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Don Coscarelli

Bubba Ho-Tep – Don Coscarelli (2002)

Elvis is not dead, but old, fragile and has lived in a nursing home for many years after an accident. The film explains how that all came to be.

Another inhabitant of the nursing home is Jack Kennedy who turned black.

The nursing home is haunted by the remains of a mummy that was stolen and crashed nearby and so we get a horror comedy that is not really horror or slapstick. The film is mostly a drama with somewhat black humour and a story-element that is horror.

Horror comedy, not really my genre, but this looked funny enough to try. Not sure how this ended on my watch list though. The film is good for a few chuckles, but certainly not a must-see.

John Dies At The End * Don Coscarelli (2012)

Here we have a difficult film to review. Difficult, because the film is both corny and brilliant. It opens with a marvelous, weird scene and starts off blazingly as a film with the weirdness and wonder of “Naked Lunch” and “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas“. Soon it becomes clear that the story is good in basis, but contains many bad elements. Also more and more teenage-superpower-film-elements creep in which makes some scenes rather annoying. Did the director hope to direct the audience of a film like “Chronicle” to the Cronenbergian way of filmmaking, the other way around, or could he not choose between horror weirdness or teen-film?
One thing is certain: the Cronenberg parts are brilliant and in themselves make this film worth watching. Too bad that the other part take the film down substantiously.
A little bit about the story then. Two young ghostbusters accidentally acquire the power to see all different times and dimensions at the same time and they are part of these different times and dimensions themselves. This leads to amusing scenes with ‘philosophy’ used to add to the unlikely story.
I guess I said enough for you to be able to decide whether you want to watch this film or not.