"I felt my pecker flutter once, like a pigeon havin' a heart attack, then lay back down and remain limp and still."

What is going on with Elvis in Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-tep? Played by Bruce Campbell, dressed in makeup that makes him look somewhere in his late 60s, and placed horizontally in bed for much of the film's runtime, he is a far cry from the svelte, swaggering, Austin Butler-played Elvis currently being seared into the minds of the Gen Zers. But like most iterations of the King that have emerged in a post-Elvis world, including Luhrmann's Elvis, he is the product of alternate history writing. Sure, Elvis historians and fans would probably be quicker to dismiss the work of Coscarelli—Elvis didn't live past 42, and he sure as hell didn't combat zombies—but where it might succeed in their eyes is in its giving a bed-ridden, impotent Elvis a great deal of dignity and courage. It also gives the man a far better fight to go out with than a fight with his toilet.

Screened at the fifth annual North Bend Film Festival to mark the film’s 20th anniversary, Bubba Ho-tep tells a simple story dressed up in a zany, macabre, and unexpectedly endearing premise. So the lore goes, Elvis, at the height of his fame, decided to step away from his whirlwind lifestyle, contractually switch places with an impersonator by the name of Sebastian Haff, and take up anonymity and a more modest role in show business. However, a fateful stage accident lands him in a coma and an oppressively brown, backwater nursing home in Texas, where a lurching Egyptian mummy preserves itself by sucking the souls of the home's elderly residents out of their asses. (Stick with me here, Luhrmann's Elvis features musical contributions from Swae Lee and Diplo...) Well, the undead king inevitably sets his sights on the King of Rock & Roll, and so Elvis (/Sebastian...?) and his new friend, Jack (Ossie Davis) - another retirement home resident who claims to be JFK "dyed black" after his assassination attempt - take it upon themselves to defend their fellow residents and finally put to sleep the film's eponymous scourge.

When I first watched this film, back in October of 2020, I referred to it as a "pure horror" film. I didn't mean this in the sense that the film is a showcase for the horror genre in its most direct form; rather, that it is an incredibly wholesome, righteous, and "pure" feeling work that just happens to incorporate a degree of spooky menace; a film about an indisputable evil and the good ol' folk who try to bring it down. Sure, Elvis and JFK were more than just your average folk, but Bubba Ho-tep envisions a timeline in which both of these figures reach ripe old ages, and old age is the great leveler, the stage of life when we will all be ailing and impotent, feeling anonymous and useless. Bubba Ho-tep is the story of two men at the end of their trails who find they can be of use again; who find one last fight to fight. And sure, their fight is a ridiculous one—a fight that could be all in their heads, the same place they may have even concocted their identities—but there is still purpose in a fight, no matter how ridiculous it is.

Both Campbell and Davis bring warmth and gravitas to their roles, while also embracing the silliness inherent in the film’s premise—and bringing an appropriate degree of crotchetiness. Campbell works overtime to give Elvis a new physical vocabulary never before seen in the Mississippi-born crooner, replacing his fluid, gyrating motions with stiff, restricted motions, while also managing glimmers of the King’s displays of machismo (real life Elvis was famous for his wild hip work; Elvis in Bubba Ho-tep is struggling with a damaged hip, and is reliant on a walker to get around). Coscarelli includes his Elvis in nearly every scene, and also gives Elvis an omniscient voice of narration, making almost every bit of Bubba Ho-tep feel like a bizarro, late-career memoir. That said, Elvis is given some wonderfully funny and poignant moments with Jack, as well as his assigned nurse (Ella Joyce), whether it is Jack sharing his stash of chocolate bars (“Let’s get decadent!”), or his nurse applying medical cream to his “pecker,” only to discover that he has finally achieved an impressive erection.

Beneath the film’s carnival haunted house presentation also exist some surprising ruminations on old age, obscurity, the nature of fame, and mortality. All kinds of ontological questions come into play when you consider that Campbell’s Elvis lives his life on borrowed time (quite literally). Both he and Jack have cheated death—Elvis by allowing one of his impersonators to walk the path that was laid out for him, and Jack by having supposedly survived his assassination attempt—so both walk hallways with particularly dark ends. (Coscarelli and production designer Daniel Vecchione make sure that the Shady Rest retirement home in which the story is set looks as moody and as tomb-like as possible.) Tellingly, one of these nursing home residents is a cowboy-type gentleman Elvis refers to as “Kemosabe,” the “Native American” name given to the Lone Ranger. This resident falls victim to the soul-sucking of the Ho-tep zombie, but not before going out in a blaze of gunfire that makes the most sense to him. As the symbol of a dying Western ideal, was he living on borrowed time as well?

Old age as one’s final stand is also explored in Bubba Ho-tep. Before there is even the notion of an undead presence, Elvis must first wrestle with his failing memory and accelerated perception of time. Coscarelli and his editors make use of erratic jump cuts during these sections, suggesting that Elvis’ sense of reality is beginning to fray at the edges, and that his narration is unreliable. His foe, who he will later come to share a sort of psychic link with, acts as his black mirror, a specter-like presence that is as much like Elvis as it is unlike Elvis. One way it is like Elvis is in the way it is clearly “past its prime,” shaky, and no longer able to stand as assuredly as it once could. The antagonistic Egyptian mummy is portrayed as more limited in his capacities than his previous incarnations, with stuntman Bob Ivy giving him a particularly stiff, shambolic sort of gait. Meanwhile, Elvis and Jack wobble in a similar manner towards combat and to their respective fates.

There is a sadness inherent in Bubba Ho-tep, just as there is sadness in watching anyone shakily descend their last stairs into dark uncertainty. Brian Tyler’s score full of mournful, slowly plucked guitar chords keeps you mindful of this tone, while simultaneously taking your mind to the far-reaching plains depicted in the Westerns of a bygone era. In this way, it is a warm, nostalgia-steeped melancholy that pervades Coscarelli's film, punctuated by the levity of crude goofiness that really does come as the best medicine. Bubba Ho-tep, in its own B-movie-type way, means to help us in approaching the dark veil, let us know that if it is time for one to go, it is best they go down laughing and fighting. Like a withered old cowboy making his last stand to protect a rest home, like the aged progenitors of popular culture and modernism in America doing combat with a decrepit, unfathomable evil originating from both the grave and the cradle of life, the end may feel for many of us a ridiculous conclusion, but as long as we go with honour, we may just save our souls.