96. Bubba Ho-Tep

Don Coscarelli, 2002

Every so often, a movie comes along that gets me real excited.  Ants in the pants excited.  Often, these movies really disappoint.  Take, for example, Anchorman.  I thought that had the makings of a damn funny movie and it turned out to be a disjointed mess.  Really, that's what usually happens, but, sometimes, the movie lives up to the hype and proves to be every bit as absurd as I could have wished.  Needless to say, when I first heard about Bubba Ho-Tep, I got really excited.  Don't spill the beans excited.  Not only was it to star the great Bruce Campbell, the finest b-movie actor of our day, it had one of the weirdest, most original plots I'd ever heard of.  Get a load of this.  Elvis is not dead.  Instead, he is living out his final days in a Texas nursing home along with JFK, who also isn't dead, and who is played by Ossie Davis, who is a black man.  The government dyed him that color.  Anyway, a zombie is threatening the nursing home, sucking the life force from the patients and Elvis and JFK have to stop him.  How great is that?  Still, it could have turned out really lame.  However, I bit the bullet and bought the DVD sight unseen.  It was great.  The movie fully exploits its absurd central plot without ever spiraling into out and out comedy.  Sure, the film has its comic moments, but it is, at its heart, an excellent horror film and a fine character study.

Bruce Campbell is terrific as Elvis.  It's probably his best performance to date.  His Elvis is an old man, somewhat feeble and impotent, waiting to die.  He makes the king pathetic and pitiable as we watch him bitterly reminisce and complain about the growth on his willie.  That all changes when the zombie arrives.  Suddenly, Elvis is energized.  He is even capable of moving his willie.  He's walking around getting things done.   He has a purpose now at, as an audience, you cheer.  Sure he was bitter, but Campbell kept him likable.  Like I say, he is a pitiable character and it is hard to pity someone you don't care anything about.  So, when he is reinvigorated and goes on to fight and, hopefully, stop the zombie, you really do find yourself rooting for the king.  The film is aided a great deal by its look, a gritty, grain realism, awash in browns and tans.  The nursing home is not fancy, but run down, and the supporting cast has the look, not of Hollywood players, but of the character heavy faces possessed by the casts of a Leone film or a Sturges.  This realism, which keeps the film and all its lessons rooted in a space we can neither dismiss nor ignore, and the portrayal of Elvis' often pathetic last days work a great deal toward the film's admirable, and somewhat rarely seen, moral.  Ultimately, this is a film about old age and how we cast aside our elders.  Elvis and JFK whither away in this hole in the wall with only memories of past glories to keep them sane or insane, as in the case of our heroes, neither of whom are definitively identified as being who they say they are, although we hope they are.  Only once they can contribute in a meaningful way do they become vital again.  Still, why this movie clearly cares about the elderly, it is hardly pedantic and is, at its best, an enjoyable and thoroughly ridiculous, if shockingly real, horror yarn. So, to sum it all up, why do I love this movie? Well, it's weird, wholly original, and, by God, it's a lot of fun.