Willa's Flic Pic: Bubba Ho-tep * * * *

Bubba Ho-tep
2002, Don Coscarelli
Drama, Horror
* * * *




Elvis: Ask not what your rest home can do for you. Ask what you can do for your rest home.
JFK: Hey, you're copying my best lines!
Elvis: Then let me paraphrase one of my own. Let's take care of business.
JFK: Just what are you getting at, Elvis?
Elvis: I think you know what I'm gettin' at Mr. President. We're gonna kill us a mummy.


This is one of My Geek's finds. It leans toward the T-audience (testosterone) but I thought it was a really great and funny film. It may be a risky pick for you ladies but, if you’re feeling adventurous, wild and crazy, I highly recommend this. I also recommend watching it with your guy friends.

One of the reasons I may not have been familiar with Coscarelli's work is that he is a horror/thriller filmmaker and that's just not my genre. His Phantasm series has a strong cult following.

The basic plotline of this movie I'll take directly from IMDB:

Elvis and JFK, both alive and in nursing homes, fight for the souls of their fellow residents as they battle an ancient Egyptian Mummy.

As you can see the possibilities are endless.

Set in the present, the film is narrated and taken from the viewpoint of Elvis (Bruce Campbell), who is now elderly and in Shady Rest nursing home in Mud Creek, Texas. Yes, Elvis is alive. I won't explain how because that’s part of the fun.

Elvis is dejected and depressed. For the first part of the film he never leaves his bed. Why should he? No one believes he's Elvis, they treat him like a child, he has no hope of ever seeing his daughter again and he has what he believes is a cancerous growth on his "pecker" (a symbol of his emasculated, deteriorating life).

Elvis: My God, man. How long have I been here? Am I really awake, or am I just dreamin' I'm awake? How could my plans have gone so wrong?

One night, an elderly resident is attacked by a giant, murderous beetle, which she easily mistakes for a Texas cockroach. From his room, Elvis thinks he witnesses the woman being dragged away… or is he just dreaming? The next day, we see a hearse taking away her body and begin to wonder if there's something malevolent going on at Shady Rest.

On the night when Elvis battles the beetle himself, he teams up with Jack (Ossie Davis) who claims he too was attacked but by something entirely different. Jack, who insists that he is JFK even though he's black, does some research and concludes that the rest home is a snack bar for an ancient mummy soulsucker. For the first time in years, Elvis has a purpose, a reason to live. He and Jack set out to save the residents of Shady Rest from the mummy.

I don't know if the rest home was suppose to be creepy or not but it was. I think all the things that bother us about rest homes were incorporated so I had the willies even before the mummy showed up. The film is not terrifying and gory but wonderfully creepy.

One of the great things about this movie is its quality. The mood of the film is expertly achieved. Everything from filming, lighting, editing, costumes, makeup and sets are fantastic. Don't expect this to look like a B-movie. It isn’t.

Again, this is a T movie. There's some bad language and crude discussions of body functions. This typically turns me off but it's not what you would find in a teen movie where they are doing it just to see how gross they can be. The dialogue is the kind you would expect to hear from a grumpy old senior man in a rest home where inhibitions no longer exist. It makes sense. It's not crudeness for sake of being crude.

When checking on the facts about this movie, I discovered that there is going to be a Bubba Nosferatu again with Bruce Campbell and Paul Giamatti (Lady in the Water, Cinderella Man) as Colonel Parker! Once more, here is the IMDB description:

This prequel to Bubba Ho-tep finds Elvis shooting a film in Louisiana when he runs afoul of a coven of she-vampires.

I’m sorry, but that's funny. I think Coscarelli has a new cult follower.