Bubba Ho Tep (Blu-ray)

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4.5/5The Film

So yeah, the story is set in a nursing home in Texas where an old white guy who thinks he's Elvis (Bruce Campbell) is pondering what's left of his life and lamenting a growth on his penis. His life takes on new meaning, however, when he realizes that a centuries old Egyptian mummy is prowling around sucking the life force out of helpless senior citizens and vandalizing the bathroom walls with dirty hieroglyphics. What's an old king of rock and roll to do? Team up with the only guy who believes him, an old man in a wheelchair who claims to be JFK (you see, he wasn't really killed when the gun went off, but he was dyed black). Together they're all that stands between a powerful supernatural monster and certain somewhat early death for the citizens of the nursing home.

By undergoing some extensive make up work and playing things just straight enough, Campbell is the perfect man to play Elvis in this film. He's the right size, has the right facial features and has just the right sort of smart ass cocksure attitude that you'd expect a cantankerous old Elvis Presley to carry with him right to the end. Playing perfectly off of Ossie Davis' Kennedy, the duo really take Lansdale's script and make it their own, delivering their lines with far more realism and effective believability than most film buffs ever likely figured was possible. The acting in this movie is top notch.

Those who've read Lansdale's work know that he's got a great sense of pacing when it comes to dialogue and a really strong knack for creating interesting characters and putting them in ridiculous but somehow entirely appropriate scenarios. Bubba Ho Top is a great example of just how he goes about doing that, by showing us the very human side of the two aged leads and letting us get to know enough about them to actually care about what happens to them. This instills in the film a sense of sadness, as the pair is quite cognizant of the fact that they are not long for this world and begins to understand and accept their fate. What they're really after, however, is redemption and the chance to once again be relative and meaningful, even if it's on a much smaller scale than they may have experienced in the past.

If the film has one flaw it's that sometimes the effects don't always work as well as they could have. The curse of many a low budget film, some of these scenes already look just a bit dated and the film (at the time of this writing at least) isn't yet ten years old. To a very large extent, Coscarelli works around that by choosing what to show and what not to show and by dazzling us with some amazing make up effects, particularly those that turn Campbell into Elvis. Since this isn't an effects heavy film, per se, it's easy to overlook that flaw and concentrate on just how well written and perfectly paced the movie is, and to soak up some of the finest acting that Campbell (not a man known for delivering great performances by mainstream standards) and Davis have given in their respective careers. Bubba Ho Tep really is a great movie.

3.5/5Video

Bubba Ho Tep's 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p AVC encoded high definition transfer is a good one. The film's budget was a modest and so it lacks the gloss you might get out of a big time Hollywood production, but there's way more detail present in the image than was ever noticeable on standard definition. The film often makes use of a very cool color scheme, lots of browns and dark blues and grays but those tones are well rendered here as are the movie's black levels. There aren't any serious compression artifacts, though you might spot one or two in the darker scenes, nor is there much print damage of note. Grain is left intact, and there are no problems with any heavy DVNR or pesky edge enhancement to complain about.

3.5/5Audio

4.5/5Extras

There is a pretty healthy selection of featurettes here as well, starting with The Making Of Bubba Ho Tep, a twenty-five minute piece that is made up of interviews with all of the principal cast and crew members, each one of whom seems understandably impressed and enamored with the film they've made together. The King And I is a twenty-minute interview with Coscarelli, who talks about his attraction to this project and the long road that he had to travel to get it made while Bruce Talks Bubba is a great eleven minute segment in which Campbell elaborates on his affections for the film, the people he worked with on it, and more specifically, the character he played and what was involved in bringing old Elvis to life. Shorter featurettes are also included which cover making the mummy, Elvis' wardrobe, and the film's score.

Rounding out the extras are a half a dozen deleted scenes, ten minutes of footage from the film's UK premiere, excerpts of Lansdale reading from his original short story, a trailer for the film, a still gallery, a music video, animated menus and chapter stops. All of the extras on this disc are in standard definition.

4/5Overall

Want more info? Hit the Anchor Bay UK website by clicking here.

Film Rating		DVD Rating
Director:	Don Coscarelli	Film:
Writer:	Joe R. Lansdale	Video:
Released:	2002	Audio:
Cast:	Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis	Extras:
		Overall: