Bubba Ho-Tep
Elvis lives! Wait, let's try that again: Elvis languishes! The poor guy's been in an East Texas rest home for the last two decades, recovering from, of all things, the busted pelvis he suffered at a concert. So it goes in Don Coscarelli's ''Bubba Ho-Tep,'' 95 minutes of amusing if underwhelming sci-fi schlock. Tired of fame, fortune, and night after night of women tossing their panties on his stage, Elvis traded identities with an impersonator, lives in a mobile home, and becomes Bubba Ho-Tep, which loosely translates as ''trailer park king.''
The movie's cheeky central conceit is that a convalescing, depressive Elvis (Bruce Campbell) teams up with his eightysomething co-tenant (Ossie Davis), a regal gent who thinks he's JFK (he insists his woolly gray hair and brown skin are merely a disguise). The two get their mojos back in their confrontations with the ''soul-sucking'' mummy that's come all the way from ancient Egypt, with a vicious scarab, to wreak havoc on elderly prey.
Coscarelli, who brought us four volumes of ''Phantasm,'' is a surefooted B-movie journeyman, and for ''Bubba Ho-Tep'' he's in a generously lunatic mood. Davis is doddering and potty-mouthed, and Campbell's Elvis wears pj's and bathrobes, uses a bedpan as a weapon, and rides a motorized wheelchair for the big showdown. Together, they're an entertainingly unsexy ''I Spy.''
The film's good humor is often betrayed by its low-budget roots, however, as though it couldn't afford to be more original or ambitious than its premise. The mummy's spiffy line-dancing outfit aside, it lacks any screen presence: with all the soul-noshing he's been doing, you'd think there'd be some meat on his bones, but instead he's a cheap, skeletal special effect.
Obviously, old Elvis and older JFK carry the day. Campbell, who at this point must be the Brando of schlock, is lost under the cracking makeup and padded waistline. But he makes sure to have a good time, playing someone who does not appear to be having any fun at all. Campbell also has real chemistry with Davis, whom I don't recall ever showing up in anything quite this bad and loving it so much.
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