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Bubba Ho-Tep.
What if Elvis didn't die? The King would be old, now; cancer-ridden,
probably in a retirement village. And if so, he would almost
certainly be battling ancient undead mummies alongside a black
man who thinks he's John F. Kennedy. Right?
To play the seventy-year-old Elvis, 'Bubba Ho-Tep''s director Don Coscarelli called on an actor renowned for his willingness to tackle offbeat roles: he of the heroic chin, Bruce Campbell. Best known as Ash in the cult 'Evil Dead' trilogy or for his recurring role as Autolycus in 'Hercules' and 'Xena: Warrior Princess', Campbell has had a long and varied career, and the Australian release of 'Bubba Ho-Tep' gave me the opportunity to ask him about some of it.
The script, from a Joe Lansdale short story, must have seemed a little left-of-centre. "It was a little disturbing but cool, too, in that it wasn't mean-spirited. There's a lot of dark low-budget movies out there that want to be dark because they can be."
This from a man whose best-known role was the chainsaw-wielding, zombie-battling Ash? "Yeah, but you can tell a weird story, but I think people should leave the theatre feeling okay at the end of the movie. I don't think it matters what genre it is, or what budget it is, but I think it has to be a good movie-going experience."
Playing a legend of the calibre of Elvis had to have been intimidating. "Not really, because nobody had done the guy at seventy," he counters. "At the end of the day, what Don and I were concentrating on was more of the person rather than the icon. You want to get enough gestures and mannerisms to make it familiar, but at the end of the day he's an old Southern guy who's bitter and who's lost it all."
Campbell was able to get himself so into the skin of this "old Southern guy" that the DVD reputedly contains a full-length commentary in character. Unexpectedly, however, he's evasive on the subject. "For legal reasons I can't comment on that. Let's just say, there is a familiar pop icon who does do a real-time review of the movie, and doesn't necessarily like it... I've heard."
A little rattled by all this mystery, I come up with possibly the worst metaphor ever: I compare successful low-budget independents to an emormous tree growing from a tiny little seed. To my relief, Campbell takes this comparison quite seriously: "Tiny little seed, exactly. That's why you do the movies; every so often they come punching through like that. What I find very gratifying about it is that the low-budget thing can work: you can get money for movies privately and independently, and you can make movies that will get in the marketplace and they can compete with [major] movies. Don will actually stand to make some good money from this because it was his money that made the movie. I'm glad that it wasn't thirty or forty million dollars because we all would have felt pressured to make a different kind of movie. If this was starring Bruce Willis, I can tell you, my character wouldn't have cancer on his penis," he laughs. "It would be some mysterious thing that you can't see."
So low-budget films have more freedom? "Way more. And then the big-budget movies rip them off anyway: 'Gone In 60 Seconds' is just a Roger Corman movie that they upgraded to a Nicolas Cage movie. 'Assault On Precinct 13' that they're doing right now with Ethan Hawke, that's a John Carpenter low-budget exploitation movie. The original 'Terminator' was a low-budget sci-fi movie; and let's not forget that James Cameron started by directing 'Piranha 2'. All roads lead to B-movies."
Which leads me neatly on to the 'Evil Dead' films, made by a young Campbell with his schoolyard chum Sam Raimi (director responsible for the 'Spider-man' films, which you may have heard did quite well). 'Evil Dead' is the epitome of the low-budget-film-made-good (or the enormous-tree-from-the-tiny-seed, if you will) and I'm hoping Campbell will be able to confirm or deny the persistent rumours of a fourth film. "The fourth one is just hooey right now, 'cause none of us have ever talked about it. We've all been busy doing other stuff. A re-make is a very likely situation. I'm not going to be in it, there's no real point to that. It's so embryonic in its concept, I can't comment on whether there'll be an Ash character, and even if it is completely different it'll just be that it's meant to be scary like the 'Evil Dead' movies. There's lots of theories. It's all coming out of nowhere right now."
For now, the Campbell devotee will have to content him- or herself with 'Bubba Ho-Tep'. "It's not for everybody, but it's for anyone who's tired of the cookie-cutter movies. They can take a break from watching a Matthew McConaughey movie and check it out."
I point out that Matthew McConaughey did the low-budget (and terrible) 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation'. "That's right! But that was before he was Matthew McConaughey."
All roads really do lead back to B-movies.
Lara Derham
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'Bubba Ho-Tep' is screening at the Mercury Cinema and Greater Union Megaplex Marion from Thurs 24 Feb.
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