Mike Flanagan Counts This Underrated Bruce Campbell Horror Film as a Personal Favorite
Bubba Ho-Tep is a silly good time. It’s an unorthodox take on genre cinema that features a great showing from Bruce Campbell as an aging, undead Elvis. I like the film (and Campbell) so much that I once dedicated an installment of the Dread Central newsletter, The Harbinger, to the Don Coscarelli-directed effort. Though the picture has its fans, I think it’s actually a bit underrated. However, the feature has at least one high-profile fan. During a recent look at Mike Flanagan’s Letterbox profile, I learned that the Absentia director is also a die-hard Bubba Ho-Tep enthusiast.
That’s right; Flanagan added the flick to a Letterboxd list chronicling his favorite horror movies. Nice work, Mike.
The setup for this Mike Flanagan-approved horror-comedy goes like this:
After falling into a lengthy coma following a freak accident involving hip gyration, an aged Elvis Presley (Campbell) wakes up in an East Texas nursing home, where he befriends Jack (Ossie Davis), a Black senior who claims to be President John F. Kennedy. After residents of their quiet retirement community start dying of dubiously unnatural causes, Elvis and Jack discover that the perpetrator is Bubba Ho-Tep (Bob Ivy), an Egyptian mummy with murderous intentions.
Phantasm creator Don Coscarelli penned the screenplay for Bubba, in addition to sitting at the helm. He adapted the script from a novella by multi-Bram Stoker Award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale.
Coscarelli toyed with the idea of a sequel called Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires. However, the project never came to fruition. All is not lost, though. Lansdale ultimately released a sequel novella called Bubba and the Cosmic Bloodsuckers. It takes on some of the proposed themes we would have seen in the unrealized cinematic follow-up. Additionally, IDW released a version of said novella as a limited edition adaptation. Moreover, Dynamite Entertainment followed that up with a Bubba Ho-Tep/Evil Dead crossover called Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep. So, if you yearn for more of the property, you have plenty of opportunities to revisit in literary form.
Where is this Mike Flanagan-endorsed horror-comedy streaming?
If you’re due for a repeat visit to the world of Bubba Ho-Tep (or if you have yet to experience the flick), you’re in luck. You can find the irreverent horror comedy streaming on Tubi as of the publication of this post.
That is absolutely everything we have for you at present. Stay tuned to the site for more exciting recommendations from your favorite filmmakers in the genre space as we successfully uncover them. If you’d like to chat more about Bruce Campbell’s brilliance, come find me on Threads @FunWithHorror.
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