31 Days of Halloween October Horror Movie Challenge - Day 2: Bubba Ho-Tep

 

Day 2 - Bubba Hot-ep (2003) Borrowed from Hoopla. 

“Even a big bitch cockroach like you should know... never, but never, f*** with the King.”

Directed by Don Coscarelli, the man who brought you the insanity that is Phantasm now brings you the classic tale of Elvis Pressley and President John F. Kennedy defending their nursing home from a cowboy mummy. Yes, that is indeed the plot of this insanely fun film. Elvis (Bruce Campbell) is alive and well in a nursing home after swapping identities with one of his impersonators. When an ancient Egyptian mummy unexpectedly finds himself waking up in East Texas, he realizes that he can drain the souls of the Shady Rest nursing home residents with no one noticing to nourish his immortality. Not on the King's watch, baby. Elvis teams up with President John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis), now disguised as a black man to keep him from coming forward about what happened that day in Texas, to take down this Bubba Ho-tep and save the residents of Shady Rest. This is a wonderful twist on a classic movie monster. The cowboy mummy looks fantastic, even if his scarab minions might make Jim Henson cringe. Bruce Campbell plays Elvis to perfection, and while the concept sounds completely ridiculous it actually plays out as a credible horror film. What I found most interesting about this, was that many of the moments of horror come from the fact that the victims are elderly and lack the strength, mobility, and vitality of their youth, putting them in greater danger against these forces. You can really feel the tension and suspense for these characters who are in their twilight years. There's a lot of drama in this as well as Elvis struggles with his fall from Graceland to wind up in a run-down nursing home. Laughs, horror, absurdity, fun characters played by great actors; this one is a definite recommend.

I'll be including the rundown on the services below each of the reviews so that if you have already read those items, you can just enjoy the review and then move on.

Hoopla Breakdown: Hoopla is a digital borrowing service that many Ohio Libraries offer that allows patrons to borrow digital books, audiobooks, graphic novels, single issues of comic books, movies, and episodes of TV shows. You are provided with a set number of borrows each month. The amount varies by the library system. There are some limits on how many borrows that branch allows across its patrons each day, so it's better to try to get your borrows in early the morning of than it is the night before you plan to use them. This can also be an issue if you are looking to check out a TV Series because you have to borrow each episode individually. However, unlike other services, the items are always available. There is no hold system, waiting for other patrons to return their material before you get the title, or waiting for it to be delivered to your local branch for pick up. If you can find it, you can borrow it. Other benefits to this program are that you can stream directly over your data connection or wi-fi, or if you are concerned about saving data, you can download the material for offline access. The Hoopla app also has a casting feature so you can stream the title from your device to a larger screen using devices like Chromecast. Now on to the review!