Cinemavenger

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Bubba Ho-Tep

The Internet didn't invent conspiracy theories, but motherfucker has it given them teeth and claws and giant, herpes-covered cocks. Back in the day when the only web was Charlotte's, conspiracy theories died on the vine because they only ever reached a few gullible fuckwits at a time. You never heard politicians, movie stars, or even actually intelligent people spouting off about the moon landing being fake or the fucking Earth being flat.

But now that anyone with Wi-Fi and a laptop can spew baseless bullshit and, more importantly, read or watch it, there's no conspiracy theory too idiotic, unimaginable, or embarrassing that it doesn't grab the attention of the QAnon, Jewish space lasers, and the-government-caused-a-snowstorm-in-Texas-using-fake-snow crowd.

That's a huge fucking problem, because conspiracy theories used to be something to laugh at. They helped you weed out the nutjobs in the dating pool. No one with even an eighth of a brain took them seriously, and no one got killed over them.

Case in point: Elvis died in 1977. For a couple of decades after that, stories would bubble up now and again that the King was, in fact, still alive and had been seen playing video poker at a truck stop outside Reno or tending bar in a juke joint in North Bumblefuck. Most people ignored those tall tales, and no one got all murdery over them.

Which is why, to the best of my knowledge, nobody, anywhere, has ever thought that Bubba Ho-Tep was some sort of secret documentary full of coded messages proving that Elvis was still alive. Thank fucking Jeebus! Because if we can't have, at least every once in a while, the kind of movie that imagines that Elvis (Bruce "Groovy" Campbell) didn't really die and ended up in an East Texas nursing home mistaken for an Elvis impersonator, then what the fuck is life for?

Bubba Ho-Tep doubles down on the insanity by pairing Elvis with former President John F. Kennedy (Ossie "And Harriet" Davis), who survived the assassination attempt in Dallas and was subsequently dyed to look African American and left to rot in the same nursing home. Then it triples down by having Elvis and JFK face off against an Egyptian mummy in cowboy drag that's sucking the souls out of the old folks in the home . . . through their assholes.

It ain't perfect, but damn if Bubba Ho-Tep doesn't have moxie to burn.

April 8, 2021