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Nevermore Festival

"Bubba Ho-tep Sells Out Carolina Theatre"

By Allan Maurer

When I called to reserve a ticket for the Nevermore Film Festival showing of "Bubba Ho-Tep," at Durham's historic Carolina Theatre, they told me not to worry. "It's a 1,000 seat theater and we've never sold out," they said.

Little did they know.

"Bubba Ho-tep," the wacky and wildly funny Joe Landsdale tale staring Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as a black JFK teaming up to battle the Mummy, packed the theater to overflowing.

The festival's one Saturday evening showing of Bubba filled its main theatre to capacity for the first time in its history. Not only that, the film generated nonstop laughter from an audience ranging from 8 to 80. The kid sitting next to me could not have been more than 14 and he howled all the way through.

"Bubba Ho-Tep," an independent production, is going to be a major sleeper hit this year if it gets any distribution. It will sell like crazy on DVD whether it gets a decent big screen run or not.

My guess is that this is the new century's first major midnight cult movie, regardless of what time they screen it.

Bruce Campbell, best known for his chainsaw wielding monster-fighting in "Army of Darkness" and similar roles in the Evil Dead films, plays Elvis so straight that now and then you really believe he's channeling the King himself.

It seems slightly absurd to call Campbell's portrayal of an aging Elvis who switched places with an impersonator years ago restrained, but it is. For Campbell.

Ossie Davis, who utters one of the film's funniest lines, is a conspiracy-obsessed JFK. Elvis, wary of hurting his friend's feelings gingerly says, "Ah, Jack, JFK was a white man."

Campbell as Elvis tells him. "They dyed me this color...don't you see how diabolical they are." Something about the craziness of that suggests the overall nonsense of conspiracy theories in our time.

The two senior heroes are in a nursing home where something deadly and nasty walks at night. Together, they learn that a mummy, Bubba Ho-tep, has taken up residence in the nursing home, where he not only kills the residents to prolong his own existence, he also sucks out their souls. He does this through whichever body-opening happens to be convenient.

Then he disposes of the what's left of their souls down a toilet he defaces with ancient Egyptian graffiti regarding Cleopatra's sexual habits.

Losing a soul to Bubba is literally a fate worse than death.

Davis is clearly a befuddled, if still courageous old man as JFK, but it's never really clear if Elvis is really Elvis. Campbell, however, certainly plays it as if he's the real King.

The way Elvis and JFK battle this creature using a motorized wheelchair and sheer bravado is hilarious and occasionally even scary. Bubba Ho-tep, the only mummy you're ever gonna see wearing a Stetson, six-guns and cowboy boots, is one bone-rattlingly scary dude.

But Elvis gets the last word. "Don't mess with the King."

Joe Lansdale, who wrote the original story, which is well worth hunting down and reading, is better known for his mystery series staring Hap Collins and his gay black pal Leonard.

They include "Mucho Moho," and "Two-Bear Mambo." Lansdale, who won multiple genre awards for his mysteries and horror stories, also wrote some of the funniest and weirdest takes you can imagine on The Lone Ranger and a comics character called Jonah Hex for Vertigo.

The laugh-out-loud offbeat -- to say the least--humor of Bubba Ho-tep permeates Landsdale's work. His weird westerns are nearly in a category by themselves, keeping company perhaps with the Clint Eastwood film, "High Plains Drifter."

Bubba Ho-tep will be showing up for limited runs hither and yon throughout 2004 unless a major distributor figures out it's going to make a bunch of money. It will inevitably hit DVD status in a year or so if not sooner and I feel no qualms whatsoever in predicting it's going to sell like tomb relics in Egypt.

Visit the official Bubba Ho-tep website for screening locations and dates.