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Bubba Ho-tep
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (June 2006) |
| Bubba Ho-tep | |
|---|---|
 Teaser poster |
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| Directed by | Don Coscarelli |
| Produced by | Don Coscarelli Jason R. Savage Ronnie Truss Mark Wooding |
| Starring | Bruce Campbell Ossie Davis Ella Joyce Bob Ivy Heidi Marnhout |
| Music by | Brian Tyler |
| Cinematography | Adam Janeiro |
| Editing by | Scott J. Gill Donald Milne |
| Distributed by | MGM |
| Release date(s) | June 9, 2002 |
| Running time | 92 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $500,000 |
| Followed by | Bubba Nosferatu |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Bubba Ho-tep is the title of a novella by Joe R. Lansdale which originally appeared in the anthology The King Is Dead: Tales of Elvis Post-Mortem (edited by Paul M. Sammon, Delta 1994) and was adapted as a 2002 horror-black comedy film starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley - now a resident in a nursing home. The film version also stars Ossie Davis as Jack, a black man who claims to be John F. Kennedy. He says he was patched up after the assassination in Dallas, dyed black, and abandoned by Lyndon Johnson. The film was directed by Don Coscarelli.
The movie was originally only 32 prints that circulated around various film festivals garnering critical success, and was only given limited release on the big screen. By the time it was released on DVD it was already at cult status due to positive reviews, lack of access, and inclusion of Bruce Campbell as the star character.
While the novella and film revolve around an Ancient Egyptian mummy (played by Bob Ivy) terrorizing a retirement home, many claim Bubba Ho-tep is really about aging and growing old in a culture that values only the young. The film also features a cameo by Reggie Bannister, the cult hero of director Don Coscarelli's Phantasm series.
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During the 1970s, when Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) grew tired of the demands of his fame, he switched places with an Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff (also played by Campbell). It was Haff who eventually died on the toilet in 1977, while the real Elvis lived in quiet, happy anonymity and made a living pretending to be himself. After a propane explosion destroyed documentation which was the only proof that he was actually Elvis Presley, he was rendered unable to return to his old lifestyle. Or so he claims - Bubba Ho-Tep is ambiguous as to whether the 'Elvis' featured in the film is indeed the real Elvis or just a delusional Sebastian Haff.
A hip injury during a performance causes him to get an infection and slip into a coma. Twenty years later, in an East Texas nursing home as the movie opens, he is contemplating his age, frailty, loss of dignity, impotence, and "A growth on [his] pecker".
Elvis's only friend is a black man named Jack (Ossie Davis) who insists he is President John F. Kennedy, claiming to have been dyed black after the assassination attempt, and abandoned in a nursing home. The truth behind his identity remains unclear, but Elvis does spot a mysterious scar on the back of Jack's head. It could be from the head wound seen in the Zapruder film, but then it might not be.
Most of the film's plot is driven by Elvis' internal monologue, as he reminisces about his life and ponders his condition.
Eventually, Elvis and Jack face off against a re-animated ancient Egyptian mummy that was stolen during a US museum tour and then lost during a severe storm in East Texas when the bus being driven by the thieves veers off the road and into a river near the nursing home. The mummy strangely takes on the garb of a cowboy and is dubbed Bubba Ho-tep by Elvis who is given a telepathic flashback of the mummy's life and death when he looks into its eyes following its murder of an elderly woman at the home. The slow, plodding mummy is a real and credible threat, as instead of going against young adults who could potentially outrun it, the mummy gives chase to the elderly heroes who lack mobility and need a motorized wheelchair and a walker to get around the grounds.
After hatching an elaborate plan Elvis and Jack manage to destroy the mummy, and the trapped souls of their dead friends appear to be released to their final rest (somewhat contradicting the characters' earlier supposition that the souls had been destroyed forever, unless these were simply souls that hadn't been completely digested yet). In the process of defeating the mummy, Elvis and Jack are themselves mortally wounded, although their deaths are heroic and honourable. As he lies near the river dying, Elvis gets confirmation that his soul is prepared to move on as he looks up into the stars and sees the message "ALL IS WELL" spelled out in Egyptian hieroglyphs; his final words are classic Elvis: "thank you, thank you very much." With that, he dies.
Joe R. Lansdale's original novella was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, while the screenplay for the film won a Bram Stoker Award in 2003. It was an official selection at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and the Hong Kong International Film Festival and won "Best screenplay" and "Best actor" at the U.S. Comedy Arts Film Festival.
A film suggested in the credits for Bubba Ho-Tep, Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires, has apparently been announced. In a DVD 'making of' documentary, Coscarelli revealed that this was originally intended as a joke, however, due to positive fan response to the film, a sequel is now a possibility. He then went on to speculate he would like to make a sequel documenting the production of a 'lost' Elvis movie from the 1950s or 1960s. Although it has not yet entered production, Bruce Campbell, Don Coscarelli and Paul Giamatti (as Colonel Tom Parker) have reportedly been attached to the project. In late August, Bruce Campbell said the project is dead, or at least will move along without him.