MOVIE REVIEW 'Bubba Ho-tep': Hard to categorize, but the King reigns

The stories might not be that believable, but the film is still amusing.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
What if Elvis were still alive and living in a Texas retirement facility? And suppose John F. Kennedy lived there, too? That's the whopper of a premise to "Bubba Ho-Tep," a goofy, half-clever/half-dopey wannabe cult movie by legendary B-movie director Don Coscarelli (best-known for his "Phantasm" horror franchise).
Based on a short story by Joe R. Lansdale, "Bubba" takes its title from the thousands-year-old mummy who's sucking the souls from residents of Mud Creek's Shady Rest Convalescence Home. (The "Bubba" part of his name comes from this ghoul's fondness for cowboy hats and boots.)
That mummy -- and Elvis and Kennedy's efforts to destroy it -- is what ultimately derails this passably amusing film. Until the Egyptian boogey man enters at the half-way point, Coscarelli does a decent job of convincing us that "Elvis" (brilliantly played by Bruce Campbell) and "Kennedy" (Ossie Davis) might actually be who they say they are.
The King's story
Elvis' story, at least as portrayed here, is even kind of poignant. Tired of the rigors of stardom, the King supposedly hired a double to impersonate him and left Graceland for some trailer park R & amp;R. (It was the impostor, not Elvis, who died in 1977.) Unfortunately, when legal documents authenticating the ruse went up in flames during a barbecue mishap, nobody believed his story. Now sequestered in Shady Rest and forced to use a walker just to get around, the one-time rock 'n' roll great is a pathetic shadow of his former self.
Kennedy's "history" is even harder to swallow. Whisked away from Dallas after his 1963 assassination "attempt," the U.S. prez was somehow made black surgically and has been hiding out at this less-than-tiptop nursing home ever since. Although stuck in a wheelchair, Kennedy still manages the gumption to team up with Elvis for a battle-of-the-titans with gnarly old Bubba Ho-Tep (Bob Ivy).
Minus the monster-movie gimmick, this sounds like it might have had the makings of a classic "Saturday Night Live" skit back in the glory days of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (one guess who would have played whom). Stretched out to feature-film length, the one-joke premise grows tiresome long before its over. Instead of redeeming the perilously thin material, Coscarelli's creature-feature stuff only makes it seem like a low-budget fright flick (which, I suppose, it is).
Worth a watch
"Ho-Tep" is still worth recommending -- to genre buffs and cultists, anyway -- for Campbell's uncanny Elvis. With his graying sideburns and oversized sunglasses, Campbell looks (and even better, sounds) so much like you'd imagine the real King himself would today that it's positively eerie.
Instead of camping up the part the way a lesser actor might have, Campbell instead finds hidden reserves of dignity and humanity inside the fallen rocker. This is the year's most unlikely great performance in what is certainly 2003's most uncategorizable film.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.