Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector's Edition)
by Don Coscarelli
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bob Ivy, Bruce Campbell, Ella Joyce, Heidi Marnhout, Ossie DavisDirector: Don Coscarelli
Brand: TCFHE/MGM
Cinematographer: Adam Janeiro
Producer: Don Coscarelli
Writer: Don Coscarelli
Editor: Donald Milne
Producer: Dac Coscarelli
Producer: Jason R. Savage
Writer: Joe R. Lansdale
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 92 minutes
Published: 2004-05-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-05-25
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: EVEN MUMMYS DO IT
Summary: 5 Stars
Bubba Ho-Tep is a morality tale disguised as an absurd/goofy horror story. In the beginning we find our hero, Elvis, put away in some forgotten nursing home in some remote little town in Texas. Years before, Elvis grew weary of his fortune and fame and traded places with one Sebastian Haff-a professional Presley impersonator-to gain some measure of peace and freedom. But Fate intervened. The Presley impersonator died in Elvis place at Graceland and Elvis was unable to reclaim his former life. Later, Elvis had an accident on stage and broke his hip. Medical complications set in eventually leaving him alone to contemplate his past in the nursing home. Naturally, as Elvis insists on his true identity, the staff assumes he is simply delusional.
As Elvis languishes in his room, he is tormented by all that he has lost. On top of the list is sex. Thousands of women had thrown themselves at him and now he was practically invisible to all females. When his roommate dies and the daughter comes to collect her father's belongings, she bends over in her short skirt revealing the "promised land". At first Elvis is thrilled by this. Then he is dejected as he realizes that she cared as little if he got a "look" than if some potted plant were behind her. It more than hurts his pride that things have come down to this. It is then that Elvis notices that there are other things this woman does not care about. She finds her father's Purple Heart medal and a few old photographs from when he was in the Second World War and tosses them in the wastebasket.
This sets up a somewhat unspoken inner dialogue with Elvis. Here was a man who made real sacrifices for his country and children and yet in the end he was valued by neither. Elvis himself made none of those same sacrifices yet he had received the best things this nation had to offer-and millions who didn't even know him honored his memory. But somehow, Elvis knows that his roommate had his pride and self-respect-something Elvis himself did not have.
But Elvis isn't quite alone. There is "Jack". Jack is an elderly black man bound to a motorized wheelchair who is convinced he is really John F. Kennedy. We are never totally sure what "Jack' believes; but it seems some be conspiracy involving Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson, the FBI and CIA drove a complicated set of events where he was shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963-he just didn't die on the operating table as the world was lead to believe. Instead, "Jack" had to be secreted away from the public. The part of his brain that had been shot away was replaced with sand and his skin was dyed "black" to complete the deception. After years of government care, "Jack" was simply left there at this obscure nursing home to end his days. Even Elvis has difficulty buying all this. The only thing is "Jack" does have the nicest room in the whole place.
We get a sense both Elvis and JFK are being punished and are in this exile waiting for death. Then quite literally they are confronted by a nightmare out of death itself. Other inhabitants of the nursing home are turning up dead in strange circumstances. A phantom is haunting the nursing home; eating the souls of the weak and feeble.
JKF has read up on this phantom and lets Elvis in on the secret. It seems that long ago in ancient Egypt, a member of pharaoh's family made love with one of pharaoh's chosen girls. As punishment, this man was "buried alive" mummy style to become one of the "undead". Through a series of events, this mummy (Ho-Tep) was unearthed and came to Texas where it was lost during transport. Its dwelling place is now the nursing home and it feeds on the souls of the old to exist. (There is a sketchy suggestion that the nursing home administrators are complicit in this. But nothing is made of it)
At first Elvis doesn't buy any of this; but the evidence mounts. To their horror, JFK and Elvis learn that when Ho-Tep consumes the souls of their fellow patients they enjoy no afterlife. They then resolve to destroy Ho-Tep if it's the last thing they do.
In the midst of their preparations, Elvis returns to his room to rest and thinks to himself that he should have been "more faithful to Priscilla" all those years ago. This seems to be the lynchpin that holds this story together. A significant feature of many horror stories is that they are a kind of "bad conscious" of the supposedly liberated modern mind.
Put in the simplest terms: modern man and woman break taboo because they are free after all and taboo is just a superstition. But taboo manifests itself as monster, ghost, or evil fate to extract terrible punishment from modern man and woman. Thus both Elvis and JFK are two men who in their lifetimes put their "thangs" in plenty of places they didn't belong. For these offences fate has extracted a terrible price from both men. Now they face the threat of total spiritual annihilation from the phantom of someone who was one such as themselves who put his "thang" where it didn't belong.
If only Elvis had been more faithful to Priscilla. But he hadn't been; so Elvis must fight Ho-Tep. In the end, Elvis destroys the mummy but it also costs him his life. The film ends with Elvis dying alone in the night beside the creek behind the nursing home. But it is a happy ending because the heavens tell Elvis that "all is well" and Elvis knows that as he leaves this world he still has his soul.
All this is presented light-heartedly and in great humor. The viewer is never really told if the two elderly men in the story really are Elvis and JFK or just two very confused old men. Part of the charm is that they win you over mostly because they believe they are Elvis and JFK. If you are looking to have the "bejesus" scared out of you, don't look here. Bubba Ho-Tep is more silly than scary. It really is a morality tale with heart. Except we moderns can't take our morality stories straight on so we have to mix it in with a big dollop of humor and ridiculousness. Big thumbs up to whoever thought of putting the mummy in cowboy boots and a ten gallon hat.
Summary of Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector's Edition)
Mud Creek, Texas, is about to get all shook up. When mysterious deaths plague the Shady Rest retirement home, it's up to an aging, cantankerous "Elvis" (Bruce Campbell) and a decrepitand black"JFK" (Ossie Davis) to defeat a 3,000-year-old-Egyptian mummy with a penchant for sucking human souls! Can the King show the world that he can still take care of business?Don Coscarelli directs and Bruce Campbell stars as the King of Camp in this intentionally over-the-top schlockfest. Bubba Ho-Tep is partially about Elvis Presley and partially about the title character, an Egyptian cowboy zombie, but mostly it is about camp. The movie is equal parts story and back story. We learn through narration and flashback how Elvis didn't really die, ending up instead in a rest home in East Texas with JFK (played by Ossie Davis), who was dyed black and had his brain removed, presumably for reasons of national security. Campbell and Davis realize that something strange is going on when their rest-home compatriots start dropping off suspiciously. The whole movie leads up to a final showdown to the death with the Egyptian cowboy zombie who has been sucking the souls of their fellow residents because he thought no one would notice. The movie unfolds a bit slowly; it is, after all, a geriatrics-fight-Egyptian-cowboy-zombie movie. However, one wishes this self-conscious movie's pacing took its cue from the atypically fast-moving zombie instead of from the senior-citizen Elvis and JFK. In the end, though, Campbell is flawless as the aged King; his accent, intonations, glasses, and trademark karate are at the same time sincere and over the top. --Brian Saltzman
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