Butterfly Cauldron

I added Bubba Ho-Tep to my Blockbuster que because it promised to be quirky and starred the divine Bruce Campbell. I'm not certain the man is capable of giving a bad performance and yes, I am a fan.

I was expecting somewhat typical Bruce fare -- humorous, quirky, sometimes downright bizarre. What I got instead was a meditation on the horrors of growing old, being abandoned and having regrets.

So, all in all, not exactly a laugh riot.

Campbell plays Elvis, who is not dead as we all believe but is instead living in a nursing home in Texas. He's cranky, he's depressed, he's alone and he's really obsessed with his penis. (And the growth thereon.) The film itself is contained completely within the halls of the nursing home, stark and depressing. Residents wander about, steal from others, drop dead and all without much fuss or notice. Elvis' roommate dies and his daughter, who hasn't been around since she checked her father in three years earlier shows up. She hasn't been to see her father because she was busy. In fact, throughout the entire film, there are no visitors, except for the boys from the funeral home who show up to collect the bodies and cart them away.

As I said, it's not a laugh riot.

There are some genuinely funny moments. The mummy at the heart of the movie, who is living on the souls of the nursing home residents, is dressed in cowboy boots and hat. He steals souls by sucking them out the ass. He leaves dirty hieroglyphs in the bathroom. There's a giant Egyptian beetle (Yeah yeah, they have a name. I just can't remember it at the moment.) that keeps getting mistaken for a cockroach -- but maybe you have to be from the deep south to understand how funny that is. Hell, we have bugs that big around here anyway, so why not?

But overall, it's a depressing flick, even if the good guys win in the end. (Was that a spoiler?Oops.) It's a good movie, but not something to watch if you're wanting to be cheered up.

Next Up: The Amazing Adventures of Two Girls in Love or The 24th Day or Brokeback Mountain. I have all three of those in my possession at the moment. I'm sure I'll be watching one of them in the next day or so.

Labels: fun, movie