"Bruce Campbell deserves Oscar consideration"

[D'Lo]

I found this story on bruce-campbell.com:

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BUBBA HO-TEP

"Campbell's version of an elderly Elvis actually deserves Oscar consideration "

Sometimes a movie hooks you with its premise alone. Like Bubba Ho-Tep.

Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(12/5/2003) -- Get this: Elvis Presley is alive. He's an old man hobbling on bad hips in a rundown East Texas nursing home. His best friend at the home is JFK. Yes, the former president is also alive. Now, though, he's a black man who looks just like Ossie Davis. “ That was part of the plan, to paint me this color,'' says “ Kennedy.”

Based on graffiti they discover in a bathroom stall, Jack and Elvis come to a horrifying conclusion: an ancient, evil Egyptian mummy needs souls to keep himself alive — and he's made the nursing home residents his targets.

The two are determined to exterminate the soul-sucking mummy. (Elvis views his heroics as long overdue. “ I played heroes in all those bad movies. Now I can finally be one,'' he says.)

Armed with homemade flamethrowers and sitting in their wheelchairs, Elvis and JFK prepare for battle. “ We'll be takin' care of business,'' says the King.

What's not to like about that wacky premise?

The title is an appropriate amalgam of Southern redneck lore (“ Bubba'') and Egyptian mythology (“ Ho-Tep” ). Bubba Ho-Tep has been adapted from Joe R. Lansdale's short story by writer-director Don Coscarelli, an independent filmmaker whose previous specialties have been low-budget horrors like Phantasm and The Beastmaster.

In truth, without Elvis and JFK, Bubba Ho-Tep would also be a low-budget horror. With them, though, it offers a sort of perverse genius. In some ways, this bizarre horror satire provides the wisest observations yet about the Presley phenomenon, especially in the decades after his death. Note, for example, this statement by Elvis: “ I should have fired Colonel Parker the moment he started to put me in those movies.'' No kidding.

Elvis is played — astonishingly — by Bruce Campbell, a B-movie icon whose claims to fame include the Evil Dead films and TV's Xena: Warrior Princess. It'll never happen with a movie this off the wall, but Campbell's version of an elderly Elvis actually deserves Oscar consideration — it's that on-the-money real, hilarious and strangely touching.

Once again, when I least expected it, Elvis has left me all shook up.

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Well, I have to agree with this guy, Campbell's performance was amazing. However, I don't think it will ever happen, which is a shame...