Bubba Ho-Tep Year: 2003 Director: Don Coscarelli Written by: Don Coscarelli Threat: Mummy Weapon of Choice: Fire Based upon: short story - "Bubba Ho-Tep" - Joe R. Landsdale IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
Rish and I were attending the 2002 Fangoria Weekend of Horrors together when I first saw the trailer. I was instantly in love. Wouldn't you know it would take nearly a year and a half to reach a theatre that was a close to where I live? And by close, I mean I still had to drive 60 miles to see it.
With those kinds of expectations though, I figured I was setting myself up for a very big disappointment. Not so. It met and possibly exceeded my hopes in every respect. Mind you, we aren't talking about the second coming of the "Evil Dead" series, but perhaps the birth of something new, something different.
So Elvis is living in a Texas rest home under a name he assumed years earlier. His only friend in the place is a black man who claims he's JFK. Late one night they discover there's a soul-sucking mummy wandering around the place and decide that it is up to them to do something about it.
Bruce Campbell's portrayal of the King is nothing short of brilliant. Add to that a very nice script and a sensitivity for the material that I don't think many people could have had and you have a movie that must be seen.
There are a lot of funny moments, a few tense ones, a couple that are a little scary, and a few that are touching and profound. It becomes easy to suspend disbelief and wander the halls of a rest home with an ailing Elvis.
Ossie Davis' portrayal of JFK only adds depth to the twisted reality. He does not for a second question whether he is JFK. And neither did I.
Now, this isn't big-budget horror. The effects aren't spectacular. The sets aren't any more than they have to be. The actors aren't big enough to get in the way of the characters. What this is is love. Don Coscarelli obviously loves the story and the place and the characters and that comes through.
I can't recommend this one enough. It will be hard to find and likely will never play in a theatre close enough to you, but if we all concentrate real hard, perhaps it will make its trip to DVD soon and find its audience.

Rish's Reviews
Tyranist saw this in the theater earlier this year, and hasn't shut up about it since. Which is fine. I love to hear movies championed by their fans when nobody knows about them. Lord knows I act as a Night of the Creeps and Dog Soldiers missionary whenever the opportunity arises. I was at tyranist's house the day this came out on DVD, and there was simply no way he was going to let me not see it.
I have to agree with what tyranist wrote above. Bruce Campbell is a hard guy to hate. He's just so darn cool, and the three times I've met him, I've gotten that "I think I could be friends with this guy if the circumstances arose" thought that are the cornerstone of every good restraining order. Ossie Davis demands respect in every film I've seen him in, and this is no exception. I've never been a fan of Don Coscarelli. In fact, I consider the Phantasm series to be the second-most overrated long-running horror series of them all. But the man did an admirable job here, creating a film that will be talked about at year's end, and next year as well, and the year after that.
There's something really sad about this film. I suppose it's the fact that most of us will get old one day and not be able to move as fast, or garner the respect we had, and not be able to do the things we once did. So imagine if you were Elvis, one of the, say, ten most-desired men of the 20th Century, and suddenly, you can't go to the bathroom without a walker, you can't dance due to your bad hip, and you can't make your microphone do its thing. And worse, what if nobody believed you were Elvis?
The Horror elements of this story also work. I was surprised, since it's all delivered so comically, and the thought that the mummy might suck out a person's soul through their anus is just so . . . just so . . .
Just so.
All this being said, I didn't appreciate the film quite as much as tyranist did. There are quite a few flicks that he raves about that I don't exactly get, but I thought it was enjoyable, interesting, and well worth seeing, even if it was pretty odd.

Total Skulls: 9

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?