When considering a film that features an elderly Elvis Presley battling a mummy in a Texan retirement home, aided by a black John F. Kennedy, the question that springs to mind should not be “Why would anybody make a film like this?”, but rather “Why has nobody made this film before?”

It’s clearly an idea that writes itself. Elvis switches places with an Elvis impersonator so that he can lead the life of a regular Joe, and while his counterpart dies in the ’70s, the real Elvis lives on in trailer-park territory, ending up in a retirement home in present-day backwater Texas. Logically, what else would Elvis do there but fight a mummy, a mummy that’s eating the souls of the residents? And of course he’d be helped by JFK, and of course the mummy would also wear a cowboy hat and boots….

It wasn’t quite what I had expected, I admit — it was very slow-paced, though I suppose this is natural, when your heroes have to get around with Zimmer frames and motorised wheelchairs, with occasional nap breaks. It’s also far more contemplative and mournful, and a significant part of the film is taken up by Elvis’ internal monologues, as he lies in bed lamenting what he’s been reduced to, regretting what he’s missed.

It’s also not funny. Not as funny as I was expecting it to be, anyway, and although it gets a few laughs, most of those are due to the excellent performance of Bruce Campbell and not the script. Campbell plays the role of the elderly Elvis, and Ossie Davis is the black JFK with all the answers. While Campbell is perfect as Elvis — all the mannerisms are there, right down to the trademark curled-lip — Davies as JFK doesn’t quite work, and far more effort should have been made to mimic JFK’s voice and vocabulary. I want to stress again how perfect Campbell is here — it would have been so easy to pick the most common Elvis affectations and exaggerate them, but Campbell plays things far more subtly.

It works. The transformation Campbell’s Elvis goes through, from a bed-ridden, depressed old man to a Ghostbuster (an intentional nod, I think, when he straps a petrol cylinder to his back like a proton-pack), is well done and believable — he doesn’t suddenly become a kickboxing hero, he’s still an old man who needs his Zimmer, who gets out of breath after too much exertion, who has to take a break to apply ointment — but you can see the transformation in his eyes and voice, and he moves a little quicker (but still needs to borrow the motorised wheelchair in the end).

(When I say ‘believable’, by the way, I do mean that in the sense of ‘it’s believable so long as you’ve already suspended your disbelief’. It is, after all, Elvis Vs. The Mummy.)

Bubba Ho-Tep is adapted and directed by Don Coscarelli, a Libyan director with a stellar portfolio, having previously directed (and, it seems, written and produced) Phantasm, The Beastmaster, Phantasm II, Phantasm III, and, er, Phantasm IV. In the hands of a different director — Sam Raimi would seem like the obvious choice, if he hadn’t had the misfortune to become so successful — then the film may have become more of a comedy, but as it stands Coscarelli has given us a surprisingly poignant and touching examination of age and death, all wrapped up in an utterly ridiculous story.

According to the Internet, there’s a prequel in the works, entitled ‘Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires’, set in ’60s New Orleans. If they can get Bruce Campbell back as Elvis, it’ll be well worth a look.