Co-written with Craig Sanborn, it reads with the same loose, anecdotal structure of the first book while adding a layer of reflective perspective that comes from writing it at a different life stage.
The Bruce Campbell Voice Problem, Solved
Some performers should not narrate their own audiobooks. Their written voice and their spoken voice are in tension. Campbell is emphatically not one of these people. He is a performer first, and reading his own prose he is visibly, audibly having a good time. The reviewer who called him a B-budget actor in the first line of their review before immediately defending him captures the essential dynamic: Campbell has always had a specific relationship with being underestimated, and this book is partly about turning that underestimation into a philosophy of creative independence.
The production quality deserves mention: the book was recorded and sound-designed by Sean McCoy at Oregon Sound Recording, and it shows. The audio has a professional warmth that some celebrity memoir recordings lack. Campbell’s voice, which has been a professional instrument for decades, is in full form throughout the nearly eight hours of runtime. The production treats the audio as a distinct work rather than as a recorded reading, and the difference is audible.
The Stories That Make This Worth Every Minute
The anecdotes are where this book lives. Hovering above Baghdad in a Blackhawk helicopter while doing research. Facing a pack of wild dogs in Bulgaria during a film shoot. Playing Sam Axe on Burn Notice for seven seasons in a show that became, against reasonable expectations, a genuine hit. Campbell approaches all of these with the same orientation: he is a supporting character in his own stories, which is either humility or the most effective available form of self-promotion, possibly both.
The reviewer who had been a Campbell fan since he first stuck that famous chin out to get smacked around by Deadites and who bought both the physical book and the audiobook is describing a form of completist devotion that Campbell has earned through consistent, genuine engagement with his audience. He is one of the most fan-accessible figures in the genre film world, and that accessibility comes through clearly in how he writes about his career and the people in it.
The Oregon Move and What It Means for the Book Structure
One of the more interesting structural choices Campbell makes in this memoir is centering the Oregon relocation as a genuine turning point rather than a footnote. Leaving Los Angeles is framed not as retreat or failure but as the kind of self-generated decision that the book argues defines a sustainable creative life. The contrast between the frantic, status-driven existence he describes in his Hollywood years and the quieter, more deliberate pace he found in rural Oregon gives the memoir a different texture in its second half. He is not nostalgic for what he left, which is not something every Hollywood memoir can say honestly, and the lack of nostalgia is part of what makes the book feel more honest than the genre average.
What Non-Fans Need to Know
This memoir assumes some familiarity with Campbell’s work, particularly Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, and Burn Notice. Listeners who have never encountered him before will still find the book entertaining, because the anecdotes are self-explanatory and Campbell writes about his world without requiring specialized knowledge. But the specific pleasures of the book, the self-deprecation about his B-movie status, the pride in the Evil Dead franchise’s cult legacy, the observations about Hollywood’s appetite for certain kinds of actors, land harder if you arrive with existing affection for the subject.
The reviewer who noted that Campbell’s section on celebrity conventions as a means of maintaining audience connection was genuinely moving is pointing at something real. Campbell has built a career that did not follow the conventional arc, and he has done so with full awareness of what he was trading for what. That consciousness of his own position in the industry gives the memoir genuine depth beneath the jokes, and Campbell is too self-aware to let the depth disappear behind the entertainment.
Who Should Have This Queued Up
Fans of Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Burn Notice, or the horror-comedy tradition in genre film. People interested in what a working actor’s actual career looks like over multiple decades rather than a single breakthrough moment. Anyone who values the peripheral figures of Hollywood over its center. And specifically: anyone who has ever heard Campbell in an interview and thought that someone should bottle that energy. They did. It runs seven hours and forty-nine minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to have read If Chins Could Kill first to enjoy Hail to the Chin?
The second memoir overlaps slightly with the first and covers the years following it. You can enjoy Hail to the Chin without the first book, but Campbell references prior events from his early career that carry more weight if you have the backstory from book one.
How explicit is the content? Some of the anecdotes sound fairly adult.
The book is written for adult audiences and includes mature humor throughout, along with frank descriptions of the film industry and Campbell’s various professional adventures. It is not graphic but it is not sanitized either. Exactly the register you would expect from the man who made Bubba Ho-Tep.
Is the audiobook significantly better than reading the print version?
For this specific book, yes. Campbell’s comic timing and voice performance add a dimension that the text alone cannot replicate. Multiple reviewers noted that the audio version enhanced their enjoyment considerably compared to the print experience.
Does the book cover his return to the Evil Dead franchise with Ash vs Evil Dead?
Yes, the memoir covers the later arc of his career including the return to the franchise. The book was published in 2017, after the Ash vs Evil Dead television series had begun airing, so that material is included.
