On a whim for something silly and fun, Prairie and I went out and saw Bubba Ho-Tep today. It was exactly what we were in the mood for.
Bruce Campbell plays an elderly Elvis, spending the last of his days in a retirement home under the name of Sebastian Half, an Elvis impersonator who he switched places with when he got tired of constantly being in the limelight. Along with his friend John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) — also in the retirement home, and now a black man (“They dyed me this color!”) — he has to battle a resurrected Egyptian mummy who is using the retirement home as his personal feeding grounds, sucking the souls out of people so close to death that no-one blinks an eye when they pass on.
BHT was done surprisingly well. While definitely an action/comedy, it did a remarkable job of not taking the camp too far, and instead, taking the time to create real characters that the audience could believe in and empathize with. It may be the best actual acting I’ve seen Campbell do, too. He’s a lot of fun as Ash in the Evil Dead series, but those are so over-the-top that they don’t really feature Campbell the actor, merely Campbell the comedian (not that that’s a bad thing at all, mind you).
Here we have an Elvis facing mortality — questioning leaving show business, losing contact with his wife and daughter, and watching his aging body fall apart. The battle with the mummy is the first thing in years to give him something to live for, and Campbell does a wonderful job of creating the character.
The setting for the movie is brilliant, too. One of the oddities of mummy movies is always that the mummy, as a desiccated corpse, really isn’t the most threatening of monsters, shuffling along after its prey, who never seem to be able to outrun it. By setting the movie in a retirement home, filled with potential victims in wheelchairs and using walkers, suddenly the threat becomes a lot more real.
All in all, well worth the time and money to see, and definitely recommended.