Bubba Ho-tep
Year:
2002
Running time:
92 mn
Nationality:
USA
Language:
English
Genre:
Horror, Comedy
Director:
Don Coscarelli
Producer:
Silver Sphere Corporation
Screenwriter/s:
Don Coscarelli
Cast:
Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis,Ella Joyce, Heidi Marnhout, Bob Ivy, Edith Jefferson, Larry Pennell, Reggie Bannister, Daniel Roebuck, Daniel Schweiger, and others
Summary of the film
Elvis (Campbell) isn’t dead. He merely swapped places with an impersonator in secret, and is now lying decrepit in a rest home in Texas. But when an Egyptian mummy is revived on the premises, The King teams up with a black resident who thinks he’s JFK (Davis) to give the evil one some burning hell… (Filmaffinity)
TV News segment in Bubba Ho-tep (Screenshot by the author)
Fake Hieroglyphic inscription with comic content (Screenshot by the author)
Oversized scarab (Screenshot by the author)
The king on his throne (left) and head of Anubis during mummification (right) (Screenshot by the author)
Egyptomania narratives or motifs
Mere moments into the film, and prior to credits, the extent of the Egyptomania quickly becomes apparent as a pair of definitions greets the viewer in a cold open:
Ho-tep (hō-tep’) n.
1. Relative or descendent of the 17 Egyptian Dynasties, 3100-1550 B.C.
2. Family surname of an Egyptian pharaoh (king).
Bubba (bub’uh) n.
1. Male from the Southern U.S.
2. Good ole boy
3. Cracker, red neck, trailer park resident.
This Don Coscarelli (best known for his Phantasm films) offering doesn’t take long to establish its intentions as the very first sequence in the film is of vintage German footage of Egyptomania in its prime: a TV news segment relating the discovery of a sphinx between Luxor and Karnak temple, along with the mummy of an unknown, 4,000-year-old priest. However, the embedded subtitles tell a different story. They name the mummy as a king Amenhotep, who they state was discovered with his priests and that they are “coming to a museum near you.” This is clearly an attempt to authenticate a backstory for the film’s plot on the assumption that the audience wouldn’t understand German.
This is the first of several examples of the film possibly mocking Egyptomania and imploring the audience to accept the ruse at face value: this is not a film that takes ancient Egypt seriously.
The premise, as shown above, is simple if not absurd. It's perfectly set up to be a mindless slasher romp, ideally suited for what Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead fame, does best. And that is when the film throws you for a curve; Egyptian iconography aside, it’s an otherwise thoughtful exposé on aging gracefully and living with regret. For how crude and foul the film is, it works towards an emotionally intelligent and thoughtful climax that utterly belies its appearance.
As for the Egyptian iconography, the film neither makes an effort to authenticate any of it, nor does it bother to conceal that it does not. For example, right off the bat, the film posits that “a Hotep” is a descendant of the 17 Egyptian dynasties, dated from 3100 to 1550 BC.
Ignoring for a moment that Hotep (ie. ḥtp) is an adjective rather than a noun, which roughly translates to mean “to be satisfied or calm and content”, what’s interesting about their definition is the dates provided and the omission of a dozen dynasties. The dates align with the onset of dynastic Egypt (3100 BC) and the beginning of the New Kingdom with the 18th dynasty (1550 BC), but why leave the New Kingdom out? Not only does ḥtp continue on in the language well into Coptic times, but it also remains a common feature of Egyptian names in the New Kingdom and beyond. There are several famous regnal Amenhotep’s from the 18th dynasty – including one falsely referenced in the opening crawl – so it is difficult to not see it as an intentional omission.
Additionally, the word has a troublesome colloquial definition in the United States. According to Urban Dictionary, it refers to “an individual or an action that centers largely conspiratorial, often bigoted, notions of Afrocentrism”, further complicating its use here.
The problematic Egyptomania doesn’t end there. Nearing the halfway point of the film, JFK leads Elvis to a restroom stall to look at some hieroglyphic writing on the wall as a clue to the mysterious assailant they’re attempting to expose.
Of course, it isn’t actual hieroglyphic script, and the translation JFK offers – “Pharaoh gobbles donkey goobers, Cleopatra does the nasty” – is clearly intended for comedic effect. But even with the disclaimer JFK offers that it’s “the best [he] can do,” the irreverence for hieroglyphics, known as the Gods’ Speech in the ancient world, is fairly blatant. Elvis retorts that it could be anyone “thinking he’s Tutankhamun or something” which further highlights the reductionism that’s characteristic of Egyptomania.
Staying consistent with the film’s general disinterest in authenticating pharaonic imagery, the residents of the nursery home are frequently attacked by the most absurdly sized scarab. The scarab is at times so poorly recognizable as such that it pales in contrast with even the equally absurd scarabs of the 1999 Stephen Sommers Mummy film.
Like the rest of the ancient Egyptian iconography in the film, the scarab is a mere derivative estimation of the ancient motif and not at all representative of or exhibiting any underlying understanding of the original element.
As for the mummy, he sports a tattered dress shirt, a feathered fedora, and cowboy boots. He is an unseen terror stalking the shadowy halls of the nursing home for the first half of the film, surprisingly sidelined and rendered as nothing more than an arbitrary MacGuffin.
Very little about the mummy evokes ancient Egypt, save for a brief sequence when Elvis comes face to face with the mummy for the first time and sees into his ancient past, via a rapid sequence of ancient Egyptian images, including a seated man dressed in roughly regnal attire, a colossal statue complete with nemes and postiche, various topless women, a rather graphic live mummification and, of course, a man wearing an Anubis head.
This is also the one sequence of the film where the music shifts into a near eastern style, employing the zummara, an Egyptian double clarinet attested to as far back as the Old Kingdom.
Brian Tyler’s score focuses on recreating the Elvis vibe rather than the ancient Egyptian one. The composition is peppered with near eastern musical motifs and a sparse splashing of something resembling “ancient” music in the aforementioned flashback sequence. In this hybridized and highly stylized approach, it’s effective. Although, overall, the music suffers from what I refer to as “The Arabian Nights Problem”, where the music is not only unauthentically near eastern but rather a caricature of it.
Ho-tep (hō-tep’) n.
1. Relative or descendent of the 17 Egyptian Dynasties, 3100-1550 B.C.
2. Family surname of an Egyptian pharaoh (king).
Bubba (bub’uh) n.
1. Male from the Southern U.S.
2. Good ole boy
3. Cracker, red neck, trailer park resident.
This Don Coscarelli (best known for his Phantasm films) offering doesn’t take long to establish its intentions as the very first sequence in the film is of vintage German footage of Egyptomania in its prime: a TV news segment relating the discovery of a sphinx between Luxor and Karnak temple, along with the mummy of an unknown, 4,000-year-old priest. However, the embedded subtitles tell a different story. They name the mummy as a king Amenhotep, who they state was discovered with his priests and that they are “coming to a museum near you.” This is clearly an attempt to authenticate a backstory for the film’s plot on the assumption that the audience wouldn’t understand German.
This is the first of several examples of the film possibly mocking Egyptomania and imploring the audience to accept the ruse at face value: this is not a film that takes ancient Egypt seriously.
The premise, as shown above, is simple if not absurd. It's perfectly set up to be a mindless slasher romp, ideally suited for what Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead fame, does best. And that is when the film throws you for a curve; Egyptian iconography aside, it’s an otherwise thoughtful exposé on aging gracefully and living with regret. For how crude and foul the film is, it works towards an emotionally intelligent and thoughtful climax that utterly belies its appearance.
As for the Egyptian iconography, the film neither makes an effort to authenticate any of it, nor does it bother to conceal that it does not. For example, right off the bat, the film posits that “a Hotep” is a descendant of the 17 Egyptian dynasties, dated from 3100 to 1550 BC.
Ignoring for a moment that Hotep (ie. ḥtp) is an adjective rather than a noun, which roughly translates to mean “to be satisfied or calm and content”, what’s interesting about their definition is the dates provided and the omission of a dozen dynasties. The dates align with the onset of dynastic Egypt (3100 BC) and the beginning of the New Kingdom with the 18th dynasty (1550 BC), but why leave the New Kingdom out? Not only does ḥtp continue on in the language well into Coptic times, but it also remains a common feature of Egyptian names in the New Kingdom and beyond. There are several famous regnal Amenhotep’s from the 18th dynasty – including one falsely referenced in the opening crawl – so it is difficult to not see it as an intentional omission.
Additionally, the word has a troublesome colloquial definition in the United States. According to Urban Dictionary, it refers to “an individual or an action that centers largely conspiratorial, often bigoted, notions of Afrocentrism”, further complicating its use here.
The problematic Egyptomania doesn’t end there. Nearing the halfway point of the film, JFK leads Elvis to a restroom stall to look at some hieroglyphic writing on the wall as a clue to the mysterious assailant they’re attempting to expose.
Of course, it isn’t actual hieroglyphic script, and the translation JFK offers – “Pharaoh gobbles donkey goobers, Cleopatra does the nasty” – is clearly intended for comedic effect. But even with the disclaimer JFK offers that it’s “the best [he] can do,” the irreverence for hieroglyphics, known as the Gods’ Speech in the ancient world, is fairly blatant. Elvis retorts that it could be anyone “thinking he’s Tutankhamun or something” which further highlights the reductionism that’s characteristic of Egyptomania.
Staying consistent with the film’s general disinterest in authenticating pharaonic imagery, the residents of the nursery home are frequently attacked by the most absurdly sized scarab. The scarab is at times so poorly recognizable as such that it pales in contrast with even the equally absurd scarabs of the 1999 Stephen Sommers Mummy film.
Like the rest of the ancient Egyptian iconography in the film, the scarab is a mere derivative estimation of the ancient motif and not at all representative of or exhibiting any underlying understanding of the original element.
As for the mummy, he sports a tattered dress shirt, a feathered fedora, and cowboy boots. He is an unseen terror stalking the shadowy halls of the nursing home for the first half of the film, surprisingly sidelined and rendered as nothing more than an arbitrary MacGuffin.
Very little about the mummy evokes ancient Egypt, save for a brief sequence when Elvis comes face to face with the mummy for the first time and sees into his ancient past, via a rapid sequence of ancient Egyptian images, including a seated man dressed in roughly regnal attire, a colossal statue complete with nemes and postiche, various topless women, a rather graphic live mummification and, of course, a man wearing an Anubis head.
This is also the one sequence of the film where the music shifts into a near eastern style, employing the zummara, an Egyptian double clarinet attested to as far back as the Old Kingdom.
Brian Tyler’s score focuses on recreating the Elvis vibe rather than the ancient Egyptian one. The composition is peppered with near eastern musical motifs and a sparse splashing of something resembling “ancient” music in the aforementioned flashback sequence. In this hybridized and highly stylized approach, it’s effective. Although, overall, the music suffers from what I refer to as “The Arabian Nights Problem”, where the music is not only unauthentically near eastern but rather a caricature of it.
Author: Waleed Hawatky
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