UPDATE: YouTube has since removed Bubba Ho-Tep, though we highly recommend purchasing your own copy to watch anytime.
If you’ve never seen the 2002 comedy horror classic Bubba Ho-Tep, there are no longer any excuses to avoid doing so right away. The film has recently been made available to watch on YouTube completely free of charge, meaning you won’t need to subscribe to any streaming services to watch the movie. Of course, the movie is ad-supported, but as the content isn’t edited, watching it on YouTube is still far superior to trying to catch it on television.
Bubba Ho-Tep stars B-movie legend Bruce Campbell in one of his very best roles of all, with the Evil Dead star portraying the King of Rock and Roll himself — Elvis Presley. After swapping identities with an Elvis impersonator, the legendary singer has since been placed into a retirement home. Co-starring with Campbell is Ossie Davis as another elderly patient who claims to be former president John F. Kennedy with dyed skin. Together, the two must figure out a way to stop an ancient Egyptian mummy from killing the retirement home’s other patients.
Written and directed by Don Coscarelli, Bubba Ho-Tep is based on the original novella of the same name by author Joe R. Lansdale. Years later, Lansdale would supervise a comic book sequel to the story called Bubba Ho-Tep and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers, but no feature film follow-up has ever been produced. Still, on its own, the film is one of the most memorable horror cult classics of the new millennium. At the very least, it’s definitely required viewing for any big Campbell fan.
Anyway, if you want to see Bubba Ho-Tep free of charge, you can watch the film in its entirety by heading on over to YouTube!
Synopsis: Having switched identities with an impersonator, Elvis is now an elderly resident at a nursing home in Texas. Together with a fellow resident, he battles an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen the care facility as his hunting grounds.
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This is honestly a really good film. It’s comedic, to be sure, but it’s also a very serious treatise in how we treat our elderly, and how they treat themselves. Bruce Campbell is absolutely stellar as The King, or is he? Even he’s not quite sure what’s real and what’s memories he’s created in his own head.
I remember renting this from The Video Spectrum and viewing it when I was living with my parents while i was putting myself back together after my Florida failure. My mom wandered in and started watching it with me, and after about an hour, Dad came in from playing on the computer and asked what we were watching. “A movie about an elderly Elvis and a black guy who thinks he’s JFK, fighting a cowboy mummy. And I can’t stop watching it.”
Ah dammit. not available in the UK…