Midweek Mention... Bubba Ho-Tep

Bubba Ho-Tep

Dan: Wiseman.

Only fools rushing.

Sidey: Russian.

Yeah.

Dan: That's the big E he featured in this week's midweek mention. And I'd never heard of this film who had

Reegs: me

Cris: no one have

Sidey: I

had, I'd been wanting to watch it for years and years, and I had never got round to it and then mentioned it somehow at work and someone brought in a DVD v d for me.

Yeah. To watch it.

Reegs: I've got this, I had this on physical media somewhere at some point over the time. I remember being quite excited when it came out because it features

Bruce Campbell. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Same. No more.

Dan: Well, it's what, 2003? Yeah.

Sidey: 2000? I've got 2002. But it's, but it's Bubba Hot.

Dan: Bubba Hoep and this, of course. You've never heard of it?

I'd never heard of it. Most of us never heard of it.

Reegs: Well, no. Of course you had,

Dan: but you might have,

Reegs: yeah, no, you might be aware of Don Costelli, who was the guy who brought this to the screen. He was well known for his work on the Fantasm series.

anyone?

Dan: Yeah, I know, know of them. Obviously I never watched them cuz they look far too

Reegs: Well, they are quite scary. They're not jump scary. They're sort of more sort of weird tall men in funeral homes, bleeding yellow and commanding psychic metal orbs type. Scary. But this was different. This was probably one of the first Elvis and JFK versus Mummy movies I think I've ever seen.

Sidey: Yeah. And the JFK thing is something else. But we'll get into that.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. So

basically Elvis and JFK did not die and today they're roommates in an East Texas nursing

Reegs: we don't need to read the Wikipedia summary cuz we watched the movie and we made our notes. It's fine. We can,

Sidey: mind. Now, Dan, recently we, you've not been here for Fortnite, but Dan likes to jump in halfway through the film.

Cris: sure. It it is very strange. Do you do that on purpose or you just can't? I just wait.

Dan: wait to get into the actual nitty gritty of it

Cris: Wow, you're so

Reegs: Well

Dan: that is basically the premise. If anybody's asking you what this film is about, you're gonna say, look, Elvis

Sidey: well, that's what I knew,

Dan: aren't dead. They're in a nursing home.

Sidey: I didn't know anything about jfk, but I did know that Bruce Campbell was playing Elvis or maybe a Elvis impersonator. Who knows? And then obviously the title Hotep and it gives you the. The text to the start about the ancient Egypt Egyptian

Reegs: it gives you a definition of hotep. It says he was a relative of the descendant of the 17 Egyptian dynasties and the surname of a king. And then they do the definition of Bubba and they a male from the south, they

Dan: give you a bit of archival footage of them digging out bodies from

Egyptian.

Sidey: was pretty omet it. Yeah. I mean, they're just literally just desecrating like people's

graves. It's

Dan: So, so it gave you that kind of feeling.

They're not gonna be pleased. The spirits will not have

Sidey: No.

Reegs: well,

it sets up the central premise as well, which is that this mummy has been taken on a tour of the us. So it's been exhumed and taken on

Dan: taken to all these different museums and things, and then we kind of, Cut to the big E.

Reegs: Yeah, it's Elvis. He's,

Dan: who, who

Reegs: he didn't die. He went to the Shady rests convalescence home in Mud Creek, Texas. And

Sidey: mud

Creek. Sounds like, what, how you would describe your asshole.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Well, he's cocks in worse shape.

Reegs: Yeah. He's got a growth on it and he's very concerned about it. We

Dan: pus

Sidey: get a lot of content about his dick.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. At one point when he sees oh, well, we'll get to that actually, but Yeah. He says that it flooded like a bird. Ha

Sidey: bird having a heart attack.

Dan: Like a pigeon or something. Yeah.

Reegs: And we see like how boring and medicated his life is. Just, you know, sort of illustrated a few times by people speeding in and out of the room

Sidey: yeah.

It's like some time, time lapse kind of

Reegs: Yeah, various indignities because what this, the schlocky title is not really telling us is that this is actually gonna be a fairly slow meditation on aging and the indignity of, of, of growing old and how old people can still be useful and that sort of thing. So, anyway, yeah. So the guy in next room in bed is cho choking horribly, isn't he?

And he like reaches out to him. He's on his deathbed.

Sidey: Yeah, I thought

he died the first time,

but then he, no, I

Cris: I thought so too.

Sidey: coughs and smells some more and then dies and then his daughter comes in to clear away his personal face and she's brutal.

She just chucks his p of heart in the bin. Yeah,

Reegs: his photos,

Sidey: His photographs just go in the bin and Elvis says, You know, do you mind if I keep one of those? You know, we were, I mean, we weren't like friends, but we were at least roommates and maybe we should keep the Purple Heart as well. That actually means something.

And

Reegs: well, he doesn't wanna just be

Sidey: and he is like, maybe you should have actually come and fucking seen him, you know, once, because she says that he's been there three years, I think. Yeah. And she was too busy. And he's like, what, for three fucking years? Yeah. But then she does give him a treat by bending over.

Cris: Yeah, that's, that was the best part of the movie.

Sidey: first

Reegs: Yeah. But it sends him on this big lament because he's like, oh she, you know, I'm so non-threatening and non-sexual. I'm like a house cat.

Yeah. That's like, she can, you know, so cuz he's spying on her as she bends over. Anyway, that's when he says, oh, I felt my pcca flutter. Like a pigeon having a heart attack

Dan: the only one.

Reegs: And

Dan: the, the, the scene Anyway, I'm just thinking for if anybody hasn't seen this, you're looking at two, it's almost

Reegs: uncanny how much he looks like Elvis Presley.

Dan: It is, but it's also a little vibe of one flew over to Cook's Nest in, in the fact that the, the beds in this.

It's a cell, almost like rather than a hotel or a, a convalescence. His room

Sidey: it's grimy. It's really, grimy

Dan: really grimy. The he's got an old style fan in television. There's,

Reegs: everyone's given up.

There's that sense that everybody involved. His

door's

Dan: always open, but nobody's really coming in other than just changing a bedsheet or, or quickly in and out. They're, they're not, and he's zoning in and out of, of consciousness.

Reegs: But meanwhile, there's signs that things aren't quite right about shady rest.

We meet one of the residents home, this old woman who's stumbling the halls and she steals the glasses off this old lady in an iron lung. And

Sidey: the old lady's just lying there, obviously can't do anything.

Yeah. She's just a head poking outta a metal tube and she's just sort of happy that someone's come speak to her.

And she just

Dan: kind of strokes her head a couple of

Sidey: takes her glasses and walks off. You can see she's devastated. Like,

Cris: She's like, let me help you and takes the glasses and leaves.

Sidey: so

Dan: and then she goes and

Reegs: steals some cookies or something.

Dan: That's it. She finds a tin of tin of chocolates and takes 'em back to her room. We see her eating them.

On her bed. And then we see like

Reegs: probably the most realistic scarra bele thing that you'll ever see in a

Dan: the size of your fist.

It's

Sidey: It's bigger than that, Dan.

Dan: it's it's size of my fist then it's huge and it, it finds its way into her bed.

She manages to struggle with it. She falls onto the bed. She hits it a few times with her walking stick. But. Once she's

Sidey: bite. It does bite her, doesn't

Dan: yeah, it gives her a little nip and it is bit of hand in everything, and she's still saying cockroach and everything. Of course, when she's done it in, then we see this larger, darker, bigger figure in the room, which she isn't gonna beat with a stick.

It's it's bubba Hotep, the, the ghost of.

Sidey: it's game over for her

Reegs: We've

talked a little bit about Elvis having a problem with his pcca and he has to have cream applied to it by a nurse, so I don't think we ever get her name in it, but she's quite a big character in the movie and it, while she's doing that, we start, we get loads of like, flashback sequences in the movie, and we get one where we understand a little bit more about how Elvis has ended up in a retirement community.

She calls him Mr. Half Sebastian Half. Who was an Elvis impersonator. Yeah. Who fell off stage, broke his hip. And when he came to believed he was the real

Dan: It's such a

common injury, isn't it? Yes. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: But is it the real Elvis went

Reegs: Well, we're gonna get that reveal later on, aren't we? That actually, yeah.

It's the Elvis kind of tired of the lifestyle. And the sort of sicker fancy of all the people around him. And the adulation swapped places with Sebastian Half, who is also Bruce Campbell. He's got blueberry pie on his face.

Sidey: And we see

Reegs: Elvis goes into the room and comes out with blueberry pie on his face.

And we know they've

Dan: So we know that they've swapped and,

Reegs: but, but, but Elvis finds the only thing that you can actually do is be an Elvis impersonator. So,

Dan: But he loves it. He's back to his bestie. He manages to blow up his side of the contract. That would prove that he is Elvis.

Reegs: But he doesn't care.

Does

Dan: But he doesn't care cuz he's, he's happy and he's kind of finding the, the love of being himself again. And up until he falls off stage after a karate kick his hip's gone. He knew he had problems with it. And and next thing he wakes up in, in hospital because he is been in coma for a long time after he got infected.

Reegs: He laments that no one believes he's the real Elvis except for one guy. And that guy was completely certifiable. And that's how we meet Ozzy Davis's character who is a black guy who believes he's jfk.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: talks how they, they replaced a bit of his brain with sand.

Dan: and he's

Sidey: and they died. Him. They died. They did a

Reegs: he says to him, no offense, JFK was a white man. And he's like, that's how clever they are. They dyed me

Dan: Yeah, they,

Sidey: And to be clear, he looks nothing fucking Michael.

Well,

Reegs: it's also Ozzie Davis, and I don't know a lot about his films, but I know that he was big in the civil rights activism, like movement and that sort of thing.

And he starred with Sidney Portier and was really important in African American cinema. So this guy, yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

And he's he's even got the scars to prove where he'd been shot. The same as

Sidey: he, he goes Elvis goes into his room and it's all set out with like

newspaper cuttings about the stuff and, and sort of like a diora of where people might be and, you know, reenacting the whole thing.

And, and he's, he's like lying on the floor when he finds it, isn't he?

Dan: Well, that's right. He's heard something in the night and we, we start to see these Beatle

Reegs: well, cuz Elvis gets attacked by them.

Dan: Elvis gets attacked big time, but he's ready. You don't fuck with a

Reegs: Never fuck with the king.

Dan: got his karate moves, even if he is a bit shaky and using a walking frame to get around.

He, he manages to,

Reegs: well, he stabs one to death with a fork, doesn't he? And

Dan: After trapping it in the bed pan, it escapes again, but he's he manages to stab it,

Sidey: it flies around a bit. Do you enjoy that, Chris? The visuals there, the, the Beatle flying around the room.

Cris: Yeah, I loved it.

Dan: Yeah,

Enraptured over there. it, it,

Cris: I'd have to say the best part was the, the night toilet, whatever you call it. That was the best part of the whole scene. That he actually catches the cockroach with

Sidey: the bed Pan. The

Cris: bed pan.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And then he kind of fries it on the heater.

Those

Sidey: Those heaters look fucking

deadly. Those

Dan: coil heaters, we all had one when we were kids. Like they were just those thin exposed bars. There were a few bits of wire behind.

We used to toast our crisps on them. It was a

Sidey: fire hazard. right? we, we

Dan: we'd think we were chefs get a plain crisp and, and just toast it on that like, you know.

Reegs: So Elvis Tolds the retirement home guy. The doctor doesn't, he's like, oh, there's bugs there.

And so they arranged for an exterminator to come

Dan: right.

He, he's kind of gone in to see JFK who's on the

Sidey: he's got booked, doesn't he? He's, and, and what is happening is that people's soul is being sucked out of their body via their anus.

Dan: Or any or office that's open. And then it's

Reegs: What jfk Yeah, he comes to that conclusion, doesn't he?

Dan: Because he's seen that written in the toilets and he realizes

Reegs: hieroglyphics have appeared on the toilet door, but they say, what if he say, Pharaoh gobbles, donkey goobers, and Cleopatra does the

Dan: which,

Sidey: which which right.

Dan: translation is to Baba te is going to. So I've consumed your soul and then shit you out in the toilet. Because he just uses the souls to keep his own energy going, but it means that you won't be going to heaven and your soul is damned or whatever.

So Elvis. He's keeping all this under his, under his hat, isn't he?

Reegs: well, he's, he's also undergoing a bit of a transition now because he's become awoken.

He's become physically stronger. He's mentally more in the game. He's got a hard on for the first time in ages, which he's really pleased about. So, you know, And it, and this thing, which is literally sucking the life out of the elderly residence has sort of given him his life back because now he and Jeff k JFK are gonna defend shady, rest against whatever's here.

Dan: That's right. They come to the conclusion they've only got you know, two options really is, is one, to get a, a different rest home.

That's what JFK's kind of advocating. But then E gives him a shout and says, We've gotta defend this, like, you know, we are gonna put up a, a fight to do it. So they go out onto the

Reegs: lawn that

Dan: night

where they suspect

Sidey: JFK in his motorized

wheelchair Elvis with his frame.

It's

Reegs: They

Dan: in full in, yeah. Regalia in. So Jeff Kay's looking smart in his suit and Elvis is obviously there in one of his Vegas Elvis suits with the

Reegs: They've managed to get theorizing that you can kill anything with fire. They've managed to get a load of rubbing alcohol and like one of those spray can things.

And so he is like,

Cris: Before that does, does is is there not someone else that dies and they have the

Sidey: chemo sabbe? We haven't even mentioned chemos. Yeah.

Cris: And then you, we still have the paramedics who I recognize that guy. One of the paramedics. I recognized

Reegs: I did as well. And

Cris: I can't remember,

Reegs: I've put a question mark in there, which is usually I go back and,

Cris: I can't remember the, the, his name or in what I've seen, I know he played the cop in, in the movie

Sidey: that Daniel, Daniel

Robuck.

Reegs: Was it?

Sidey: Yeah. I dunno

Reegs: what he's in though.

Cris: Was he in Kickboxer?

Sidey: Hang on.

the Fugitive us Marshall's final destination.

Reegs: Oh,

Cris: ah, yes. That's why. Yeah, we've seen him recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: There we go.

he he's,

Cris: he was a police officer in that one

Reegs: Yeah, he was. Yeah. Yeah. The fbi,

Dan: he's, he's been discovered, but in, in this, he plays one of the, the guys that comes to take away the, the corpses from.

Sidey: Yes.

Reegs: Yeah. And they keep bundling the job

Sidey: and

Dan: they drop a couple, they, you

Sidey: they get progressively worse with each.

Dan: It gets worse and worse in their

Cris: but Yeah,

But that's, sorry, that's where the thing is because there's

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: Kim

Mobi is the low ranger, basically. And in this nursing home there's a few characters.

Some people are absolutely normal. And then you just get some people who, like Elvis the low ranger who he used to play Kim Mobi,

Sidey: he's got play card.

He's got two kids. Cap guns. Yeah. And the, the like classic sort of black ima thing and he faces off against Hotep.

Reegs: I thought he was literally meant to be the lone Ranger in this movie. I figured. Yeah, probably. He

Sidey: actually well everyone else is sort, is supposed to be someone, so yeah. Maybe

Reegs: he gets gunned down anyway. Horribly. And that's what, that's what inspires Yeah.

Dan: say. He gets, he gets gunned down. He doesn't actually get gunned down. He goes shoot him. But then the Egyptian Know, evil being or something that he, he just kind of gives it a wave, doesn't he?

And that takes him out. He's he's had a heart attack or, or whatever, but they know differently. They know that Bubba,

Cris: that's when they lied to the police because initially they're like, oh, there's these cockroaches. This is the problem. And then this time he, they were like, well, we couldn't tell them the truth because we had

Dan: who would believe us?

They, they'll think we're nuts. So they go into, they

Reegs: have managed to link it all to a, a, a, a bunch of rednecks who stole the mummy from the museum tour and it fell off a bridge and all that stuff.

So they've linked it to all that

Dan: El Elvis has had some kind of daydream flashback when he looked in the eyes of the Egyptian god that there's a bridge involved and he goes and check out the bottom of the bridge and thinks, oh, it's probably come off here.

Sidey: And the theory is that if they're able to defeat him, that will release the souls of everyone who's had their soul taken. Yeah. And they will be able to rest. So that's why they're motivated to, to get it done.

Dan: to do it. Yeah. And

Cris: now they're getting the suits out and now they're ready for action. Yeah. And they make a plan what is it, inflame bull gas or something? Some.

Reegs: the rubbing

Cris: Rubbing alcohol check. Suit

Sidey: That's right. He says check a lot, You

Cris: know? He's like, yes, check this.

Reegs: the suiting up, the tooling up scene and Yeah. And they

Cris: get matches lighter.

Reegs: got the Zimmer frame cuz he fights him with the Zimmer frame. It's a symbol of his disability. And now his renewed mobility that he's able to fight him

Dan: he pins him against a tree, but he can't hold him for him to escape. But they, they wanna flush him out. JFK follows him on his wheelchair, but it's all a bit of a trap. Because now the distance between him and Elvis is quite a big one and he's gonna take him some time to

Reegs: sometimes change. It changes a bit between shots depending on how

Dan: yeah, it did.

And then the wheelchair kind of rolls off on its own and. The Egyptian Pharaoh, mummy kind of bad guy, is on top of J Fk about to suck his soul out when Elvis jumps on the chair and saves the day by burning him to

Cris: well, temporarily saves the day because he just burns the top of like, the top of like his torso. Yeah. And his head. He, he, he sprays the, the rubbing alcohol and throws the lighter on him saying sorry or See you later. I dunno. He, he does like a proper quote.

Sidey: Yeah,

Reegs: yeah. Well he says that goodbye to jfk, doesn't he? Cuz he asks him how Marilyn was in the sack And

Sidey: he

Dan: he? goes, I can't say that's classified information, but, Wow.

And he's going,

Reegs: mother. And, and so he's out jfk he's gone and Elvis is reading the words of power now that he, they, they were given two words of power earlier, and it turns out we get the hieroglyphics flying about on screen and it says, eat the dog dick of Anbu as wipe. And then Elvis charged this when he charges him in the wheelchair to show how fast it's going.

Do you see it? Like it rears up, but it's just clearly somebody just like

Sidey: lifting slightly off,

Reegs: off camera

Sidey: and

Reegs: they have a, and they, they roll down this hill, which was the same hill that they used earlier to show where the bus was. Yeah. And anyway, and then they, he's definitely dead this time. Set on

Dan: well he, he, he really gets a good torching this time.

Yeah.

Reegs: And then Elvis dies

Sidey: he's wounded. Yeah. He's got a, he's got a gash, doesn't he? Down the side. And he,

Reegs: he's kept his soul. He's protected the residents of shady rest. He's got his dignity back.

Dan: Yeah.

Cris: can also see the souls while the the hotep is burning. You can see the souls kind

Dan: Yeah. Very much.

Cris: Leaving his burning body

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: good.

Dan: Or Temple Doom. Yeah. No.

Sidey: Raiders Yeah. Raiders one. Yeah.

Dan: all, kind of float out the, the, the big gold box with all ghosts.

Sidey: Yep. That one. And there's a message in the stars aligned, don't they?

And leave a message saying, all is well. And he says, thank you very

much.

Dan: you very much. That's it.

Reegs: it sets us up at the end for a possible sequel. It teases bubba

Sidey: still in, in still,

Cris: I'm still praying.

Sidey: How what's it called? Bubba Ferrato cursed with the she vampires. Yeah. Which I would pay a lot of money to watch that.

Yeah.

Dan: This was then a really crazy.

Nuts

theme. And you know, Elvis and JFK aren't there, they're in a nursing home, JFK's black. Elvis has a massive

Sidey: Elvis is an impersonator, but not,

Dan: yeah.

He's got something wrong with his dick and that's gonna get played. I

Reegs: Yeah, well he does have cancer with the penis, so he was gonna die anyway as part of it. But it is that bizarre storyline. But it is also this thing that's to comments a lot about aging and the useless, you know, how useless you feel and, and all that stuff.

So it's surprisingly you know, thoughtful as well. In

Dan: I mean, you could, you could read more into, into this certainly with those kind of themes of, you know, are they, are they dying

Sidey: it must have resonated with someone your age. Dan, you

must have

Dan: right. Yeah. A bit too close to the bone. No, but you have

Reegs: fading sexuality and

Sidey: Dan again,

Dan: that.

All

Reegs: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: Well, when he said my, my, what did he say? My dick flooded. Like a dead pigeon or something, or

Cris: Exactly that. Dead pigeon. Yeah. Pigeon

Reegs: having a heart attack. Yeah.

Dan: It was yeah, real kind of a little tear to me high there, I thought. Yeah, I know

Reegs: to the cock.

Dan: But

but it was bizarre. It was, I mean, I like these things with Elvis and.

Characters and, and historical characters when people play. I've never seen anything like this though. I mean, the Elvis biopics I've seen follow Elvis, whether it be even a, a bizarre story of his that you haven't heard before. Nobody's ever heard anything like this. I mean, it's, it is really, really bizarre.

But it, it was enough there to keep you watching and certainly enough tension at points to, to make you think, oof, I dunno what's gonna happen. I hope this. Comes out. Okay. And there was enough humor just because,

Reegs: Well, some of

Dan: the bizarre

Reegs: from how cheap it is as well. Yeah. Because, you know, some of the costumes and special effects are pretty bad. And,

Sidey: it's a million quid. It

was pretty together

Reegs: and they don't, clearly don't have the money for, there's no actual Elvis content in here by, by his name.

There's no

Sidey: songs.

No, they said if they had to license even like 30 seconds of a song, that would've been the budget gone. Yeah. So

worth

1. Didn't need it anyway.

Dan: was

No, it didn't. No, it was it was something that, You would've never seen before.

Cris: Or, or ever.

Dan: Unless you've seen it.

Sidey: you've seen it before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was different to how I'd expected it. I, it was, like you say Rick, it was slower and more contemplative with the absurdist nature of it, alongside it, you know? So, I really

enjoyed It

Reegs: resonates as you get a bit older as well, cuz a lot of it is dealing with that theme of aging.

So

Sidey: yeah.

Dan: Well just being sat there alone night after night, and it, it

Sidey: in the man cave.

Dan: It made me think, yeah, yeah. In the man cave, that's just my own story. Away we go. But it, it does make you think, you know how people, that guy didn't have his daughter come and visit him for, for three years.

And how he's just kind of, Faded away. And the only people that have, you know, he had a purple heart. He had these two girls round him in the, in the old photographs and you think, wow, what a life, what I think. And there he is dying here. So it does make you think of these deeper themes and, and deeper motives of the characters and everything.

But ultimately it was, it was watchable hour and a half.

Cris: Yeah, it was all right. It was all right. I mean, to be fair, I have to say horror comedy is not necessarily a, a genre that I'm familiar with, but it was funny enough in moments. I still think as always, that it was, it could have been a lot shorter, but it was, it was good.

It was funny. It was, it was, no, listen, it was funny at, at some points and, and the whole, like the jfk, the, the whole him, the, the zabi where you think, fuck, how, where they get these character. Like how do they, how does one think? Of that. And, and if you are telling me that it's about aging and all this, you are thinking way too much.

It's

not there. It's not there. Whoever thinks about putting all these characters together and doing a storyline like that, I bet they don't think of that. Yeah,

Sidey: Ah, I'd be surprised.

Reegs: you'd be surprised. Yeah.

Sidey: Bruce Campbell promoted it at the same time that he had his autobiography out, which is called If Chins Could Kill Confessions of a B Movie

Reegs: Got it.

Sidey: which is great title.

Reegs: got it. It's good.

Sidey: Yeah, I bet it is. I haven't read it, but I would like to.

Dan: Okay, well maybe I will read it one day, but otherwise, if you don't have time to read the book of somebody who was in this film, then you could watch this film.

Reegs: Or

if you only get the chance to ever see one movie about Elvis and jfk.

Yeah,

Sidey: Yeah, This is it.

Reegs: is it.