Every faithful reader of the Weekly World News knows that the King isn’t really dead.

By “faithful reader,” what I mean is, anyone who scans the front page of that particular tabloid while in line at the grocery store. I can’t imagine anyone actually buys the paper, but we’re all interested in seeing what Bat Boy’s up to, where aliens have landed now and yes, what latest Elvis sightings have made that week’s edition.

So while we all know that Elvis didn’t really die on that hot summer August day back in 1977, what we don’t know is where he actually is. Maybe that’s because we’ve never checked the Shady Rest Convalescent Home in Mud Creek, Texas.

BUBBA HO-TEP, the recent horror-comedy (it’s kind of both and kind of neither of those things, as star Bruce Campbell mentions in the movie’s commentary track) that is about, boiled down to its logline, a 70-year-old Elvis and a black man who believes he’s JFK team up to fight a soul-sucking mummy in an old-age home, reveals the truth about Elvis. That is, that he faked his own death in an effort to escape from a life that had gotten out of control. And since that time, he’s languished in a home in East Texas, waiting to die.

The movie, released to a few theaters last year, performed reasonably well among Bruce Campbell fans, but its lack of general release, odd premise and oft-putting name kept a lot of people away from it. Which is too bad—the movie’s a helluva lot of fun.

Like I say, describing it as a “horror-comedy” doesn’t quite do it, or that particular genre of movies, justice. The British film SHAUN OF THE DEAD is a “horror-comedy” (more on that flick next week); this, as Campbell says, is a drama about a redemptive Elvis. Of course, since it also features a soul-sucking 3,000-year-old mummy preying on the “little souls” of the elderly, it fits the horror description, too. And it is funny in places, but it has its share of poignant moments and commentary about old age, too.

The movie, released on DVD tomorrow, opens with footage of King Tut’s tomb being discovered. Only, in this movie, it’s not King Tut that’s found but rather King Ho-Tep.

Cut to a ramshackle old age home in Texas. Elvis (Campbell) is lying in his bed, bemoaning the cancerous growth he’s discovered on the end of his dick. The dick-growth gets a lot of talk in this movie but luckily, it’s not that much of a horror movie and we’re never shown the damaged member. Campbell stated that he liked the script a lot but the thing that sealed the deal for him to make this movie was when the writer/director Don Coscarello assured him it wouldn’t be shown on-screen.

Elvis, bloated, graying and 70, has given up on life but not given up completely on the notion of being the former King. His prescription glasses are standard Vegas-era Elvis-issue sunglasses. His sideburns are still prominent, even if he now looks more like Neil Young than Elvis Presley.

He suffers indignity after indignity in this home. The dick cancer, which requires his skeptical nurse to apply ointment to a region that hasn’t stirred for him in over two presidential elections. He doubts his former wife (“’Scilla”) or daughter would come see him even if they new he was alive. He shares his room with another old, moaning patient.

Time passes slowly for the old boy. “Is there finally anything in life other than food, shit and sex?” he wonders and is given no answer to make him think otherwise.

The guy next to him dies one night. Elvis watches him go. Soon, an old woman, who otherwise spends her days pilfering items from sickly patients (she scores a nice pair of glasses from a woman in an iron lung who can’t stop her) is attacked by a huge scarab beetle. As she futilely tries to fend off its attack, it grows to full size, becoming our mummy villain. She’s done in.

Later, Elvis watches the deceased guy’s grand-daughter Callie Thomas (Heidi Marnhout, who looks very cute in the movie and even better in the behind-the-scenes bits on the DVD), come clean out his stuff. Elvis is bothered that she never one came to see the guy while he was here. He feels alone and abandoned, too. Of course, the nurse is there to interrupt his bid for sympathy by pointing out that he ain’t Elvis, he’s really just “Sebastian Haff,” an Elvis impersonator. However, through flashbacks, we see that she’s wrong…he really IS Elvis.

At least, he’s more Elvis than the old black man down the hall who claims to be John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK (given some dignity in what could have been a ridiculous part by being played by Ossie Davis) says that after his head was blown off, they filled it with a bag of sand and died him black to hide him from Lyndon Johnson and Castro. JFK is Elvis’ only real friend there.

“Kennedy” is attacked by a scarab beetle, too. “Big bitch cockroach,” he calls it, and later, after fighting it off, he tells Elvis that he’s sure the scarab is either Johnson or Castro, out to finish the job. E doesn’t quite buy into this, so instead an exterminator shows up. “Thank you, thank you very much,” Elvis says, and delivered by Campbell, the line works great. Campbell really does a fine job as the King, treading the line between ridiculousness (this Elvis has a bad hip and uses a walker but still brings out the karate kata whenever he’s threatened and still goes into battle at the end in his white jumpsuit and cape). His delivery is great, too, bringing the laughs at times but also making you feel something more when he talks about aging and being forgotten.

Later, as he’s getting his ointment applied, Elvis is thinking about the old days and how he “coulda made a curly lipped smile and had her eating out of my asshole.” This little burst of liveliness actually gives him a boner for the first time in years. He starts to wonder if there’s more to life than just languishing in some bed.

“JFK” is a bit more paranoid than he is, discovering some hieroglyphics on the bathroom wall. He and Elvis go about translating them and figuring out that a cursed mummy has broken through his centuries-long bindings and ended up in East Texas, looking to eat some old souls. These “small souls,” as they put it, have little fire left in them, making them easy plucking for this mummy. Well, not on Elvis’ watch, dammit. And the fight is on.

Beyond just being a fun movie, it’s full of little touches that make you laugh. When Elvis finally decides to fight back, he calls JFK to tell him he believes the story about the mummy and is willing to help. JFK, of course, answers on his red phone. Before they head off to fight the mummy (clad in snakeskin boots, cowboy hat and rotting flesh), Elvis presses JFK for the truth about Marilyn. “That’s classified,” Kennedy tells him. “But between you and me…WOW.”

By the end, of course, it’s not important at all if you believe this is really Elvis and JFK, since Campbell and Davis make you care about them even if they are just delusional old men (they’re not, of course! Not to me.). In fact, it sounds a little ridiculous to say, but somehow, in his portrayal of Elvis as a tired old man fighting a mummy alongside a black JFK, Campbell actually manages to return a little dignity to the image of the King. For so long, Elvis has been played as the butt of jokes, a bloated, drug-abusing victim of his own excess, but here...Campbell plays him with just the right note of pathos amongst the karate poses and posturing. So, yes, this is an utterly preposterous movie, BUBBA HO-TEP. But it’s also an entertaining, intelligent (that's right) look at aging and friendship.

When it came out, some people commented that they were disappointed by it. I think the cult of Bruce Campbell makes some people wish everything he does is as frenetic as the EVIL DEAD movies. This isn’t like that. It’s more subtle, better acted and just a completely different tone. But why take my word for it? Why not find out for yourself? Why not get some kind of reward for reading down this far? Well, read one paragraph more and see how I’m willing to reward a few of you for your patronage.

WIN ONE OF TEN COPIES OF BUBBA HO-TEP ON DVD RIGHT HERE!

Yeah, that’s right. I have ten copies of the DVD to give away to y’all. I figured, since there’s been a lot of other contests elsewhere on the site of late, I’d separate this one and run it here. Here’s the details: