Bubba Ho-tep: review

Back when this blog was fresh and new* and awkward, back when I hadn't found my voice and was trying to be witty for wit's sake as a way to gather attention, I wrote a review of the movie "Bubba Ho-tep," which starred Bruce Campbell in yet another B-movie horror role. I finally got around to reading the Joe Lansdale novella (short story, really) on which the movie was based. There's a good YouTube video that reviews the differences between the movie and the novel here. I'll be touching on some of those differences myself in this review.

But similarities first. For people who have experienced the movie but not the novella, Lansdale's story will feel familiar. The viewer-turned-reader will quickly realize that entire paragraphs of dialogue were transferred straight from the page to the screen, and while I wouldn't call Lansdale my favorite writer, or even a great writer, his punchy, terse, Hemingway-esque prose has a memorable ring to it that transfers well from story to screen. In the short story, Elvis is referred to as "Elvis" even though there's a chance that this supposedly third-person omniscient narrative might be joshing with us, i.e., maybe this really is the story of a self-deluded Sebastian Haff (or other non-Elvis) at the end of his life, convinced he truly is Elvis. And except for a few extra scenes and characters added into the movie, the short story and the movie are almost beat-for-beat reflections of each other.

The basic story is this: Elvis Presley didn't die "on the throne" in Memphis as the newspapers described. Instead, Elvis made a deal with an impersonator named Sebastian Haff, who would keep performing as Elvis. Elvis himself, still wanting to perform, passed himself off as another impersonator. Haff, meanwhile, succumbed to the life of fame and ended up dying on the toilet; Elvis, meanwhile, now playing Haff playing Elvis, fell off a stage years ago, breaking a hip and ending up in the Mud Creek Shady Rest Convalescent Home in eastern Texas. Some time after he had traded places with Haff—with whom he had made a contract allowing him to resume his own identity at any time—Elvis's trailer burned down in his trailer park, destroying the contract and any other evidence that he was the real Elvis. Now a broken-down old man, Elvis spends his days sulking at Shady Rest alongside other colorful, delusional oldsters like his terminally ill roommate Bull; a black man claiming to be John F. Kennedy (and who at first thinks Elvis was in on the plot to assassinate him); Kemosabe, a man dressed like a white-hatted cowboy and popping off two cap guns; the Blue Yodeler, a woman who had been a singer when she'd been younger; and a Mr. Dillinger (presumably the notorious bank robber). Residents of the home begin to die around Elvis at an unnatural rate, and Elvis inadvertently manages to rescue JFK from a similar fate. JFK tells Elvis he'd been doing some research, prompted by a clue left in the restroom: Egyptian hieroglyphics. Near as he can figure, the home is being stalked by a predatory mummy that sucks the souls of the living out of their assholes while the victims are sleeping. It's up to Elvis and JFK to stop the mummy, whom they finally see stalking the halls and wearing its own cowboy outfit, perhaps in a weird attempt to blend in. The mummy is surrounded by a billowing cloud of shadows; even its cowboy hat turns out to be a living shadow.

The story, as short as it is, unfolds rapidly, and while some of the prose toward the end is a bit clunky and unclear, it's overall a very entertaining read. Like the movie, the story mixes lewd comedy—as Elvis broods over a nasty, pustulating growth on the tip of his penis—with pathos and tragedy as every moment is a reminder of Elvis's advanced age: getting out of bed is difficult; pissing and shitting the bed is a regular occurrence; every meal is paradoxically looked forward to and a letdown as it's the same old tasteless slop. It's a story about finding a sense of purpose again, about being a hero one final time, and maybe even about redemption after a life spent making mistake after mistake. 

From what I've read, the story was originally included in an Elvis-themed anthology, and critics thought it was the worst story in the collection, given all the raunchy humor, the perverse focus on Elvis's diseased penis, and the asshole-eating mummy. Guess who got the last laugh, though, eh? No one remembers those other short stories!

If you have a chance to pick up Bubba Ho-tep as an ebook or as part of a dead-tree anthology, I highly recommend it. It's got a gonzo premise, but in the end, it's a story with a heart.

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*The blog turns 21 this coming July 4.