"It was the weirdest script I'd ever read!" said cult icon Bruce Campbell, whose "Bubba Ho-Tep" begins its roll-out into theaters in Seattle and Portland on Sept. 19, 2003. "Here's this story about an aging Elvis, living in a rest home in East Texas, where his best friend is this complete psycho--an old black man (Ossie Davis) who thinks he's John F. Kennedy, that his assassination was faked, they dyed him black to hide him and his brain is still in a jar in the White House! And then, they have to battle an Egyptian mummy that's feeding on the souls of the rest home's residents!"
Campbell, who has appeared in numerous TV and film roles, gained a cult following for his role as Ash in three "Evil Dead" movies directed by Sam "Spider-Man" Raimi. Filling the King's blue suede shoes "wasn't really a challenge, because I'm not playing the Elvis people know. The Elvis I'm playing, nobody ever had a chance to see. He's just an old man like any other, dealing with the mundane problems of old age, losing control of his bodily functions--at least, until the end, when he starts to get his mojo back and kicks the mummy's ass."
Director Don Coscarelli, whose "Phantasm" series features a brain sucking flying silver sphere and a killer mortician from the fourth dimension, found "Bubba Ho-Tep" to be too weird for his usual backers. But neither Campbell or Coscarelli were afraid of returning to the shoe-string approach that launched their careers. Campbell recalled, "Those were totally hand-made movies, and they were exactly what we wanted them to be. I've been trying to crawl back into that womb ever since."
The project would have been easier to drop if Joe R. Lansdale's award-winning story didn't have its serious side, "I think the thing that most appealed to me were the regrets that Elvis had", said Coscarelli,"because I think that if...well, since Elvis is still alive, he probably has a lot of regrets."
According to Coscarelli, there were moments during the filming, when 86-year-old Ossie Davis may have had some regrets of his own. "If you've seen Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood' movie, you'll remember the part where Martin Landau, as Bela Lugosi, is bringing to life this giant fake octopus that's on top of him. There was something similar in 'Bubba Ho-Tep' where we shot a close-up in a park of Ossie with the rubber mummy on top of him. He's fighting with this limp, rubber mummy, and he's just putting so much heart and soul into it."
Though "Bubba Ho-Tep" may have been a tough sell for backers, fans of "Phantasm" and "Evil Dead" shouldn't be disappointed. Coscarelli has found an affordable substitute for his flying brain-sucking silver sphere thanks to Bruce Campbell's cult status with industry special effects wizards. And the Elvis drawl doesn't affect Campbell's dead-pan delivery of his trademark one-liners. The people at this year's Aspen Comedy Festival seemed to get it. Coscarelli won for best screenplay and Campbell took top acting honors.
As "Bubba Ho-Tep" roles out across the country, Bruce Campbell may be spending some time away from his southern Oregon home where he's currently working on a documentary about Federal land management. But he doesn't shirk the hard work of getting an indie film launched. "What's been really nice is, you always sort of get it in your head that there's only multiplexes left, and to a large degree that's true. But I took Bubba around when I was doing some of my book tour (for If Chins Could Kill, Confessions of a B-Movie Actor), and it was really refreshing: in most large cities there is some funky-ass theater that shows all these wacky movies. They were really supportive."
Trailer and more info at:
http://bubbahotep.com/
Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/template.php3 on line 36
Warning: include(http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/template.php3 on line 36
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/template.php3 on line 36
Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/template.php3 on line 41
Warning: include(http://www.myenvoy.com/movies/bottom.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/template.php3 on line 41
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://www.myenvoy.com/movies/bottom.html' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/template.php3 on line 41
