"Bubba Ho-Tep"

Elvis Presley and John F Kennedy are both alive and living in a nursing home together. Things are awful for them, but they're about to get even worse. The souls of all the residents of their nursing home are in danger, and the threat is an Egyptian Mummy, come to absorb all these old souls that no one will miss. I present to you, the craziness that is "Buba Ho-Tep" (2002).

Now, "Buba Ho-Tep" is not for everyone. It's a very strange premise, and an even stranger movie. Based on a short story by Joe R Lansdale, Elvis (played by Bruce Campbell) swapped places with the best Elvis impersonator years ago because he wanted a break from the fame. So when Elvis died on the toilet, that was actually just his impersonator. Ossie Davis plays JFK. Instead of being killed on November 22nd in 1963, he was actually abducted by the government and had several experiments run on him. They then died his skin black so no one would ever believe the truth. An Egyptian mummy (which Elvis calls Buba Ho-Tep) is using their nursing home as a feeding ground - killing tenants and stealing their souls to become more powerful. 

If that all sounds ridiculous to you, well you're right. If it sounds awesome, you're also right. The plot screams B-movie, and that's also true. The budget of this movie was about $1,000,000. Sure, that sounds like a lot of money, but for a movie that is chump change. "28 Days Later" had a budget 8 times that. "Buried" had a budget of $3 million, and that was 90 minutes of just Ryan Reynolds in a box (still a worthwhile movie, check that out if you haven't seen it). "Dogma" had a $10 mil budget (We'll get to it, don't you worry). All of these are considered fairly low budget movies, so $1 mil is pretty small. 

This is a good movie with some fun moments, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. It is on my recommend list, but it doesn't jive with a great number of people. Look at the IMDB forums for this movie - they're full of people asking for the humor to be explained to them, and saying this movie is boring. Yeah, it can be a bit dry. The humor is very (very very) dark. This doesn't deliver comedic lines on a silver platter the way other comedies we've discussed have. The comedy is the entire premise, and watching an old and broken Elvis with a foul mouth try to piece together where Buba Ho-Tep came from and how to stop him. I mean, really. That final battle with Elvis all dressed up with a walker, and JFK riding a motorized scooter to stop a mummy dressed like a cowboy? Hilarious!