‘Bubba’ unites cult heroes

In the somewhat rarified world of fan-geek worship, writer-director Don Coscarelli and actor Bruce Campbell are superstars. They became cult heroes more than 20 years ago, when Coscarelli wrote and directed “Phantasm” (1979) and Campbell starred in Sam “Spider-Man” Raimi’s shoestring debut “The Evil Dead” (1982).

Now in their mid-40s, they still enjoy untarnished credibility with a hard-core fan base that seems to get younger every year.

One reason, Coscarelli says, is that “we both still have a genuine enthusiasm for the kind of weird genre material that teenagers like.” But the oddness of the situation has struck them both, as Campbell notes in his cheerfully self-deprecating memoir “If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor.” The book, a hot seller on the cult film circuit, both confirmed and extended his popularity in certain circles.

Coscarelli’s first film starring Campbell involves, among others, Elvis Presley and Egyptian mummies; “Bubba Ho-Tep,” arrives at the American Cinematheque on Thursday already festooned with raves from bellwether fan sites like Dark Horizons and Ain’t It Cool News. As well it might. “I just loved the idea of Elvis’ fighting a mummy,” Coscarelli says of the short story by mystery novelist Joe R. Lansdale that inspired the film. But the story had more to offer than a gonzo premise: It was a project in which both actor and director could act their age without betraying their B-movie roots.

The film they’ve made is a surprisingly touching genre send-up in which the King (Campbell), now a cranky elderly patient in a Texas nursing home, teams up with his neighbor down the hall (Ossie Davis), a blissfully goofy 83-year-old convinced that he is JFK. Shoulder to shoulder they battle supernatural evil (and a very dangerous scarab beetle the size of a fat pigeon), armed only with their walkers and the fastest bedpan in the West.

At this point, there is no American distributor.

The gonzo premise generates more thrills than one might expect, even though the action is mostly confined to the rest home and the movie’s only “high-speed chase” involves a battery-powered wheelchair. “But what kept me coming back to the story,” Coscarelli says, “was that Joe Lansdale also gave it a deeper level, about what happens to people as they get older, the loss of dignity. People of my generation are getting to the age now where the rest home is staring them in the face, and it is not a pretty picture. What I like best about the movie is that the sensitive stuff really seems to work.”

Campbell and Coscarelli admit that they may have been spoiled by their early experiences making shoestring low-budget genre movies like “Phantasm” and “The Evil Dead” with groups of close friends. Physically those wing-and-a-prayer shoots were often grueling, Campbell recalls, “but there was also a zone of mental comfort there. Those were totally hand-made movies, and they were exactly what we wanted them to be. I’ve been trying to crawl back into that womb ever since.”

Both films became instant cult favorites because fans recognized them as the work of kindred spirits. “One of the things I have aspired to ever since,” Coscarelli says, “is make another movie that resonates with an audience that way. And we’re beginning to get the feeling that ‘Bubba Ho-Tep’ might be it.”

None of Coscarelli’s other films, which include “The Beastmaster” (1982) and “Survival Quest” (1989), has had the impact of “Phantasm” and its sequels. The film delivered such memorable shock images as a brain-sucking flying silver sphere and created one of the great iconic horror villains in Angus Scrimm’s saturnine Tall Man, a killer mortician from the fourth dimension.

In three sequels shot over 20 years, Coscarelli has allowed the “Phantasm” series to darken, embracing the passage of time as a story point. In “Phantasm IV: Oblivion,” footage of the performers as fresh-faced youths is deftly intercut with new scenes in which the same actors play their characters as haggard and alienated adults, pursued by the Tall Man across a post-apocalyptic landscape.

By contrast, Campbell is loved not so much for his seriousness as for his energetic playfulness, a quality abundantly evident in his performance as a gallant and chivalrous geezer-Elvis. In the “Evil Dead” pictures, he wields a snarling chainsaw with the athletic abandon of a zombie-hunting Errol Flynn.

The persona translates well to less sanguinary genres. Campbell made perfect sense as the dashing rogue Autolycus on the syndicated TV series Hercules (co-produced by Raimi), as a post-Indiana Jones cowpoke on the tongue-in-cheek Fox Western “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.” (1993) and as a swashbuckling matinee idol in the film-within-the-film in “The Majestic” (2001).

Campbell and Coscarelli began plotting a collaboration three years ago, when the director co-wrote (with “Pulp Fiction” Oscar-winner Roger Avary) the screenplay for “Phantasm V,” which had a juicy role in it for Campbell. “The idea was to sort of combine the ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Phantasm’ franchises by bringing him in to fight the Tall Man. The fans of both series would go crazy for that,” Coscarelli says. “But then you pitch it to executives and their eyes glaze over. Success in the genre is both a blessing and a curse. I’m always able to get funding for further ‘Phantasm’ movies at a certain budget level, but it also marks you as a little too cultish in the eyes of the Hollywood big shots.”

Campbell is fed up with the big shots altogether and with the endless anxiety of aspiring to become one. He came closest as a runner-up for the title role in “The Phantom” (1996) but, he says: “The more I chased that brass ring the less it had to do with making movies.”

“Bruce has blazed his own trail,” Coscarelli says. “He has made a franchise out of himself. The direct connection he has developed with his fans is amazing.”

Campbell and Coscarelli enjoy trading ideas for possible “Bubba Ho-Tep” prequels, retro period films in which a younger Elvis could play hooky from the set of “Clambake” to battle slinky vampire babes.

“And the longer we go on making them,” Campbell suggests, “the cheaper they’ll be to do. Eventually I won’t even need make-up.”