Josh Becker was the Raimi circle's other director: the one who let a scene run long, built a whole film to look like one take, and handled the silly episodes of Xena. The ambition usually outran the money; the jokes usually landed.
Fi1m perspective
Josh Becker's habit was to let a scene run. On Xena: Warrior Princess he was handed the episodes where Lucy Lawless plays several women at once, or where Ted Raimi's Joxer spends a long stretch falling over things, and he kept the camera on the business well past the point where most television directors would have cut away. The same instinct, taken as far as it will go, is Running Time (1997), a black and white crime film built to look like one continuous take, with the joins hidden.
He came out of the Detroit Super-8 years with Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, recorded sound on The Evil Dead (1981), and turns up in Evil Dead II (1987) as a Fake Shemp, a part our review does not mention, which is the correct amount of attention. His first feature as director, Thou Shalt Not Kill...Except (1985), was made at 25; Lunatics: A Love Story (1991) followed. Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur (1994) got him the Xena job, nine episodes and two stories between 1996 and 2001. After that came smaller features, Alien Apocalypse (2005) with Campbell among them, and books on how to make films for very little.
Xena is where most people met his work, and where it holds up best. We scored the series 74 for a friendship played far straighter than its wigs, and the silly hours were his department. "Since I was the silly comedy director... I kind of had unprecedented freedom," he said, and it shows: gags allowed to build, actors given room to find a second laugh after the first. We were fonder of those episodes than we expected to be. The show is loud and often absurd, and the stretches where Lawless is let off the leash are the ones we remember, because she is a better comedian than the premise needed her to be and Becker seems to have known it.
The features are harder to recommend without qualification. He wanted to make bigger films than his money allowed, and the results were mixed. Running Time is a stunt in real time; we have not reviewed it and will not judge it at length here, beyond saying that a director who attempts that on a small budget is at least not lazy. Rob Tapert produced his Xena work and Ted Raimi acted for him six times, and it is telling that the things he is remembered for were made with the same small group he started out with.
If you want to see what he did, start with the Xena episodes. The freedom he talked about is on the screen there, and it is a rarer thing in television than the wigs would lead you to expect.
Biography
Josh Becker was an American film and television director and writer. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he began making Super 8 films as a teenager alongside Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. He worked in lighting and sound on The Evil Dead (1981) and appeared as a Fake Shemp in Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992).
Becker directed episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001) and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, including the 1994 television film Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur. His feature films as director and writer include Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except (1985), Lunatics: A Love Story (1991), Running Time (1997) and Alien Apocalypse (2005). He also authored books on low-budget filmmaking.
Becker died on 5 December 2025.
