Bruce Campbell as the aging Elvis Presley in a retirement homeīubba Ho-tep, which is taken from a 1994 short story by Texan horror writer Joe R. It also won several awards when it came out, including the Bram Stoker Award for Best Screenplay, even a surprise nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay from the Online Film Critics Association. Disappointingly, Bubba Ho-Tep did only modest business, more on video than in theatrical release, although did build up a slow cult reputation around the world.

He made only one other original effort – the silly teen backwoods brutality film Survival Quest (1988) – but mostly resorted to making a string of Phantasm sequels with Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III (1994), Phantasm IV: OblIVion (1998) and Phantasm: Ravager (2016).īubba Ho-Tep was Don Coscarelli’s long-awaited return to new genre material and is his most mature and intelligent film to date. Coscarelli went onto make the disappointing sword-and-sorcery effort The Beastmaster (1982) and then his career floundered. Nowadays, with such an independent hit, Don Coscarelli would have been snapped up by the studios and could have gone onto a career akin to Wes Craven (who had a hit that was very similar to Phantasm with A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) a few years later). Coscarelli was only 24 years old when his third film Phantasm/The Never Dead (1979) became a modest cult hit all around the world.

Don Coscarelli is a director that should be more well known than he is.

Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R. Lansdale