Bubba Ho-Tep: An Outstanding Addition to the Lee Harvey Oswald Film Collection

Long-time readers of this blog know well my academic interest in cultural works referencing Lee Harvey Oswald. Several psychiatrists have traced this obsession to repeated viewings of Oliver Stone's JFK at impressionable times in my life.

Anyway, I'm pleased to announce an outstanding addition to the collection of Oswaldiana: Bubba Ho-Tep, a beloved low-budget movie about a decrepit Elvis (or Elvis imitator) wasting away in an East Texas nursing home. Another resident is President John F. Kennedy -- or, at least, an elderly black man who insists he is in fact JFK, diabolically disguised by Lyndon Johnson. The two team up to battle an evil mummy who's terrorizing the good citizens of the Shady Rest Retirement Home.

JFK, played by the late, great actor Ossie Davis, decorates his room with pictures of Oswald, Jack Ruby, and others. The centerpiece is a Dealey Plaza scale re-creation, including -- be still my heart! -- a "Lee Harvey Oswald Depository Playset, complete with Sniper’s Nest," according to an interview with art director Justin Zaharczuk. In fact, here's a picture of Oswald from the playset:





Bubba Ho-Tep itself is a fantastic movie, one that gives me hope in the ability of some filmmakers to stress intelligence and emotion above fancy F/X and useless "talent" from Young Hollywood. From the delirious title to the stunning performance of Bruce Campbell -- who IS Elvis, or at least a great aging Elvis impersonator -- Bubba Ho-Tep works. Sure it drags in places, but this is that rare movie that digs itself into your consciousness. It deals with topics many American films avoid, such as aging, male friendship, finding dignity in the presence of death, and, of course, the omnipresence of mummy attacks in East Texas.

The movie is a southern-fried cri de coeur, an innovative variation on the Dylan Thomas poem that starts

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I like to think that nursing-home Elvis had Dylan Thomas in mind when he snarled at the evil mummy in a cowboy hat, "Nobody fucks with the King, baby."