While he’ll always be known as Ash, Campbell’s turn as an aging Elvis might be the best bit of actual acting he’s ever achieved. Your enjoyment of this film will depend entirely on your enjoyment of Bruce Campbell, and really, I can’t imagine why anyone would watch this film unless they were down with The Chin. At first it starts out as just a “bug problem”, with Bubba Ho-Tep’s scarabs attacking sleeping residents, but when the dead man himself shows up to terrorize the elderly, Elvis and his one buddy, JFK (Davis) – alive after his assassination attempt and dyed black to cover the evidence – hatch a plan to defeat this “undead sack of shit.” And he definitely isn’t down with the thousands-year-old mummy that’s been forcibly removing the souls from his equally-decrepit housemates. No matter Elvis is happy enough right where he’s at. Their arrangement gave Elvis a clause that would allow him to resume his former life at any moment, should he choose to do so, but a trailer park explosion blasted away all the official paperwork. The staff knows him as Sebastian Haff, an Elvis impersonator who slipped, broke his hip and wound up in a coma here at The Shady Rest Retirement Home in Texas, but that’s only a partial truth… or is it? According to Sebastian/Elvis, he made a deal with The King years ago, wherein he – Elvis – swapped places with Sebastian – his spitting image imitator – in order to get away from the glitz and glamour of the music business.

Life is a far cry from his prime of lovely ladies, gyrating hips, and sequined jumpsuits. Elvis Presley (Campbell) sits in a nursing home, lying beside a dying roommate, with a growth on his pecker.

Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R. Lansdale