Bubba Ho-Tep

Posted by James Schu (jgs210@psu.edu) on January 12, 2007

B-movies are often the unfortunate result of shoddy editing, half-baked scripts, cliched concepts, phony special effects, amateurish acting and scores of other corner-cutting pitfalls. In avoiding most of these missteps (FX aside) and in keeping its aspirations self-deprecatingly modest, writer/director Don Coscarelli’s 2002 comedy Bubba Ho-Tep is a B-movie for all the right reasons. Clearly, illusions of grandeur are few and far between when a film’s plot revolves around the adventures of two batty nursing home patients and a resurrected mummy in East Texas. Oh, and did I mention that the delusional old coots think they’re Elvis and a black JFK?

Elvis (played to deadpan perfection by Bruce Campbell) may or may not actually be Sebastian Haff, a one-time Elvis impersonator with more than a few screws loose, but the ambiguity is irrelevant, only adding another layer to the gag (you know the joke’s on you when you find yourself actually debating whether or not this character could legitimately be Elvis). With a miniscule cast and a paper-thin plot, this is as close to a “star vehicle” that a scene-stealing cult-film vet like Campbell is going to get. Far from playing the usual parody of himself, he’s wonderfully eccentric in this role. The genius of his performance is not the spot-on impersonation of Presley’s voice and mannerisms, but in his understated depiction of a pessimistic, washed-up legend increasingly plagued by reminders of his impending mortality (”What do I care? I got a growth on my pecker,” he muses).

Campbell’s ruminations on death, aging and past regrets invite sympathy, but never overwhelm the absurdity enough to take Bubba Ho-Tep into “dramedy” territory, and his Elvis idiosyncrasies keep the laughs at a regular clip. He creaks up in bed, squinting, and with a straight face, puts on his studded silver shades as if they were your grandfather’s coke-bottle bifocals. He describes a bug as “the size of my fist–the size of a peanut butter and banana sandwich,” referring to the King’s famous favorite snack.

While Campbell is both physically and mentally immersed in the Elvis persona, his sidekick (Ossie Davis), who thinks he’s President Kennedy, may as well be just another patient, since there’s very little to suggest that he is who he claims. For starters, he’s black, a factor he attributes to his assassin’s resourcefulness (”They dyed it! What better way to cover it up?” he shrewdly observes). “Jack”, as Elvis calls him (it’s an informal relationship, after all), is, not unexpectedly, a huge conspiracy theorist, and convinces the skeptical King that a cursed mummy stalks the grounds of their hospice and is sucking the souls of other patients out through their–well, as JFK puts it, “any major orifice” will do.

Only when they realize that they’re the only two people loopy enough to actually believe each other do Elvis and JFK decide to join forces. Ditching the bathrobes and pajamas for a sequined jumpsuit and a presidential three-piece, they break out the walker and electric wheelchair and devise a plan to defend their fellow patients against “Bubba Ho-Tep”. Having nothing left to salvage of their once-great legacies, the two now, in the twilights of their crumbled lives, aim to poignantly recapture what little slice of pride and dignity they can. Y’know, by taking out the soul-sucking mummy.

Bubba Ho-Tep is hilarious, zany humor with an unintentional heart, never so much as touching but always absurdly charming. It’s sometimes cynical and doesn’t rely on feel-good gimmicks, and certainly never takes itself too seriously–but dammit if you aren’t pulling for the two protagonists, especially Elvis, by the end. Bubba Ho-Tep belies its low-aiming B-movie aspirations, and is executed with the effortless joy of a major-studio production.

Read more articles by James Schu