Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

If you'd come to me before 2008 and told me there was a movie where Bruce Campbell plays an elderly Elvis Presley in a nursing home, Ossie Davis plays a man who claims to be President Kennedy, and the two of them take on a reanimated mummy that wears cowboy boots and a hat and sucks people's souls out of their assholes, I would have either asked you what kind of drugs you were on or if you were coming off a really bad fever dream. 2008 is when I first learned of this movie, specifically when James Rolfe featured it on his first CineMassacre's Monster Madness marathon. Watching the clips he showed in that video, I couldn't believe this was real, as it seemed like the most random and bonkers plot one could think of, which James himself even acknowledged; I also always remembered the way in which he said "Bubba," as he did it the way Elvis himself may have. And while he said it was quite a well-made and sincere movie, in spite of the ridiculous concept, unlike a lot of the movies he introduced me to in those marathons, it didn't become one I ever sought out, mainly because I've never been that big a fan of Bruce Campbell and also because, at that point, I'd never seen a single one of Don Coscarelli's films (in fact, this would become the first for me, even before the Phantasm movies). So, what made me decide to give it a try, you ask? Simply that, in early 2017, I decided to pick up a lot of Scream Factory's recent releases and saw that they'd just given Bubba Ho-Tep a Blu-Ray release, so I figured I'd take a chance. And, I'm not going to lie, that chance didn't pay off initially, as I didn't much care for it when I first saw it. I couldn't deny that Campbell and Davis were great and that the movie was well-made, but the reason for my initial disappointment came down to expectations. With this kind of plot, I was expecting an absolute farce, possibly along the lines of a Troma movie (though, hopefully, not too much, as I hate Troma), but what I got was a movie that, while definitely vulgar, with a lot of toilet and sexual humor, was actually rather slow-paced and melancholic, often becoming a meditation on lost youth, wasted lifetimes, and the extent of one's worth as they become old. Honestly, I actually found it kind of boring that first time but, upon re-watching it, I was able to get a lot more out of it and appreciate what it had to say. I don't absolutely love it like those who are part of its devout cult following, and its tone does start to get to me after a while, but I will say that I definitely respect the story and what Coscarelli was able to do with it.

One of the more interesting residents of the Shady Rest Retirement Home in Mud Creek, Texas is a man who's officially known as Sebastian Haff but looks, dresses, talks, and claims to actually be Elvis Presley and that Sebastian Haff was an Elvis impersonator he traded places with in the 1970's when he decided he'd had enough of the demands of his fame and fortune. Ergo, while Haff was the one who ultimately died in 1977, Elvis himself lived a happy life in anonymity, making a living by impersonating himself, until an accident during a performance in the early 80's landed him in a coma. Nowadays, at the retirement home, Elvis is often bedridden and has nothing to look forward to other than sleeping and crapping, lamenting the way his life has turned out, the loss of his family, his impotence, fragile physical condition, and a growth on his penis that he suspects is cancerous. He's also annoyed at how none of the staff believe his claims, with one nurse constantly patronizing him whenever she cares for him. He's not the only resident who claims to be a still-living famous figure: Jack, an old black man who needs an electric wheelchair to get around, claims to actually be President John F. Kennedy, that he was stitched up after the assassination, dyed black, and abandoned. As insane as he likely is, he's the one whom Elvis can really talk to. One night, Elvis get an unexpected visitor in the form of an enormous scarab beetle, which he manages to kill when it attacks him, and when he goes to check on Jack, he finds him lying on the floor in his room, claiming he saw a figure in the hall that he believes was an assassin sent to finish him off. The following night, Jack wakes Elvis up and leads him to the restroom to show him some graffiti on a restroom stall wall that's written in Egyptian. He also tells him that, when he was attacked the night before, the figure had his mouth over his "asshole" and now believes he was after his soul, which can be removed from any orifice. Showing Elvis a book on the subject, he tells him his theory that the culprit is an undead Egyptian mummy that's been resurrected and is feeding on the souls of the home's residents to sustain himself. At first skeptical, Elvis then meets the ghoul face-to-face and sees a vision of his past life in Ancient Egypt when he looks into his eyes. Now, knowing that no one will believe them, Elvis and Jack must take it upon themselves to defend the residents from having their souls devoured by this "Bubba Ho-Tep."

Out of all the Masters of Horror who came out of the 70's and 80's, the one I feel is the most fiercely independent and anti-Hollywood, for lack of a better term, is Don Coscarelli. Although John Carpenter and George Romero definitely fit that description too, especially Romero, they still made movies for either big or decent-sized studios in their careers, and sometimes with fairly big budgets; the closest Coscarelli has ever come to making a studio movie is when he made Phantasm II for Universal and even then, it still had a very small budget. In fact, his biggest budgeted film, The Beastmaster, was made for only $9 million. Although it's led to him not directing that many films despite having been working since the mid-70's (at this point, if you count his Masters of Horror episode, he's only done eleven), like Romero, you can't help but admire him for his spirit and determination to do things his way. I've actually met him before, at a convention in Nashville in 2013, and he was a really cool, chill dude (we talked about our mutual love for Godzilla, as I was wearing one of my many Godzilla shirts), and I've also read his book, True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking, as Jeff Burr let me borrow it in 2019 and I highly recommend it for anyone who's a fan or has an interest in the trials and tribulations of independent filmmaking. When it comes to Bubba Ho-Tep, I like the rather straightforward way it came about: Coscarelli read the basic description of the original story by Joe Lansdale and was so taken by it that he decided, "That could be a movie." He's also said that Lansdale himself was surprised he wanted to make that particular story into a film, as it was the last one he ever expected to get such interest.

If you read the reviews I did for the Evil Dead movies, you'd know two things: I'm not a fan of that series (I desperately wanted to be a fan, but they don't gel with me, for whatever reason) and I'm not big on Bruce Campbell. I know he's this beloved cult icon and I won't deny that he does have a charisma and can be entertaining, but I've never loved him the way so many other people do. Besides stories I've heard of him being something of a dick to people who've met him at

conventions, one thing I've never cared for is how, basically since Army of Darkness, he's almost always played a variation of Ash every time he's popped up in a movie or even when he's made public appearances. It's often that same sort of sarcastic, one-liner-spewing smartass who's something of a faux action hero and, while I get why a lot of people love it, it makes me think, "Can't you do anything else?" In-between the Evil Dead movies in the 80's and up to Army of Darkness, it felt like Campbell was actually trying to create a performance when he appeared in other movies, but that went away after 1992. Because of this feeling I have about him, people would often encourage me to watch Bubba Ho-Tep, saying it was an instance where Campbell was actually trying to act rather than coast on that persona he's created for himself and, I must say, they were right. Although Campbell has admitted he wasn't a fan of Elvis during his lifetime, he really manages to embody him here, with the look, the voice, and the mannerisms. It works both in the flashbacks when you see him as young Elvis, as he truly captures the more familiar and lasting image of him, and in the present story as old Elvis, who hasn't aged well at all, is horribly frail and awkward, needing a walker to move around, has a potbelly, and is concerned about a growth on his penis. Speaking of old Elvis, the makeup by KNB is good enough to make you think this is what he possibly would have looked like if he had lived on to 2002.

Besides the look, voice, and movements, Campbell also excels in the performance he brings to Elvis, which is a sad, regretful, and reflective one. It starts with what's known about the real Elvis' mindset and point he was in his life during his final years and then builds on it. As Elvis himself explains, he was addicted to drugs, had lost his wife and daughter, was buckling under the pressure of his fame and fortune, felt his "friends" were nothing more than leeches, and, above everything else, he'd lost all

sense of himself, feeling he was now nothing more than a persona and image everyone else had created for him. Wanting out, he tracked down the best Elvis impersonator he could find, Sebastian Haff, and traded places with him. They even had a contract written up where they would trade their lives back if Elvis wanted to, but he was so happy living a normal life that, when the contract was accidentally destroyed, he wasn't upset about it. He was able to go on making a living as Haff

after the real Haff died in his place, and was even feeling like himself again, when his hip went out during a performance and he fell off the stage. He got an infection from it and fell into a coma, after which his life really went downhill. Now a resident at the Shady Rest Retirement Home, Elvis laments how he's lost his youth, his sexual virility, his family (whom he has dreams about), and now, has a growth on his penis that's likely cancer. All he has to look forward to is sleeping, eating, crapping in a bedpan, talking with Jack, and

moments where the nurse lubes up his penis with a cream meant to cure the inflammation caused by the growth. But, Elvis gets an unexpected boost to his energy and virility when, after he gets attacked by a large scarab beetle and learns Jack was also attacked that very night by a scuttling figure, he becomes interested in finding out what's going on, so much so that he gets a hard-on when the nurse is lubing him up. After that, he learns from Jack that what's going on is a resurrected Egyptian mummy is feeding on the souls of the elderly at the

home, although he doesn't totally believe it until he comes face to face with the mummy and has a vision of his former life in Ancient Egypt and how he came to be in Texas when he looks into his eyes. After watching Kemosabe, a resident of the home who believes he's the Lone Ranger, attempt to take on the mummy, only to die of a ruptured heart, Elvis becomes all the more independent and determined not to be coddled or patronized like a baby, even threatening the nurse when she tries to make him go back inside when he's out enjoying the fresh air.

He then learns the mummy was being taken around the country but was stolen when it got to Texas, only for the thieves to crash the bus they were driving in a bad storm. Having found the bus' license plate in a river near the home, he figures the mummy was released from his coffin in the crash and is now free to suck the souls of the constantly incoming residents. Although Jack is initially content to just switch homes and stay awake all night in the meantime, Elvis decides the place is all he has left and he's not going to let

Bubba Ho-Tep devour anyone else's soul. Having now come to the realization that the bad that happened in his life was his own fault, he says, "In the movies, I always played the heroic types, but when the stage lights went out, it was time for drugs and stupidity and the coveting of women. Now it's time. Time to be a little of what I had always fantasized of being: a hero." He convinces Jack to help him and the two of them load up, as well as suit up, and prepare to face Bubba Ho-Tep when he comes to feed that night. As part of his "uniform," Elvis wears a Native American medicine bag

around his neck that's full of good luck charms, like Kemosabe's Lone Ranger mask, the Purple Heart of a roommate of his who died at the beginning of the movie, and a picture of Lisa Marie. As he's done throughout the movie, Elvis laments how he'll never be able to see his daughter and tell her he loves her, but Jack tells him this is no time for regrets. During the battle, Elvis twice manages to douse Bubba Ho-Tep in gasoline and alcohol, light him on fire, and recite an incantation meant to defeat him, although he's unable to keep Jack from dying. In the end, while he manages to destroy the mummy, he's mortally wounded in a tumble down a hill, but dies peacefully, knowing he's going to keep his soul and the same goes for everyone else at the rest home.

All throughout the movie, you have to wonder whether this man really is Elvis or, as the staff insist, is actually Sebastian Haff who, after suffering an infection and being in a coma after his accident while performing, is now deluded that he's Elvis. You're never given any concrete proof one way or the other, as nothing Elvis says about how his life went before the trade isn't public knowledge now and, while he does have a dream about his daughter and has a little photo of her, you never get a clear enough look to confirm whether or not it's actually Lisa Marie; it could actually be Haff's own daughter, or someone else he knew, and he now believes her to be Lisa Marie. In the end, it doesn't matter, as he ultimately recovers a zeal for life and decides to make some kind of difference before he goes, but personally, I like to think he actually is Elvis.

This same ambiguity is certainly true of Ossie Davis' character of Jack, who claims to be President John Kennedy who was patched up after the assassination, with sand put in place of some of his brain matter, dyed black to ensure the truth never got out, and then abandoned by Lyndon Johnson. Though you'd likely think he was just a crazy old man, when Elvis finds him lying on the floor at one point, he sees a scar on the back of his head that could be all that's left of the gunshot. But, at the same time, Jack later mentions a woman who claims to be his niece. Regardless of the truth, Jack is certainly paranoid of someone coming to finish him off, having decorated the walls of his room with pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, and Jack Ruby, and when he first encounters Bubba Ho-Tep, he believes him to be an assassin sent by either Johnson or Fidel Castro, before suggesting it may have been Johnson himself (when Elvis tells him he's long dead, Jack says that wouldn't stop him). However, he finds evidence that tells him otherwise, as he leads Elvis to the restroom and shows him some writing on a stall wall that's Egyptian, and also believes that, when he was attacked, his assailant was trying to suck his soul out through his butt. Jack claims to know that a soul can be sucked out through any major orifice from a book called The Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul by David Webb, and later tells Elvis he believes the creature that's attacking the home is an Egyptian soul-sucker feeding on the souls of the elderly because they're about to die anyway, so no one would be the wiser. When he suggests he wrote what he did in the stall because he got bored while crapping out "soul residue," it initially confirms to Elvis that he is indeed certifiable, as he described him in his narration, but that's when Elvis sees Bubba Ho-Tep and gets a vision of his past life and how he came to be in Texas. The next day, Jack digs up some more information that confirms how the mummy got there in the first place.

Overall, while Elvis is very morose, Jack has a lot more life to him, one in how paranoid he is about someone coming to finish him off but also in how he spends his offscreen time digging around to find an explanation for what's going on at the home. He also makes more genuine and intentional jokes than Elvis and reveals to him that he's been keeping a lot of candy and sweets hidden in his room, much to Elvis' delight. And while Elvis initially thinks he's just as crazy as everyone else at

the home views him, their respective claims about who they really are leads to them forming a bond, albeit after Jack is convinced that Elvis had nothing to do with the assassination attempt in Dallas, as he says he heard Elvis never liked him. At first, the only recourse Jack considers taking against Bubba Ho-Tep is to change rest homes and keep himself awake in the meantime, but then, Elvis convinces him to help face off against the mummy and save those who are still alive. They load up with materials to burn the mummy, an incantation

that's meant to dispel evil, change into their "uniforms", synchronize watches, and head out late that night, with Jack going in a motorized wheelchair. Before the final battle occurs, Elvis shows Jack everything he has in his medicine bag, including his picture of his daughter, prompting Jack to say, "We weren't there for our kids when they needed us, were we?" (If Jack really is Kennedy, there's an added poignancy to that line in that this was after John F. Kennedy Jr. died in that plane crash.) And when Elvis says he wishes he could see his daughter just once more and tell her he loves her, Jack tells him, "No time for regrets, Elvis. We were the best fathers we could be under the circumstances." In the ensuing battle, Jack comes close to have his soul sucked but Elvis stops Bubba Ho-Tep before he can finish the process. Unfortunately, Jack dies of a heart attack from the stress and it's left to Elvis to take care of things.

I think what's most amazing about these two characters is that, despite how utterly ludicrous and potentially mocking this story is, they're treated with respect. It has fun with the idea of Elvis still living as a crotchety old man in a rest home with a growth on his "pecker" and a black man claiming to be President Kennedy, paranoid of assassins being sent to finish him off, and makes plenty of jokes about them, but it's almost always them making the jokes about themselves rather than others picking on them. Plus, as crude as the humor tends to get, with Elvis missing his ability to get an erection, the constant talking about crapping, Jack offering Elvis a "chocolate ding-dong" and clarifying, "Oh, I don't mean mine... Of course, mine would be chocolate, now that I've been dyed," and his describing Marilyn Monroe's performance in bed as, "Wow!", it never gets to the point where the two of them become farcical caricatures. Ultimately, they're still treated as human beings who both admit they've made regrettable mistakes in the past and decide to atone by facing Bubba Ho-Tep to stop him from devouring any more souls, after which they both go out as heroes.

Aside from Jack, one of the few people Elvis interacts with throughout the film is this nurse (Ella Joyce) who acts patronizing towards him when he claims to actually be Elvis Presley, saying she just plays along with it because both of them really know that he's Sebastian Haff. She clearly finds him to be a source of amusement, laughing at him when he curses at her for not believing his story and at the thought of lubing up his penis with the cortisone cream, although she's disgusted at doing the act itself, especially when he suddenly gets a boner while she's doing it. After his first run-in with Bubba Ho-Tep and witnessing Kemosabe's death, Elvis decides he's had enough of the nurse when, while he's outside, she comes out and tries to talk him back in, saying it's time for his nap and that she'll have to lube him up again. He curses her out, calling her a "patronizing bitch" and threatens to wrap his walker around her if she tries to baby him again, much to her shock.

Reggie Bannister from the Phantasm movies has a small role here as the rest home administrator, who's just as bad about patronizing Elvis as the nurse. When Elvis tells him about the large "cockroach" he tangled with in his room and that they've got bugs all over the place, he assures him they're going to call the exterminator but it's obvious he's going to do no such thing. He's also dismissive towards the staff, as the nurse at one point tries to tell him of some lights that appear to be shorting out but he tells her it's none of her concern and orders her to go give someone an enema. And following the death of Kemosabe, he and the other members of the staff question and scold both Elvis and Jack for their apparent role in what happened.

Among the other residents of the home is this mean old woman (Edith Jefferson) who takes a pair of glasses from this poor lady who's stuck in an iron lung and walks off with a tin of cookies meant for someone else. Needless to say, she's the first one to die at the hands of Bubba Ho-Tep. Also, there's Kemosabe (Larry Pennell), an old guy who believes he's the Lone Ranger and always dresses like him, from the cowboy getup and hat down to the mask. Elvis says he's

someone he used to think of as a friend but now, he's become so deluded that he doesn't even know who he is. He witnesses Bubba Ho-Tep sucking the soul out of someone and attempts pursue him as he leaves the home, but drops dead from a bad heart as a result. And finally, you have Elvis' roommate, Bull, (Harrison Young), who dies at the very beginning of the movie, after which Elvis meets his daughter, Callie (Heidi Marnhout), who proves to be absolutely cold and uncaring. Not only did she not

visit her father during the three years he was in the home but, when she shows up to collect his things, she's about ready to throw away his photos and purple heart. Elvis stops her from doing so and she gives them to him, after which she claims she did what she could for her and that she didn't have the money to take care of him. Disgusted, Elvis, who wonders if Lisa Marie would feel the same way about him, tells her, "You could've come and seen him. They don't charge you for that," to which she

snarls, "Mind your own business. I was busy." When the nurse comes in, Callie learns about his claiming to be Elvis Presley, and she decides to humor him, asking him why he gave it up, leading to him telling his story. But, when he's finished, he realizes he's just being patronized again and tells Callie to get out when she mockingly says, "It was nice meeting you, Mr. Presley."

Finally, there's a recurring gag with these two hearse drivers (Daniel Roebuck and Daniel Schweiger) who have to stop by the home and take away the bodies. They act as a comedy duo, with the one played by Roebuck often trying to be philosophical about life and death when they pick up a body, while his partner couldn't care less and just wants to get the job done. When the two of them pick up Kemosabe's body, there's a morbid bit of slapstick where the one driver falls over the porch wall, flipping the body with him, and they scramble to pick him back up and get him into the back of the hearse before someone sees them.

Speaking of which, in spite of the melancholy tone, a lot of the humor also comes from just how pathetic Elvis and Jack's lots in life are. While it's sad to see the possible King of Rock N' Roll reduced to a fragile, out of shape old man who's stuck in a lousy rest home, it's also ironically funny, and his complaints and reflections about it are just as humorous as they are depressing, like when he looks at himself in a mirror and says, "Well, goddamn it. How could I have gone from the king of rock n' roll to this? An old guy in a

restroom in East Texas with a growth on his pecker." He often talks about how he's no longer the sexual icon he once was, with one of his first lines being, "Truth was I hadn't had a hard-on in years." He also wonders, "If Priscilla discovered I was alive, would she come and see me? Would we still wanna fuck? Or would we merely have to talk about it?" And later, when the nurse is slathering that cream on his penis, he says, "Doll like this, handling me without warmth or emotion. Twenty years ago, just twenty, man, I could've made with a

curly lip smile and had her eating out of my asshole." The same goes for Jack: whether he really is John Kennedy or just a crazy old man, both possibilities are sad to contemplate but also funny. On the one hand, you have a beloved former president who's been rendered unrecognizable and is stuck in a rest home with no possible way to convince anyone of who he really is, and on the other, you have a guy with the most random delusions and who's paranoid about people who are

either dead or have no clue he even exists sending assassins to kill him. There's also some humor in how, when they're discussing what might be going on, they become like two naughty little kids who decide to have some sweets they aren't supposed to that Jack's been hiding in his room. And the idea of these two old men, who can't get around well without a walker and a motorized wheelchair and who have to take a crap in a bedpan, having to defend the rest

home from an undead, soul-sucking mummy is funny in how ludicrous it is, like when Elvis threatens to do his moves on Bubba Ho-Tep and nearly breaks his hip when he throws a kick or when Jack falls asleep in his chair while waiting for the mummy to show up. In fact, a slow-moving mummy who's preying on the elderly because he can't fight off young and agile people is a perfect opponent for them!

The humor, as you've no doubt picked up on, is often extremely crude and vulgar, usually centering on one of two things, sex and shit, and comes down to two dirty old men who either think back to their past sexual conquests or talk about one of the few things they have to look forward to nowadays, which is being able to do their business in an actual restroom rather than a bedpan. Again, most of the sexual stuff comes from Elvis and his lamenting the loss of virility, as well as the sad irony that he's likely got cancer on the end of his penis, but there

is also that moment when Jack lets him in on how good Marilyn Monroe was in the sack, as well as the "ding-dong" scene. I think the scene that best encapsulates this movie's sexual humor is when the nurse is lubing Elvis up with that cream and then, he gets the first erection he's had in years, surprising both the nurse and himself and prompting him to ask her to pull on it. Having now regained some of his vigor, when Elvis later tells off the nurse when she patronizes him yet again, one of the things he says to her is, "I'll lube my own crankshaft from now on!" As for the other

type of humor, there's the fact that Bubba Ho-Tep apparently likes to suck people's souls directly out of their rear ends, as well as that it's suggested he went into one of the restrooms because he had to take a crap after feeding on a bunch of souls and even drew on the wall of the stall, which proves to be Elvis and Jack's first clue as to what's going on. Think about that: their first clue is in the restroom. And Bubba Ho-Tep proves to be just as much of a dirty old man as they are. According to Jack in

his translations, what he wrote on the wall was, "Pharaoh gobbles donkey goobers," and, "Cleopatra does the nasty," which he likely wrote whenever he took a crap back in Ancient Egypt. Also, during the final confrontation with him, he yells at Elvis, "Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass wipe!" (note how suggestive the hieroglyphics look in that shot).

Finally, there's humor that's just inherently funny and goofy, like Elvis' one-liners, which include, "Let's take care of business," "Never, but never, fuck with the King!", "It's time for A-C-T-I-O-N!", and, "Your soul suckin' days are over, amigo!" The movie even starts with a joke: definitions for both "Ho-Tep" and "Bubba," the latter of which is defined as a "good ole boy," "cracker," "redneck," and, "trailer park resident." But the one that I find really funny, even if it is stupid, is when Elvis has to read the incantation meant to dispel evil, only for

it to read, "You nasty thing from beyond the dead, no matter what you think or do, good things will never come to you. And if evil is your black design, you can bet the goodness of the Light Ones... will kick your bad behind." It's akin to the moment in Army of Darkness where Ash has to recite an incantation in order to safely remove the Necronomicon, but here, Elvis is so dumbfounded at the stupidity that he has to call it out, shouting at the sky, "That's it? That's the chant against evil from the Book of Souls? Oh yeah, right, boss. And what kind of decoder ring comes with that, man? Shit, it don't even rhyme well!"

But, as funny as it gets, the movie is, in the end, a very sad examination of what can become of someone when they get old, despite what they've accomplished in life. Not only do we have Elvis looking back on the life and fame he once had, wondering how he could have ended up where he is, and if anything matters anymore, but it's best summed up in how his roommate, who had a purple heart, is completely tossed aside by his own daughter once he's put in the rest home and, after he dies, she's ready to throw the medal away. It

also makes for a sad statement about how senior citizens are treated in America; as Jack himself says, they're basically put away so they won't be a bother anymore and can just slowly die off without their families having to deal with or think about it. Later, when Elvis decides that the growth on his penis is likely cancer, he figures, "They're keeping it from me 'cause I'm old, and to them, it doesn't matter. They think age will kill me first..." Because of this apathetic view everyone has towards the

senior citizens, they're ideal prey for Bubba Ho-Tep, who can continually feed on their souls without anyone questioning why they're dying off, seeing as how they're all close to death anyway. And yet, ironically, the realization of what's going on spurs Elvis and Jack to make a stand against the mummy and go out as heroes, saving everyone left at the home from having their souls devoured, digested, and unable to find eternal peace.

Although it takes place in Texas, the movie was shot entirely in California, mainly at an abandoned veterans' hospital outside of Los Angeles that served as the location for the Shady Rest Retirement Home. Ever since I was a kid and often had to visit my maternal grandmother when she worked at a nursing home, these types of places have always made my skin crawl. That nursing home may have been better than the one seen here but it was still a nasty, awful place (just thinking of the smell makes me want to gag) and I remember

how much it disturbed me to see those old people either walking around in a daze or sitting in their own filth. While it seems okay on the outside, situated in a nice, tree-lined yard, on the inside, Shady Rest looks like an unpleasant dump, with dimly lit hallways painted in ugly browns and stained grays; a room for Elvis that's even uglier, due to the wallpaper, the desaturated brown and teal linoleum, the lamps with nasty-looking, orange-colored shades on the stands, a TV

that looks like it's at least two decades out of date, and beds that seem to have made with the absolute bear minimum of comfort in mind; the mean old woman's room, which is filled with dolls, teddy bears, and other stuffed animals, a couple of which are creepily sitting in a rocking chair over by the corner; a dining room that looks just as sorry as the food does disgusting; and a restroom that, while not that bad, considering, would look more appealing without those lime-colored stalls and

gray walls. Actually, the best room in the place is Jack's room, which, despite the pictures of suspects in the JFK assassination lining the walls and the models recreating the scene of the assassination, is actually carpeted, has a genuine bed, candy and other treats hidden in the drawers, and Jack is even able to make tea for him and Elvis.

Shady Rest is so unsightly and claustrophobic, with 90% of the movie taking place there, that it's a relief when we get to go somewhere else whenever there's a flashback to Elvis' previous life, even if it's the little podunk of a town where he found Sebastian Haff, who appeared to live in a rundown building, and the trailer park he lived in after switching places with him. It's especially nice to see those big, wide shots of the desert landscape when Elvis is driving around in his convertible, going from town to town to impersonate himself,

shots that are actually kind of ambitious for a movie whose budget was, most accounts, just over $500,000 (Coscarelli has said it was around $700,000). And when you see him doing his thing on the stage, as limited as it ultimately is because of the budget (as well as because the hundred extras they managed to gather gradually left as shooting went on), it's pleasing to the eye because of those bright, vivid colors, which you don't get anywhere else in the movie.

The movie is shot to make the rest home look all the more unappealing, with a dark and rather murky quality to the nighttime scenes, sometimes even when the lights are on, and a desaturated color palette that has a lot of brown in it. The scene where Elvis has an encounter with a large scarab beetle in his room has a distinctive brown-orange look to it due to the floor heater, whereas the scene where Kemosabe wakes up to find Bubba Ho-Tep about to feed on his roommate has an unexpected white-blue tone to the lighting, which you don't see

anywhere else in the movie. Speaking of Bubba Ho-Tep, when Elvis first sees him, there's an interesting lighting effect that happens after his presence causes the lights in the hall and the ceiling to short out, leading to a kaleidoscope-like vortex that backlights him and makes for a very otherworldly image. As I've said, the only scenes at the rest home that have a lovely look to them are those inside Jack's room and when we get to go outside on the lawn, which looks really nice. I

especially like the way it looks during the climax, as it seems as though it's only lit by the light-poles in the yard, with everything else being enshrouded in shadows or total darkness. It has the look and feel of a warm summer's night to me, but you can see the actors' breath in some shots, so I'm guessing that wasn't actually the case.

The filmmakers also get a bit creative with the editing in some instances. There are moments where Elvis has these visions that are flashes made up of very quick cuts and sped up action, specifically when he first awakens at the beginning of the movie and sees people coming and going in his room and, most notably, when he looks into Bubba Ho-Tep's eyes and sees glimpses of his past life in Ancient Egypt and his being condemned to death (all of those shots have this kind of yellow-green color to them), as well as the bus crash that led to his

being freed from his cursed sarcophagus and the bridge where said crash happened, all with extreme closeups on Elvis' eye spliced in. Also, in his flashback where he talks about trading places with Sebastian Haff, there's a shot of Elvis walking with his posse that's done in slow-motion to give it a vibe of epic coolness, and later, when he's dreaming and remembering the life he had while impersonating Haff, there's a shot of him telling the story to the nurse and Callie, while an image of

him driving the road can be seen on the bottom section of the screen. And finally, there are a couple of instances where Bubba Ho-Tep speaks in Egyptian and hieroglyphics representing his speech come floating onto the screen, with a similar visual happening at the end of the movie, where Elvis sees a message in the sky that tells him, "All is well," before he passes away.

Bubba Ho-Tep (Bob Ivy) himself is more of a presence than an actual character, as he's offscreen a lot and, when he does appear, he's often either kept in the shadows save for some blink and you'll miss it moments or his presence is heralded by electrical equipment malfunctioning when he's near. It's not until the climax that you truly get to see him and even then, it's often still in low lighting. A cursed, undead resident of Ancient Egypt (you only get vague clues at to why he was cursed during Elvis' vision but it appears to have something to do with a pharaoh and a woman he may have been involved with), he's able to resurrect when the bus carrying his stolen sarcophagus crashes into a river during a bad storm and the box is popped open. Needing souls to stay alive, he decides to go for very easy prey: the residents of the Shady Rest Retirement Home. While a single one of these souls doesn't give him enough energy to sustain himself, as they're so close to death anyway that they don't have much to offer, the constant influx of new arrivals makes it probable for him to keep feeding indefinitely, especially since no one will think much of it as they're going to die soon anyway. What's really bad is the notion that those whose souls he devours won't be able to go to the afterlife, making them as dead as one can possibly get. He proves to be quite a perverted guy as well, as he likes to suck the souls out of his victims' butts when he could do it out of any major orifice, draws graffiti on the restroom stalls while crapping out soul residue, and hurls some profane obscenities at Elvis during the final confrontation. And as I said earlier, he's just as old and decrepit as Elvis and Jack are, proving unable to move all that fast, even during their climactic battle, making him a fitting foe for them.

KNB, who'd worked with Don Coscarelli before, agreed to do the makeup effects as a favor to him and, along with some very minute blood and gore moments (the goriest one is a shot of brain matter being removed through a guy's nose during the flashback to Ancient Egypt), chief among their duties was designing Bubba Ho-Tep himself. While it's definitely a well-done suit combined with makeup, especially when he stretches his mouth opens to suck a person's soul, I don't find his actual look to be that impressive, as he's just a slow-moving, decaying corpse with rotten bandages and shreds of clothes all over him, which

has been seen before; however, the hat with the feather in it and the cowboy boots he wears are another matter, as they do make him stand out from similar characters. As for the big scarab beetle that appears in a couple of scenes early on, that creature was created by D. Kerry Prior, who'd worked with Coscarelli on Phantasm III and IV, specifically on the sequences in those movies involving the infamous spheres. According to Coscarelli, everything involving the beetle was done practically, as they didn't have the budget for

much digital work and instead used a handful of different versions of the prop, some which could scuttle, others which had wings that could flap and fly, and so forth. However, there are some shots of the beetle, like when it deploys its wings and shoots off the wall or some shots of it flying, that do look like CGI, and there are some very brief but obvious digital effects elsewhere, like a shot of souls leaving Bubba Ho-Tep when he's defeated. But, regardless, the scarab is effectively done and will likely screw with anyone with a fear of bugs.

If I have any qualms about Bubba Ho-Tep, it's mainly that I still find the movie to be a little too slow. Like I've said before, there's nothing wrong with a movie taking its time, and I can appreciate that this is a film about the characters rather than the actual monster (it especially helps that said characters are entertaining to watch), but I guess the horror fan in me would have liked a little more action and scenes of Bubba Ho-Tep devouring people's souls. I also think the movie's overwhelming feelings of dreary melancholia and

sadness start to get to me after a while, as they make me think about what could possibly happen to me one day when I get that old, as well as make me hope I don't come to lament any youth I feel I've wasted. And finally, while I don't mind ambiguity, exactly why Elvis is able to see into Bubba Ho-Tep's past, as well as seemingly sense his presence or when something bad is happening at certain points, is never explained and feels very random. There's also a hinted connection between Kemosabe's delusions about bad guys hiding under a bridge and the bridge that the bus carrying Bubba Ho-Tep's coffin fell off, one that almost comes off as foreshadowing, but it's also left vague and unexplained and it's possible I'm reading too much into it.

After the opening definitions of both "Ho-Tep," which is defined as a, "Relative or descendant of the 17 Egyptian Dynasties, 3100-1500 B.C.," and, "Family surname of an Egyptian pharaoh," and "Bubba," the movie truly begins with old German newsreel footage of the discovery of the tomb of Amen Ho-Tep near Luxor and Thebes. The mummies of the pharaoh and his priests are removed from the tomb and taken to a museum, with the German-speaking narrator announcing

that they will soon come to the viewer's closest museum. (Don Coscarelli has said that this footage is real, but the subtitles for the German language are not at all accurate.) We then skip ahead to the present, to an establishing shot of the Shady Rest Retirement Home in Mud Creek, Texas, and are introduced to Elvis, as he rolls over in his bed. He narrates, "I was dreamin'. Dreamin' my dick was out and I was checkin' to see if that infected bump on the head of it had

filled with pus again. If it had, I was gonna name it after my ex-wife, 'Cilla, and bust it by jackin' off. Or I'd like to think that's what I'd do. Dreams let you think like that. Truth was... I hadn't had a hard-on in years." As he wakes up and sees a sped up vision of people coming in and out of the room, he becomes despondent at the knowledge that he's still in the rest home, when his roommate, Bull, gets into a violent coughing fit. Elvis puts on his glasses and raises his bed up to get a better look, and as Bull starts convulsing, he lays back down

and thinks, "My God, man, how long have I been here? Am I awake now, or just dreamin' that I'm awake? How could my plans have gone so wrong? When the hell are they gonna serve lunch? Considering what they serve, why the hell do I care?... Is there finally and really anything to life other than food, shit, and sex?" Looking at himself in a mirror and lamenting what he's become, he flashes back to an instance where he was performing and a woman threw her panties to him. Looking down at his crotch, he wonders what the

growth on his penis is, noting that no one seems to know if it's cancer or not, or possibly, no one wants to know. Suddenly, Bull, lets out a horrifying, pained yell and turns and looks at Elvis, reaching his arm out to him. Elvis reciprocates but then, Bull flops back over onto his back and expires. Later, his body is taken away and loaded up into a hearse. One of the two men carrying the body out, after harshly slamming the stretcher down and sliding it into the hearse, wonders what kind of life he led, but his partner grumbles, "Oh, who gives a shit?", and closes the door. 

An elderly woman is shown roaming the halls of the home, when she comes upon a woman in an iron lung. She walks up to her, pats her head and strokes her hair, as if comforting her, and then takes her glasses and walks off, as the woman lets out a weak and helpless, "No." Down another hallway, she finds a tin of cookies sitting on a small table and, making sure no one's looking, walks off with it. That night, in her doll and stuffed animal-filled room, the woman sits in bed,

enjoying the cookies, when she hears a fluttering sound. Looking over the edge of her bed and down at the floor, she sees what appears to be a large bug skitter underneath the bed. Quickly bending to the other side of the bed, she gets another glimpse of it and listens as the sounds it makes carry throughout the room. Looking down at the foot of the bed, she sees it climb up under the sheets with her and make its way towards her, emitting bizarre sounds as it does. She puts her hand

under the covers and reaches for the creature, growling, "I'm gonna squish you, cockroach!", only to yell in pain following the sound of a snap. Pulling her hand out, she sees it has a bloody bite in the palm and she rolls out of bed in a panic, taking the bedspread and sheets with her. Grabbing her cane, she smacks the bug when she sees its form move underneath the covers and pulls back the sheets to see it sitting there in a pool of green blood. She laughs, when the beetle looks up at her and then glances off to the

sound, making a squeak. The woman looks and is horrified when a dark figure wearing a hat with a feather in it appears in front of her. She attempts to run, and the scene switches to Elvis, now sleeping alone in his room. He awakens when he gets a flash of something and, hearing the sound of groaning and moaning, looks and sees the woman holding onto the edge of the doorway. She manages to moan out, "Help me," before being yanked down the hall. Elvis puts his glasses on, but when he looks, he sees nothing there.

Thinking he was seeing things, he rolls over and goes back to sleep. The next day, the same hearse drivers pick up the woman's body and load it into the back. The one guy appears like he's about to get all philosophical again, but instead tells his partner to use some deodorizer on the corpse, as, "She's smelling pretty ripe."

Elvis awakens again and sees another sped up vision of people coming and going in the room, before fully awakening to see a woman looking through Bull's stuff. Glancing at his purple heart and some old photos, she walks over to a garbage can to the right of what was Bull's bed and tosses them in it. Elvis asks her if he could have one of the pictures and the purple heart, as well as maybe the tin of chocolates she's brought. She agrees and bends over to dig everything back out out of the can, as

Elvis, who gets a look up her skirt, tells us, "The revealing of her panties wasn't intentional or unintentional. She just didn't give a damn. She saw me as so physically and sexually non-threatenin', she didn't mind if I got a bird's eye view of her love nest. It was the same to her as a house cat sneakin' a peek. I felt my pecker flutter once, like a pigeon havin' a heart attack, then lay back down and remain limp and still. Of course, these days even a flutter was kinda reassurin'." She then gives him the medal and a photo, and Elvis is

shocked when she reveals she's Bull's daughter, Callie, whom he mentioned a lot but never came to visit him during the three years he was at the home. When she makes the excuse that she didn't have the money to take care of him herself, Elvis wonders if his own daughter would feel the same way if she learned he was still alive and glances at the photo, which shows Bull as a young soldier with two women by his side. A nurse comes in and refers to Elvis as Mr. Haff, but he tells her he prefers to be called Mr. Presley or just Elvis. Going along with

it, the nurse tells Callie about Elvis but insists to both her and him that the real Elvis is dead and he was an Elvis impersonator who became deluded into believing he was the real man after an accident while he was performing. Elvis, however, insists he was impersonating himself and that there's nothing wrong with him. When Callie asks why he would want to be someone else, he explains, "I got tired of it. I was hooked on pills, you know. I wanted out." He goes on to say that he traded places with Sebastian Haff, the best impersonator he could find, and he was the one who died due to a bad heart and an even worse drug addiction.

As it transitions to a flashback that shows Elvis riding in a limousine with his posse, Callie asks him why he wanted to give everything up and he says, "I don't know. 'Cause it got old. The woman I loved, Priscilla: she was gone. The rest of the women... were just women. I mean, the music wasn't mine anymore. I wasn't even me anymore, just this thing they made up. And my 'friends...' well, they were sucking me dry. So, I took a little road trip down to Nacogdoches to check out this

Sebastian Haff." The limousine pulls up next to a long building and Elvis and his posse walk into another building across from it. Inside, they find a door with a sign that reads, "Sebastian Haff. Do Not Disturb," and Elvis tells his posse to wait outside for him. Inside, Haff, dressed in his Elvis getup, is eating some pie, only to be floored when the real Elvis walks in and approaches him. He's so taken aback that he can't even finish the sentence he starts and gets down on his knees and kisses Elvis'

hand. Afterward, Haff, now done up as the real Elvis, walks out and tells the posse, "It's alright, boys. Just another freak. Let's split." They walk out the door and Haff is about to open the door to the limousine, when one of his boys insists on doing it for him and he obliges. The limousine drives off and Elvis, now wearing Haff's costume, watches them go. He narrates, "So, I signed everything over to Sebastian, except for enough money to sustain me if things got bad. I was determined to make myself a new life. A better one." He's then shown

grilling some hotdogs in a trailer park and goes on to say, "But me and Sebastian, we had us a deal: if I wanted to trade back, he'd let me. It was all written up in the contract. Thing was, I lost my copy in a barbecue accident." We see how said accident happened, as he unknowingly leaves the can of charcoal lighter leaking out beside the grill, while he walks over to a table where some people are waiting for him. He says, "But that wasn't so bad, either. I was making new friends and enjoying myself." Just then, the grill blows up in a massive

fireball that consumes the entire trailer it was sitting next to. While everyone else is horrified, Elvis is more amused than anything else. Going back to the present, the nurse advises him, "Don't carry it too far. You may just get way out there and not come back," Elvis grumbles, "Oh, fuck you," and when both she and Callie laugh, he says, "Shit. Get old, you can't even cuss someone and have it bother 'em. Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing." Callie then leaves and the nurse says she'll come by later, "To do that little... thing that has to be done. You know." Both women walk out, laughing, as Elvis looks at the purple heart and wonders, "Poor Bull. In the end, does anything really matter?" 

He narrates, "No one here ever listened to me... except for this one guy. Only he was certifiable." We're then introduced to Jack and his claims to be John Kennedy, as he points to his head and says a piece of his brain was taken there, replaced by a small bag of sand. That's when Elvis points out the big whole in his claim and Jack says he was dyed black before being abandoned following the shooting. That night, Elvis dreams again, this time about when he was on the road, impersonating

Sebastian Haff. He says, "I was livin' simple, the way Haff had been, goin' from town to town, doin' the Elvis act. Only, I felt like I was really me again." It's then revealed he's dreaming about telling this to the nurse and Callie, both of whom now believe what he's saying, with the nurse saying, "We're digging it, Mr. Haff... Mr. Presley." We see one of his performances, as he comes out onto the stage to a bunch of screaming fans, most of them women. He says, "Women were

throwin' themselves at me 'cause they could imagine I was Elvis. Only, I was Elvis, playin' Sebastian Haff playin' Elvis. It was all pretty good. I didn't mind the contract bein' burned up. Didn't even try to go back and convince anybody... And then, I had the accident. I was gyratin', see? Takin' care of business, and then my hip went out. I'd been havin' trouble with it." We see that happen, where Elvis throws a pseudo-kick, followed by a loud snap, him losing his balance, and falling over the edge of the stage. He awakens, turns on

the lamp on the nightstand, puts on his glasses, and, remarking that it's cold, grabs his bedpan. But then, he decides he's had enough of using that thing and forces himself to get to his feet and grab his walker. Turning on the floor-heater next to the other bed, he heads to the restroom, managing to make it and do his business. Hearing something, he glances back into the room and notices that the window across from his bed is ajar. Finishing his business, he walks back out into the room and notices that the tin of chocolates Callie let him

have has been dumped in the floor. Approaching the spot, and hearing something underneath the upturned bottom of the tin that's lying next to the chocolates, he removes it and jumps back when he sees the big scarab beetle from before. He murmurs, "Man, that is one big, bitch cockroach," only to be startled and fall to the floor when the thing jumps up at him.

Feeling for his glasses, which fell in the floor with him, Elvis gets them and then uses his fallen walker as a brace to get back on his feet. He scans his room, looking for the beetle, when it scuttles up the wall behind him. Hearing it and swinging around, he sees it turn around to face him and he acts like he's going to use his moves on it. Because of how unsteady he is, he tries to find something else to fight with and, spying a nearby food tray, grabs for a knife or a fork. Unfortunately, he

ends up grabbing the spoon and mutters, "Damn," as he drops it to the floor. The scarab deploys its wings and starts flying around the room, with him having to duck when it comes right at him. When it comes around for another pass, he attempts to use his walker as a shield but it's so fast that it flies over him numerous times before he can do anything, making a screeching sound that also sounds like cackling laughter. It then pops up and hovers in front of him, following his every move.

He raises his left hand, distracting it, and then tries to grab it with his right, but it easily dodges him. As it continues fluttering, Elvis spies his bedpan and grabs it when the scarab flies at him again. He manages to catch it in the opening and trap it up against the wall. Thinking he's triumphed, he proclaims, "Gotcha, you six-legged bastard," but when he doesn't hear anything, he removes the bedpan from the wall and is surprised when the scarab isn't there. He scans the room, finding no sign of it, but then flips the bedpan over and

finds the scarab hiding inside it. It zooms past him and he falls to the floor again, knocking over both the food tray and the floor heater, the grill on the latter's front popping off. Trying to get his bearings, he sees the scarab on the floor, quickly crawling towards him, but he grabs a fork from the tray and stabs it into its back. Picking the impaled beetle up, he declares, "Even a big, bitch cockroach like you should know never, but never, fuck with the King," and jams it into the heater, although he ends up shocking himself in the process and blows out the heater completely. Regardless, he manages to kill the beetle and blows out the burning flame on its carcass.

Elvis walks into the hallway outside his room and yells, "I think we got some major bug problems in this place, man!" Not getting any sort of response, and hearing a strange sound akin to a gust of air and murmuring, he walks down the hall and the one connecting to it, when he comes across a room with its door open. Looking inside and seeing a framed picture of Jackie Kennedy, as well as those believed to have been involved in the JFK assassination lining the wall, he knows he's found

Jack's room and walks inside, also finding a small model of the scene of the assassination in Dallas. He then sees that Jack is lying on the floor and makes his way over to him. Speaking to him but not getting an answer, he bends down to have a look at him and finds a strange scar on the back of his head behind his right ear. He calls Jack, "Mr. Kennedy," which appears to rouse him, and he turns him over as he awakens. Initially not recognizing him, Jack then asks Elvis if he saw a

scuttling figure in the hall, who he thinks might have been an assassin sent to finish him off. Sure enough, they then hear a scuttling sort of sound in the hall. In the next scene, Jack is being put back into bed while Elvis is questioned by the administrator. He tries to explain to him what he saw and heard, saying he was woken up by big bugs that they have all over the place. When the administrator asks him what sort of bugs he saw, he answers, "Look, man, do I look like an ichyologist to you? Big damn bugs, all right? The size of my fist. The size of a... peanut butter and banana sandwich, man," and then grumbles, "What do I care? I got a growth on my pecker." He's then assured they'll call the exterminator and have the problem dealt with. 

The next day, the nurse puts on a pair of latex gloves as she stands by Elvis' bedside, preparing to do, "That little thing." She pulls back the sheets, gets a dab of a special kind of cream, lathers it in her gloved hands, and starts rubbing his rode. As he talks about how he could have made her his just twenty years before, she explains that the cream is a cortical steroid that should cut down on the inflammation in his pecker. He wonders to himself, "Where'd my youth go? Why didn't fame hold off

old age and death? Why the hell did I leave the fame in the first place. Do I want it back? Could I have it back? And, if I could, would it make any damned difference?" He thinks back to what happened the night before with the beetle and his finding Jack on the floor, as well as when he saw Callie's panties. Suddenly, the nurse stops lubing him up and, with a very shocked expression on her face, exclaims, "Mr. Haff!" Elvis is so lost in thought that he doesn't hear her at first and, when

she motions downwards with her eyes, he's just as surprised as her to see that he actually has a boner. She suggests he take a cold shower, while he tries to figure out why it happened and decides it was because he was finally interested in something other than his next meal or going to go to the bathroom. He says she should join him in the shower and even suggests she pull on it a little bit, before she leaves the room. Very pleased with himself, he just leans back and puts his hands behind his head, sneaking a peek to make sure it's

still there, which it is. Then comes a short scene in the dining room where we're introduced to Kemosabe, as he has a delusion about being the Lone Ranger, while Elvis looks down at the fork he has to eat with and remembers how he killed the scarab with it. That's when he notices Jack looking at him intently on the opposite side of the table. That night, Elvis has another dream and appears to wake up, only to turn and see the silhouette of a woman standing in the doorway. The woman says, "Daddy," and he calls back,

"Baby," but then, the figure disappears in an instant. As he's processing it, Jack appears and shakes him awake, claiming, "It's loose." They then listen and hear the same strange sounds they did the night before. Jack tells him the "assassin" is after another target and asks Elvis to come with him. Elvis suggests telling the administrators but Jack refuses, saying he's not going trust suits after what happened in Dallas, and goes on about "thinking with sand" and how, "Somebody might just disconnect the battery at the White House." Elvis says, "Oh, yeah. That's somethin' to worry about, alright," and turns over on his side, facing away from Jack.

Jack gets his attention again by telling him he knows he's Elvis Presley and brings up how he heard he hated him, but figures if he wanted him dead, he could've done it the night before. He asks Elvis to confirm that he had nothing to do with what happened in Dallas and that he didn't know those involved. Elvis sits up on his bedside and tells him, "Now, look, man, I had nothing to do with Dallas, and I knew neither Lee Harvey Oswald nor Jack Ruby," which is good enough for

him. He tells him to get his glasses and then, the two of them make their way down the hall, with Elvis narrating that he was walking really well, almost like he didn't need the walker. Jack leads him to the restroom and opens up the first stall, pointing him to something written on the wall. At first, Elvis is unimpressed, saying, "That's it? I mean, we're investigating a scuttling in the hall, trying to figure out who attacked you last night, and you bring me in here to look at stick pictures

on the shit house wall, man?" Jack tells him to take a closer look and, when he does, he sees that the graffiti is Egyptian symbols. Jack then says that he wrote the symbols down when he first found them and used his books to translate them. He gives Elvis a rough guess on what they say, and they both prove to be very profane and vulgar. Elvis thinks it was just one of the residents but Jack tells him the figure that attacked him had its mouth over his butt and believes it was after his soul. When he says he read that the soul can be sucked out of any

major orifice, Elvis asks him if he read that in Hustler, but Jack answers, "The Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul, by David Webb." He has Elvis follow him back to his room to see for himself. Meanwhile, outside, the nurse is having a smoke break, when she hears something. She walks down the steps at the home's front and rounds the corner to see lights flashing in a nearby shed, accompanied by the sound of electricity arcing. Looking at it for a few seconds, she turns back around and runs into the administrator.

Recovering from being startled, she tells him about the possible electrical issues but he tells her that she needs to go give one of the patients an enema. She asks him to let her finish her cigarette but, when she's alone again, a red, distorted POV shot reveals she's being watched by something inhuman inside the shed. She senses this and looks back, but doesn't see anything. Finishing her cigarette, she walks back inside. When she's gone, the shed's door opens and we get a shot of Bubba Ho-Tep's booted feet as he walks out, leaving the body of a resident inside the shed.

In Jack's room, Elvis looks through The Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul, specifically Chapter Seven, The Soul Sucker (the text of which is taken from an H.P. Lovecraft book), while Jack makes them some tea. He reads about how a dead person can resurrect thousands of years later if the right incantations are said and that he must then devour souls so sustain his life-force, but "small" souls won't sustain him for very long. After getting them some candy he has hidden in his

room, Jack explains how "small soul" means a soul that doesn't have much life in it, i.e. the souls of the elderly, and that the soul-sucker that's haunting the place could easily come in night after night and feed on those who are about to die. Elsewhere, Kemosabe is asleep in his room, when he's awakened by the sound of a struggle. Seeing Bubba Ho-Tep pin his roommate down to the ground, Kemosabe reaches behind his pillow and pulls out two popgun pistols. Growling, "Asshole,"

he starts "shooting" at Bubba Ho-Tep, who glares at him. Back with Elvis and Jack, they figure the soul-sucker has easy prey in the home and that he can go on doing it indefinitely since people are always coming in. However, Elvis asks how an Egyptian mummy found his way to a rest home in Texas and why he would be writing on the restroom walls. Jack figures he probably got bored while crapping the residue of the souls he devoured and started writing on the wall like anyone would, adding that someone who dies by him wouldn't go

to the other side but instead, would be digested into oblivion, and that he probably wanted a nice, clean place to do his business, something he didn't have in Ancient Egypt. Then, the two of them hear the same sounds from before. Elvis goes to investigate, ignoring Jack when he tries to stop him, saying there is no mummy. Jack goes and grabs his cane for protection, while Elvis walks to the doorway and looks down the hall. He sees a figure standing at the end of it and watches as the figure walks very slowly towards him, the lights lining the walls and in the ceiling flickering, crackling, and even bursting from his supernatural presence. Elvis watches him get closer and closer before ducking back into Jack's bedroom.

Bubba Ho-Tep then steps right in front of the doorway and turns and looks at Elvis. As Elvis looks into his eyes, he's hit with a lightning fast series of visions revealing the mummy's past in Ancient Egypt, which includes flashes of lovely women, a pharaoh sitting on a throne, the man himself having his brain yanked out through his nostrils, and a woman holding up a large scarab, as well as a bus carrying a crate driving through a "bridge out" sign and veering towards the edge of it. Once it's all over, Bubba Ho-Tep heads on down

the hall and Elvis and Jack watch him go, when they hear a popping sound behind them. They turn to see Kemosabe walking down the hall, popping his fake handguns, and repeatedly yelling, "Asshole!" Bubba Ho-Tep doesn't pay him any mind and continues on, while Kemosabe suddenly stops, grabs at his chest, and collapses to the floor. Elvis and Jack watch the mummy pass right through the door at the opposite end of the hall and his departure stops the lights' flashing and shorting out. When they turn back around, two

nurses and home administrators come out and inspect Kemosabe's body. It becomes obvious from their reactions that he's gone and, as one of the nurses removes his mask, Elvis narrates, "Kemosabe was dead of a ruptured heart before he hit the floor. Gone down and out with both guns blazing. Soul intact." He and Jack are shown being admonished by the staff, and he tells us, "And this time, we got quizzed about what had happened to Kemosabe, but neither of us told the truth. I mean,

who was gonna believe a couple of nuts? Elvis and Jack Kennedy explainin' that Kemosabe was gunnin' for a mummy in cowboy duds, some... some kind of Bubba Ho-Tep. So, what we did was... we lied." After the dressing-down, Elvis picks up Kemosabe's discarded mask and looks at it. Jack pats him on the shoulder and motions that they'd better get back to their rooms. They shuffle back down the hall, Elvis pocketing the mask. The next morning, Kemosabe's body is picked up by

the same hearse drivers. The one guy, again, tries to be deep, talking about how life is fleeting, when he falls over the side of the porch's wall and flings the body into the bush. The two of them panic and struggle to get the body out and into the back of the hearse without being spotted. When they do, the other driver tells his partner, "You are one fucking idiot," and they leave as quickly as they can.

Elvis is shown standing outside, enjoying the fresh air and sniffing some flowers, when the nurse comes out and tells him, in her usual patronizing tone, that it's time for his nap, as well as for his lube job. Having had enough, Elvis swings around and yells at her, "You fuck off, ya patronizin bitch! Sick of your shit! I'll lube my own crankshaft from now on. You treat me like a baby again, I'll wrap this goddamn walker right around your head!" At a loss for words, the nurse walks back inside, leaving Elvis out there alone. He goes to the outside of the

door Bubba Ho-Tep went through and inspects it, trying to figure out how he did it. He then walks away from the door and to the edge of the property, coming upon a hill that leads down to a river. Figuring, "What the hell?", he makes his way down the hill, though it proves to be really difficult due to the combination of the muddy, slippery ground and his walker. When he gets down there, he looks at the bridge extending over the river and then wonders where the mummy went and, more importantly, how he got there. Noticing something by the

riverbank, he walks over and parts the reeds to find a bus' license plate in the water. Looking up at the bridge and remembering the vision he had, he begins to figure he knows where the mummy came from. He then makes his way back to his room and, wheezing and out of breath, reaches and flops down on the bed. Panting, he looks at the growth on his penis again and figures it's a cancer but they're keeping the truth from him. He then gets some of the cortisol cream and lubes himself up,

before lying down on his back and sighing. He attempts to watch some TV and, after flipping some channels, comes upon a station that happens to be having a marathon of his old movies. This does not make him feel any better, and as they show clips of the mindless fluff he always appeared in (you never see a single shot of the real Elvis, as it's all recreations with a lookalike because they couldn't afford the actual movie clips or any of his true music), he grumbles, "Shitty pictures,

man. Every single one." He then gets contemplative again: "Here I was, complainin' about loss of pride and how life had treated me, and now I realize... I never had any pride. And much of how life had treated me had been good; the bulk of the bad was my own damn fault. Should've fired Colonel Parker by the time I got in the pictures. Old fart had been a shark and a fool, and I was even a bigger fool for followin' him. If only I'd treated Priscilla right. If I could've told my daughter I loved her. Always the questions, never the answers. Always the hopes... never the fulfillments." 

There's a knock at the door and Jack, wearing a nice gray suit and black tie, comes in and tells Elvis he had the woman who says she's his niece drive him into town where he dug up some information about the mummy. He hands Elvis a file of newspaper clippings and tells him about how a mummy on loan from the Egyptian government was being circulated around the country but was stolen when it got to Texas by a couple of men driving a bus, corroborating Elvis' vision. When he hears that the thieves ran into a

horrible storm after stealing the mummy, Elvis figures the bus must have gotten washed away, and when Jack tells him about mummies who are buried in cursed coffins, he theorizes that the bus getting washed away must have released the mummy from his sarcophagus. Jack gets up and heads out to go to his room, planning to sleep during the day and stay awake at night to keep from having his soul devoured. Laying back down on his bed and turning on his side, Elvis prepares to do the same, when he comes to a realization:

"What do I really have left in life but this place? It ain't much of a home, but it's all I got." Sitting up, he proclaims, "Well, goddammit. I'll be damned if I let some foreign, graffiti writin', soul suckin' son of a bitch in an oversized cowboy hat and boots take my friend's souls and shit 'em down the visitors' toilet!" He makes his way over to where a phone is, deciding to finally be a hero in real life, and calls Jack in his room, who answers on a red, presidential-type phone. He tells him, "Mr. Kennedy, ask not

what your rest home can do for you. Ask what you can do for your rest home," to which Jack says, "Hey, you're copying my best lines." He then clarifies that they've got a mummy to kill. After night falls, they meet up in Jack's room and check to see if they have everything they need: bottles of rubbing alcohol, with Elvis handling a sprayer he found in the storage room, matches and a cigarette lighter, their "uniforms," which are one of Elvis' old performing suits and

Jack's presidential suit and tie, and some scissors. Jack also says he's got his electric wheelchair all oiled up and that he's written down some words meant to ward off evil from his books. Elvis suggests they meet back up at 2:45 in the morning, though because of how slow they are, Jack instead says they should meet at 2:30. They then synchronize watches, and Elvis tells him the two keywords are "caution" and "flammable," with Jack adding, "And also, 'watch your ass.'"

Late in the night, the two of them head out to the "battlefield," dressed up and armed. They deactivate the alarm to the front door, switch on the lights in the front yard, and slip outside. As they fill the sprayer up with alcohol, Elvis shows Jack his medicine bag that's full of all sorts of good luck charms, including Kemosabe's mask and Bull's purple heart, as well as a small picture of his daughter. After contemplating how they weren't the best parents to their kids, they make final preparations, with Elvis adding some gasoline to

the alcohol in the sprayer. Hoisting the sprayer on his shoulder, and with a cigar in his mouth, he declares, "Let's do it, amigo," and they take their places in the yard. Time passes, with Jack patrolling the yard in his electric wheelchair, while Elvis gets in position and scans the place, watching Jack sit nearby. As he lights another cigar, he thinks to himself, "Shit. Bubba Ho-tep comes out of that creekbed, he's going to come out hungry and pissed. When I try and stop him, he's gonna jam this paint can up my ass and jam me in that

wheelchair up Jack's ass." Scanning back across the yard, he sees Bubba Ho-Tep emerge from the darkness across from him and begin lumbering towards the home. Gulping, he tries to get the sprayer ready, as the mummy gets closer and closer, but then, he looks up and sees he's gone. He tries to yell for Jack, but he's fallen asleep in his wheelchair, forcing him to walk out into the yard, hide behind a large tree, and scan the yard for any sign of Bubba Ho-Tep.

The mummy then emerges from the other side of the tree and Elvis, sensing his presence, prepares himself. When Bubba Ho-Tep lunges for him, he swings around and jams his walker into him. He manages to turn him around and pin him up against another tree, but after some struggling, he shoves the walker forward, throwing Elvis off his feet and causing him to lose the sprayer. The sound of this awakens Jack, who sees what's happening and rolls to the rescue. Elvis gets to his feet with his walker and does his karate hand gestures, telling Bubba

Ho-Tep, "Don't make me use my stuff on you, baby." He then makes the mistake of throwing a kick, resulting in him nearly throwing his hip out again. Jack rolls in behind Bubba Ho-Tep, who turns and looks at him, then glances back at Elvis. Seemingly not taking either of them seriously, he ignores them and walks on towards the home, only to disappear when he walks behind another tree. Scanning the yard but finding no sign of him, Jack tells Elvis to stay put and goes to flush him out. No sooner does he roll out than Elvis sees Bubba Ho-

Tep hiding in wait nearby. Elvis tries to warn Jack but it's too late, as Bubba Ho-Tep steps out in front of him and backhands him out of the chair. He prepares to have his way with the helpless old man as he lies on the ground, and Elvis has no way of getting over there in time, until Jack's wheelchair comes rolling towards him. Jack struggles with Bubba Ho-Tep, knocking his hat off, as Elvis manages to land in the chair when it rolls by him and grabs the sprayer as well. He veers the chair

around and heads towards Bubba Ho-Tep, who leans down towards Jack's mouth and opens his own, preparing to suck his soul out. That's when Elvis arrives, whistles to get his attention, and says, "Come and get it, you undead sack of shit." Bubba Ho-Tep speaks in Egyptian, "By the unwinking red eye of Ra!", and steps over Jack's body and stomps towards Elvis. When he gets close, Elvis sprays him with the gasoline and alcohol combo and then whips out his cigarette lighter. He tells Bubba Ho-

Tep, "Sorry, man," lights it, and flings it at him, setting the mummy aflame. Bubba Ho-Tep staggers away, screeching as his decayed torso is consumed by the flames, and collapses to the ground. Elvis wheels his way over to Jack and bends down over his body, attempting to rouse him. When he awakens, he tells him, "The president is soon dead," and hands him a copy of the incantation from the book, adding, "So... now... it's up to you, Elvis. You got to get him. You... got to... take care of business." With that, he passes away, and Elvis, choking back the loss of his friend, stands up and salutes him, saying, "Mr. President."

Looking over at Bubba Ho-Tep's steaming body, Elvis reads the incantation, only to be taken aback when it proves to be totally ridiculous, corny, and juvenile, prompting him to deride the heavens for it. Bubba Ho-Tep then stands up, growling angrily, and turns and curses at Elvis in Egyptian. Elvis tosses away the paper and sits back in the wheelchair. Declaring, "It's time for A-C-T-I-O-N," he speeds the chair at Bubba Ho-Tep, going at full-blast. The two of them struggle and fight as the chair heads to the edge of the hill leading down to

the river, Bubba Ho-Tep trying to strangle Elvis and clocking him in the face, while he, in turns, returns the punches to his own face. The two of them fly over the edge, fall off the chair, and tumble roughly down the hill, both landing on the riverbank. Elvis quickly realizes he's been hurt very badly, as there's a big, bloody gash in his right side and a rib is sticking out of it, while Bubba Ho-Tep crawls over to him and grabs him by the throat. Despite his lack of strength, Elvis reaches the sprayer and, again, douses Bubba Ho-Tep with the fuel. This

only momentarily aggravates the mummy, as he again grabs Elvis' throat, then takes a nearby club and bashes him over the head with it. Despite being knocked senseless, Elvis pulls the plunger out of the sprayer and the liquid streams over towards Bubba Ho-Tep, who smashes Elvis over the head again. As Elvis starts to lose consciousness and the screen gets blurry, he narrates, "I was goin' out, and if I did, not only would I be one dead son of a bitch but so would my soul. I'd just be someone's crap.

No afterlife, no reincarnation, no angels with harps. Whatever lay beyond would not be known to me. It would all end right here for Elvis Aaron Presley. Nothin' left but a quick flush." But then, with Bubba Ho-Tep looming over him and preparing to deliver the killing blow, Elvis curls his left hand into a fist, says, "T.C.B., baby," and punches him off. Grabbing the pack of matches from his medicine bag, he lights one, tells Bubba Ho-Tep that his soul-sucking days are over, and lights the trail of fuel leading towards him. Once again, Bubba Ho-Tep goes up in flames, completely engulfed this time, and stumbles to the edge of the river, the various souls he's devoured leaving his body before he collapses into the water, finally defeated.

As Bubba Ho-Tep's burning body is slowly extinguished in the water, Elvis lies on the ground, exhausted and close to death. He tells us, "I felt somethin' inside gratin' against somethin' soft. I felt like a water balloon with a hole poked in it," as he looks down at and feels the really bad wound in his side. Accepting his fate, he takes solace in his victory, declaring, "But I still have my soul. It's still mine. All mine. The folks up there... at Shady Rest... they have theirs, too. And they're gonna keep 'em. Every single one." He looks up at the sky

and a message appears in the stars, one that's done in Egyptian symbols, but he's able to see that it's telling him, "All is well." With a final, "Thank you. Thank you very much," the movie ends as Elvis leaves this Earth.

It's a testament to the music score by Brian Tyler that, until someone else mentioned, it never entered my mind that this was a movie featuring Elvis that didn't have one, single song by him. As I said, they couldn't even begin to afford the rights to any of those songs, and Don Coscarelli said that Bruce Campbell made it clear upfront that he couldn't sing, so they had to come up with something that could evoke the feeling of Elvis and they accomplished that with flying colors when they hired Tyler for the music. His main theme for the movie is a really cool guitar piece with a drum backup that perfectly captures the greatness that Elvis once had, which is probably why, in the actual movie, it's heard in its full glory in the flashback to when he was reclaiming himself by impersonating Sebastian Haff. Most of the time, however, this theme is heard in a very quiet, sad version, be it on the guitar or piano, that reflects the regrettable turn Elvis' life had taken before he made the switch and how pathetic and meaningless it is during the actual story. And at the end of the movie, after he's defeated Bubba Ho-Tep and is lying there dying, the piano version of his theme returns when he sees the celestial message to show how he can now go to his eternal rest having redeemed himself. There's also a big, epic-sounding theme made up of the guitar, the drums, and vocalizing voices that you hear in pivotal moments like when Elvis and his posse walk in slow-motion and when he and Jack head out to confront Bubba Ho-Tep. Speaking of Bubba Ho-Tep, he has an appropriate Egyptian-sounding theme that's accompanied by the sound of a vocalizing voice (Tyler's, to be specific), and there's a distinctive, nasty-sounding bit that you hear when Elvis first meets him up close and during the final confrontation. The fight scenes have a memorable, fast-paced but tongue-in-cheek, rocking theme to them, and there's a little creeping bit that I'm sure James Rolfe used at the beginning of the Angry Video Game Nerd video on Independence Day for the PlayStation. And finally, the rest home has its own theme, which is another guitar piece that's accompanied by what sounds like music played on a pipe organ, giving it a simultaneous funny yet sad and pathetic feel.

As anyone who's a fan of this film knows, there have been talks of a sequel, Bubba Nosferatu, ever since it was released but it's never happened. Although Don Coscarelli never actually intended to do a follow-up and meant for the card proposing a sequel at the end of the credits to be a joke to offset the movie's sad ending, he figured it would be a good idea to make one when he saw the response to it. According to Coscarelli, he wrote a script that he really liked, had the money ready to go, and had even developed a relationship with Paul Giamatti that would have him play Col. Parker, but then, Bruce Campbell wound up not liking the script and, as he put it, he and Coscarelli couldn't come to a compromise they were both happy with, so he opted out of the movie. Coscarelli and company explored other options, one which involved Ron Pearlman taking over the role of Elvis, and Joe Lansdale even eventually used ideas for a sequel to create a new novella, but the film has never come fruition. Although when I met him at the convention in Nashville in 2013, he said Bubba Nosferatu was virtually dead (even though I hadn't seen Bubba Ho-Tep at that point, I'd heard of the issues going on with the sequel), Coscarelli said in his interview on the Scream Factory Blu-Ray that he hoped it may still happen one day. At this point, it doesn't seem like it's going to happen, and, regardless, I don't think a sequel would do much other than hinder this story. The ending, with Elvis dying but going out having redeemed himself, felt like the best note for the film to end on, so having the nurse show up and resuscitate him and have the story be about him fighting monsters in his younger days, both of which were in the script Coscarelli wrote, would come of as inappropriate in my opinion and may lead into the farce this movie was able to keep from becoming.

Bubba Ho-Tep is truly a one-of-a-kind movie, in more ways than simply because of its nutty concept. It has a stellar cast, with Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis giving really good and funny performances without becoming caricatures, well-executed direction by Don Coscarelli, cinematography, art direction, and location work that manage to get a lot out of a very low budget, creative editing, good makeup and creature effects, an excellent music score, and, most impressive of

all, it manages to get a lot of humor out of this crazy story while also being genuinely heartfelt and emotional. Now, for real diehard horror fans, the film may be a tad too slow and lacking any real punch, the melancholic tone can start to get to you after a while, the villain is just so-so, and there are some things in the story that are left ambiguous but could have done with a bit more fleshing out, but on the whole, it is a very rich and fulfilling viewing experience that I would recommend to fans of horror-comedies, offbeat cinema in general, and even Elvis Presley fans.