Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) review

23. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Directed by: Don Coscarelli

Produced by: Don Coscarelli, Jason R. Savage

Screenplay by: Don Coscarelli

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce, Heidi Marnhout, Bob Ivy

Let me paint you a little picture: Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley, Ossie Davis as John F. Kennedy, and they’re fighting a mummy (Bob Ivy) dressed like a cowboy. Based on the alternate history novella by Joe R. Lansdale, this is “Bubba Ho-Tep,” one of those movies that didn’t get much mainstream exposure, but soon built up a passionate cult following. It circulated at various film festivals around the world from 2002 to 2005, and was promoted personally by Campbell on his book tour for his autobiography “If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor.” Despite containing plenty of bizarre humor and concepts, it has a good deal of heart, and ultimately works due to the committed performances of Campbell and Davis.

Campbell plays a man at Shady Rest Retirement Home in East Texas known as Sebastian Haff, but claims to be the real Elvis Presley. Apparently, he grew tired of the stress of fame, so he switched places with an Elvis impersonator in the 1970s named Sebastian Haff. So it was the impersonator that died, while Elvis lived a more quiet life impersonating himself, with all known documentation of his true identity being destroyed in a propane explosion. His only friend in the home is Jack, a black man who insists he’s JFK, alleging to have survived his assassination attempt and got his skin dyed before being abandoned by his successor Lyndon Johnson. Anyway, the two supposed former American icons are now mostly invalid, which becomes a life-or-death challenge when the home is besieged by a re-animated Egyptian mummy stolen from a museum tour, who’s been devouring the residents’ souls.

I really haven’t talked much about Campbell outside of my review of the original “Evil Dead” trilogy, but he’s one of the great character actors of the horror genre; he’s so uniquely charismatic, and he gets Elvis’s mannerisms and charm down very well. Granted, I’m not the biggest Elvis expert, but this feels how an aging King of Rock ‘n’ Roll would be if this is the kind of life he lives, surrounded by walkers, bedpans, dementia-ridden patients, and a nurse (Ella Joyce) who frequently applies salve to his genitals. Interestingly enough, there’s no Elvis music anywhere in the film; they didn’t have the budget to license any of his songs. Davis is also very good as Jack, even though I feel like he’s slightly underused; it seems like they wanted to put more of the character focus on Elvis, but the two of them have good enough chemistry to help you along during the more absurd scenes. I also like that we never find out for sure if Elvis and Jack really are who they say they are, or if they’ve just gone old and senile.

When it comes to the horror situations, I have mixed feelings. For starters, it seems random to have Elvis, JFK and a mummy in one interlocking story; but the running theme is that they were all on top of their proverbial worlds—Elvis the King, JFK the President, Ho-Tep the pharaoh—and are now trying to recapture their former glory when the rest of society has forgotten them. However, having the mummy walking around in this hat and leather jacket just feels like a strange gimmick, and giving Elvis this telepathic link with it doesn’t really add anything substantial. I like the trippy moment where he’s given visions of the mummy’s back story, but even before then, we get these weird point-of-view shots where the action goes fast forward and glitches a lot that I don’t really like.

But with that said, there are a lot of fun moments, like the scene where Elvis goes to battle with a giant scarab beetle; the cinematography, humor and special effects are pretty good here. How often do you see an enemy in a horror movie successfully subdued with a two-prong fork? And I have to admit, there is something really cool about just the idea of Elvis in the suede and JFK in a three-piece suit, going up against a force of evil; it sounds like parody, but the material is played so straight. It’s really necessary, especially considering there’s a lot of focus on scatological happenings; they seriously refer to the mummy defecating the souls he eats.

However, the outright bluntness of some of the humor does make me laugh at times, I can’t deny. There’s a funny recurring joke with these two hearse drivers, Ella Joyce has a great supporting role as the nurse, and some of these visual gags are so exaggerated, it’s hard not to admire them. “Bubba Ho-Tep” gets a little tedious as far as the story is concerned, with a lot of extraneous scenes of minor characters walking around that don’t amount to much. But amid the weird setup, infantile comedy and clunky pacing, the movie still manages to be about something, recognizing that those past their prime still have something to give. It’s honestly worth a watch just for Campbell’s portrayal of Elvis; if that sounds fun to you, this is probably one to check out.

My rating: 6.5/10