Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002): written and directed by Don Coscarelli; adapted from the story by Joe R. Lansdale; starring Bruce Campbell (Elvis Presley/ Sebastian Happ) and Ossie Davis (John F. "Jack" Kennedy): Texas horror, Western, and suspense legend Joe R. Lansdale's classic story gets a solid adaptation from writer/director Don "Phantasm" Coscarelli. It's fun, raunchy, melancholy, meditative stuff. 

In an East Texas nursing home, Elvis Presley lies in bed most of the time thanks to a hip badly broken in a stage tumble. That tumble happened some time after Presley switched places with the world's best Elvis impersonality in the mid-1970's. Or is "Elvis" just deluded or demented? In any case, he spent years in a coma and now languishes in bed for the most part, feeling sorry for himself.

In that same nursing home resides President John F. Kennedy, as portrayed by Ossie Davis, who is African-American. The assassination was staged to depose Kennedy, who was then.... dyed? that's what JFK thinks, anyway, along with having part of his brain removed and replaced with a bag of sand .... and placed in a nursing home to live out his life in some terrible purgatory. Or is "JFK" just deluded or demented? He sure does have a swell room to himself and a disabled-person scooter that will be a pivotal part of The War To Come.

There will be a call to arms for Elvis and JFK because an ancient Egyptian soul-sucker Mummy has begun eating the souls of the nursing-home residents, and only Elvis and JFK can stop it!

There's a certain amount of the Evil-Dead-style rock'em, sock'em action-horror that made Bruce Campbell's reputation in the original three Evil Dead movies. There's also humour both low and clever. And moments of unexplained silliness. The Mummy "disguises" itself by wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. It's a jarring, funny visual.

But there are moments of rumination on the inequities and sadness of old age, especially old age for those abandoned by the world. But if Elvis has been abandoned (partially because no one believes he's Elvis and still alive), perhaps he can still summon the gumption needed to take a stand against the forces of darkness.

Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis are superb as Elvis and JFK -- funny, winning, and poignant. By the end, their sanity is irrelevant -- it could only be hoped that the last stand of JFK and Elvis could be this heroic, if it were the last stand, which it may not be. Though the promised sequel, Bubba Nosferatu: Curse Of the She-Vampires, has yet to materialize. Come on, guys! Highly recommended.