Bubba Ho-tep

Elvis (Bruce Campbell) is alive but not exactly well, living in a decrepit east Texas rest home after having changed places with an impersonator years before his supposed death. He and a fellow resident who thinks he’s JFK (Ossie Davis) wind up doing battle with an evil Egyptian deity that looks like a giant cockroach. Adapted from a story by Joe R. Lansdale, this might have squeaked by as a half-hour Twilight Zone episode, albeit with jokes about toilets and erections in old age. Writer-director Don Coscarelli piles on unpleasant details and cynical asides as if they were the stuff of wisdom, though they seem intended to produce guffaws rather than thoughts. R, 92 min. (JR)

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