#200. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Directed By: Don Coscarelli

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce




Tag line: "You know the legends... Now learn the truth"

Trivia: Despite the fact that Elvis Presley is the main character, not one piece of Elvis's music is heard in the film

Elvis Presley living in a Texas rest home? John F. Kennedy as an elderly black man? A 3,000-year-old mummy walking around in a cowboy hat? What's not to love about Bubba Ho-Tep?

Bubba Ho-Tep gives hope to all those who could never accept that the King of Rock and Roll was dead. As it turns out, he isn't. Elvis (Bruce Campbell) is indeed alive...but just barely. In failing health, the King spends most of his time lying in bed at the rest home, thinking back on the “glory days”, when he was on top of the world.  Far removed from those happier times, the King laments how god-awful boring his life has become. Then suddenly, as if on queue, people at the rest home start dying. With the help of his good friend, former President John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis), who apparently survived the assassination and is living out his days as a black man, Elvis investigates these seemingly ‘random’ deaths. It doesn't take long for them to conclude that an ancient Egyptian mummy is sucking the life force from the seniors in residence, and the only way to stop the killings is to face the powerful creature themselves.

Bubba Ho-Tep spends much of it's running time walking a fine line between comedy and horror, methodically merging the two into an entertaining whole. The screams that Bubba Ho-Tep generates are genuine: for starters, there are Elvis' disturbing dreams, which include erratic visions of the murders being committed. To coincide with these images, there’s also a frightfully chilling hallway running through the rest home, which at night takes on supernatural qualities all its own. A deep hum rattles through these halls, broken occasionally by low-level chanting or the sharp echoes of footsteps.

As these elements build up the dread, the character of Elvis, played perfectly by Bruce Campbell, is busy getting a few laughs. Reduced to a resident in a third-rate home for the aged, Elvis has become a bitter old man that everyone assumes is insane. Years earlier, Elvis, wanting to live a life of obscurity, changed places with one of his many impersonators, a guy named Sebastian Haff (also played by Campbell), who, while living as the King, developed a drug habit and dropped dead of a heart attack (of course, nobody believes this story).

Age has also thrown a few physical problems the King’s way, including a broken hip that won’t heal properly and a rather bothersome lump in an uncomfortable place (“How could I have gone from the King of Rock and Roll to this”, he wonders, “An old guy in a rest home in East Texas with a growth on his pecker?”). Throughout Bubba Ho-Tep, the humor never strays far from the horror; the mummy is a truly frightening creation, but it’s hard to get too scared when he's facing off against a battle-ready Elvis, who wears his patented sequined jumpsuit to the final showdown.

Those who still worship Elvis Aaron Presley as a cultural deity may have a hard time watching this movie, but for everyone else, Bubba Ho-Tep will undoubtedly leave you in stitches.