Bubba Ho-Tep

BUBBA HO-TEP(15)

D: Don Coscarelli

Vitagraph/Silver Sphere (Don Coscarelli & Jason R. Savage)

USA 🇺🇸 2002 (released 2003)

92 mins

Horror/Comedy

W: Don Coscarelli [based on the novel by Joe R. Lansdale]

DP: Adam Janeiro

Ed: Scott J. Gill & Donald Milne

Mus: Brian Tyler

Bruce Campbell (Elvis Presley / Sebastian Haff), Ossie Davis (Jack 'John F.' Kennedy), Ella Joyce (The Nurse), Heidi Marnhout (Callie Thomas), Bob Ivy (Bubba Ho-Tep)

Based on a story from an 'alternative history novella', Bubba Ho-Tep spent a year on various festival circuits before a lot of campaigning by the filmmakers and the cast, as well as a good cult following, saw it eventually pick up a distributor and get a cinema release.

The story is set in a Texas nursing home, where one of the residents is a man claiming to be Elvis Presley (the Elvis who died in 1977 was impersonator Sebastian Haff, whom the real Elvis swapped lives with). Elvis strikes up a friendship with an African-American who thinks he's John F. Kennedy. Together, the duo battle an ancient Egyptian Mummy, named Bubba Ho-Tep, who is terrorising the nursing home to absorb the life-force of its victims.

Though the storyline is complete and utter nonsense, the style is very much in the vein of John Carpenter's movies of the 1980's (Big Trouble In Little China, They Live, etc.), as well as highlighting a theme in modern culture that the elderly are not given ample attention or taken seriously enough. 

It's mad as a box of frogs, but great fun with a hilarious lead performance from the self-proclaimed 'King of the B-Movie', Bruce Campbell.

6/10