Mary Whitehouse would be scratching her way out of the grave if she knew she’d helped the movie she branded “the number one video nasty” have a long and healthy lifespan. In 1983, Whitehouse, founder of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, demanded members of the House of Commons squirm their way through scenes of decapitation, dismemberment and tree-rape culled from Sam Raimi’s micro-budget splatter classic, The Evil Dead, in an attempt to force the government to clamp down on the then-burgeoning video-rental industry. Soon after, police confiscated mainstays of the VHS horror shelf such as The Driller Killer, I Spit On Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust from the nation’s shops, with The Evil Dead considered the most notorious corrupter of young minds. The hysteria continued all the way until a test trial in July 1984 when a Crown Court judge screened the film and failed to find it obscene.

The publicity sent it to number one,” recalls Bruce Campbell, who plays The Evil Dead’s signature role, Ashley “Ash” J Williams. “It was the biggest video of the year. The Shining was way down the list. Everyone wanted to see what this video nasty was once we’d won the court case.”

Campbell continued his battle with the Necronomicon – AKA the Sumerian Book of The Dead, a text with the power to reanimate the deceased – in 1987’s Evil Dead II. While in the grim original he was the last man standing among a group of impaled and eviscerated students, the sequel was a one-man show. Heavily influenced by the slapstick violence of The Three Stooges and Warner Bros cartoons, it pitted Campbell’s Ash against his own demonically possessed hand. (He chopped off the offending limb and attached a chainsaw to the stump.) Then Ash returned to fight the medieval dead in 1992’s Army Of Darkness.

Neither movie was a big, or even medium-sized, hit. But each rapidly assumed cult status and that cult has never dwindled. “The Evil Dead fans are not gigantic,” says Campbell. “We were never the Beatles. We were never even Friday The 13th, but I’ve got 300 pictures of people’s Evil Dead tattoos that they’ve put all over their bodies and I don’t think you find that with other movies. Evil Dead hit a chord with people because we didn’t crank ’em out. We made one in the 70s, one in the 80s and one in the 90s, so it wasn’t like we were trying to shove the franchise down your throat.”

In 2013, Campbell and Sam Raimi produced an Evil Dead remake that dispensed with the cartoon humour and reverted to the original template of five shrieking students trapped in a cabin with a book made of human flesh. “We only did it because people wouldn’t shut up about a sequel. The reaction was close but no cigar. We want Ash. We want the hand. But Sam Raimi makes big-budget movies now. Do we really need a $200m Evil Dead? I don’t think so. If you don’t get the Taco Bell tie-in deal and it makes $40m on opening weekend you’re branded a loser and the franchise is dead. So I said to Sam: ‘Can you get your head around this as a TV show?’”

Bruce Campbell in the original Evil Dead. Photograph: Allstar

In today’s fragmented programming landscape, a small, loyal following is almost as desirable as a huge audience. That’s why The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Heroes, Prison Break and even Gilmore Girls are on the way back. And it’s why, 32 years after Mary Whitehouse attempted to banish The Evil Dead from our screens, Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi were able to resuscitate their little gore movie once again, this time in the guise of a 10-part, half-hour show titled Ash vs Evil Dead. “In 12 years of movies, you’ve got four-and-a-half hours of material,” calculates Campbell. “In Ash vs Evil Dead, you’ve got five new hours. That would take four decades if we made movies with that much material. And because it’s cable, there’s no content restriction whatsoever. Violence, carnage, mayhem, boobies, sex: it doesn’t matter, we can do it all.”

This luridly gory show also contains a certain amount of subtle pathos. The original movies exploited Campbell’s leading-man looks, gleefully bashing his handsome face to a pulp, but always ensuring he triumphed like a blood-drenched hero. This incarnation of Ash is a 57-year-old superstore sales clerk who lives in a trailer, wears a wooden hand and haunts local bars at closing time, looking for a candidate with standards low enough to contemplate a one-night stand with him. In an attempt to impress one such lucky lady, Ash accidentally frees demons from the Necronomicon he keeps locked up in his trailer. The upside to this is a reinvigorated Ash, reunited with his chainsaw. Joined by two acolytes – one worshipful, one suspicious – and a glowering nemesis in Lucy Lawless’s Dr Ruby Knowby, he pursues Deadites across the country, hacking and slashing them to bloody shards, and never quite coming off as cool and as cocky as he wants to be.

Bruce Campbell in As Vs Evil Dead. Photograph: Allstar

In a movie-going month when we’re coming to terms with senior-citizen versions of Rocky, Han Solo and Princess Leia, I get the opportunity to ask an actor what it’s like to play an elderly version of a trademark character. “I have more skills to approach it now,” is Campbell’s response. “Last time I played Ash was 24 years ago. I’ve got 24 years under my belt to figure out how to do things. Ash is the least developed character I’ve ever played. He was nothing in the first Evil Dead. He was a non-demonstrable character. In II, he’s kind of a veteran. Army Of Darkness, he’s kind of a trash-talking Ugly American. The thing about a TV show is: how does he play with others, how does he talk? In Evil Dead II, there were weeks when I never said a word of dialogue. You’re fighting with your hand today, tomorrow and Thursday. Now you’re going to get to know Ash, whether you want to or not.”

To non-horror fans, Campbell is a working actor probably best known for his seven seasons on the US spy show Burn Notice. A matter of weeks ago, he showed up on Fargo playing Ronald Reagan. To horror fans, he is Ash. Does that make for a confusing career? “I’m actually more pigeonholed by fans than by my own industry. I used to get really pissed off when people didn’t recognise all the other stuff I did. I’ve done comedies, dramas, children’s films. I’ve done a French film. I’ve written, produced and directed. But a guy that watches Evil Dead isn’t necessarily going to watch any of that. If all you watch is horror then I’m your horror guy. I’m grateful there’s something people can grab on to and remember. Some guy called me the Gregory Peck of B-movies. I got no problem with that.”

With a second season of Ash vs Evil Dead green-lit before the first one even airs, and persisting rumours of a fourth film (“If this show goes three, four years, I’ll guarantee you there’s going to be another movie. Success begets success”), Campbell has not only made peace with being known for his trademark role, he sees it keeping him active well into his twilight years. “I finally got to meet William Shatner. He is a 100% inspiration. He’s 84. He’s never retiring. He does more fan conventions a year than I do. His energy is phenomenal. He’s powered by the sun or something. Stan Lee is, like, 92. Adam West is 87. They’re not slowing down because they’ll die. That’s what happens to actors. If you stop swimming, the shark dies.

“I’m never retiring. Christ, compared to some of these guys, I still got 30 more years of this crap!”

Ash vs Evil Dead is available on demand to Virgin Media customers. New episodes are released weekly

• This article was amended on 16 December 2015. An earlier version said Evil Dead II was released in 1989, rather than 1987.

