Is Bubba Ho Tep the most 'cult' film of all time?

A short post here, but a valid question. It cannot be argued that Bruce Campbell is anything other than a much loved cult cinema idol. He is obviously unknown to the broader popcorn-munching movie watcher, but would be up there at the top of the list if the cinephiles were asked their opinion.

Then add the plot - Elvis and a (now black) JFK are alive and living in a nursing home battling an ancient mummy that is killing the residents by sucking their souls from their anus'.

Then take the classic quotes, which are incredible when delivered in Elvis' iconic voice:

Elvis: Ask not what your rest home can do for you. Ask what you can do for your rest home. JFK: Hey, you're copying my best lines!
Elvis: Then let me paraphrase one of my own. Let's take care of business.
JFK: Just what are you getting at, Elvis?
Elvis: I think you know what I'm gettin' at Mr. President. We're gonna kill us a mummy.

Elvis: Don't make me use my stuff on ya, baby!

Elvis: It'd been two presidential elections since I'd had a boner like that.

Elvis: You fuck off ya patronizin bitch! I'm sick'a yer shit! I'll lube my own crankshaft from now on. You treat me like a baby again I'll wrap this goddamn walker right around yer head!
[last lines]

Elvis: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Elvis: Look, man, President Johnson's dead.
JFK: Shit. That ain't gonna stop him.

Elvis: Even a big bitch cockroach like you should know... never, but never, fuck with the King.

Elvis: Where'd my youth go? Why didn't fame hold off old age and death? Why the hell did I leave the fame in the first place and do I want it back, and could I have it back? And if I could, would it make any damned difference?

Elvis: Jack wait. Marilyn. [JFK looks at him funny]

Elvis: Come on, Marilyn Monroe? How was she in the sack?
JFK: That is classified information! Top Secret! But between you and me... Wow!

Elvis: Uh, Mr. President... You're on the floor.
JFK: No shit?

Elvis: [to Bubba Ho-Tep] Come and get it, you undead sack of shit.

Elvis: But what do I care? I got a growth on my pecker.

Elvis: I was dreamin'. Dreamin' my dick was out and I was checkin' to see if that infected bump on the head of it had filled with pus again. If it had, I was gonna name it after my ex-wife 'cilla and bust it by jackin' off. Or I'd like to think that's what I'd do. Dreams let you think like that. Truth was [pause] Elvis: I hadn't had a hard-on in years.

Elvis: That's it? I mean, we're investigating a scuttling in the hall, trying to figure out who attacked you last night, and you bring me here to look at stick pictures on the shit house wall, man?

Elvis: No offense, Jack, but President Kennedy was a white man.
JFK: They dyed me this color! That's how clever they are!

JFK: He had me on the floor and had his mouth over my asshole!
Elvis: A shit eater?
JFK: I don't think so. He was after my soul. Now you can get that out of any major orifice of a person's body. I read about it.
Elvis: Oh, yeah? Where, man? Hustler?
Kemosabe: Asshole! Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!... Asshole!
[after Elvis tells the story of how he switched with Sebastian] The Nurse: Don't carry it too far. You may just get way out there and not come back.
Elvis: Oh, fuck you! [Nurse and Callie laugh]

Elvis: Shit! Get old, you can't even cuss someone and have it bother 'em. Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing.

Elvis: My God, man. How long have I been here? Am I really awake, or am I just dreamin' I'm awake? How could my plans have gone so wrong?

Elvis: You could've come and seen him. They don't charge you for that.

Elvis: My own daughter... lost long ago to me... if she knew I lived, would she come and see me? Would she even care?

Elvis: I got tired of it. I was hooked on pills, you know. I wanted out.

Elvis: Problem is, he had a bad heart. He liked drugs, too. Liked them more than I did.

Elvis: Poor Bull. In the end... does anything really matter?

Elvis: Oh yeah, that's something to worry about all right.
JFK: Listen here. Listen. I know you're Elvis. There was a rumor, you know, that you hated me. But I thought about that. If you hated me, you could've finished me off the other night.

Elvis: But I still have my soul. It's still mine. All mine. And the folks up there at Shady Rest... they have theirs, too. And they're gonna keep 'em. Every single one.

Elvis: Kemosabe was dead of a ruptured heart before he hit the floor. Gone down and out with both guns blazing. Soul intact.
Callie: But why would you want to leave all that fame, Mr. Presley? All that money?
Elvis: I don't know. 'Cause they got old. The woman I loved - Priscilla - she was gone. The rest of the women... were just women. I mean the music wasn't even mine anymore. I wasn't even me anymore. Just this thing they made up. And my friends... well they were sucking me dry.

Elvis: It's a cancer. They're keeping it from me 'cause I'm old, and to them it doesn't matter. They think age will kill me first, and they're probably right. Well, suck them! I know what it is, and if it isn't... it might as well be.

Elvis: Here I was complainin' about loss of pride and how life had treated me, and now I realized... I never had any pride. And much of how life had treated me had been good. The bulk of the bad was my own damn fault. Should've fired Colonel Parker by the time I got in the pictures. Old fart had been a shark and a fool, and I was even a bigger fool for following him. If only I'd treated Priscilla right. If I could've told my daughter I loved her. Always the questions. Never the answers. Always the hopes... never the fulfillments.

Elvis: In the movies, I always played the heroic types. But when the stage lights went out, it was time for drugs, and stupidity, and the coveting of women. Now it's time. Time to be a little of what I had always fantasized of bein' - a hero.

Elvis: That's my daughter.
JFK: I know. We weren't there for our kids when they needed us, were we?

Elvis: Man, if I could just talk to her again... tell her I love her... try and make things right somehow.
JFK: No time for regrets, Elvis. We were the best fathers we could be under the circumstances.
Elvis: Yeah, I guess, no time for regrets. We got business to take care of.

Elvis: So I signed everything over to Sebastian. Except for enough money to sustain me if things got bad. I was determined to make myself a new life. A better one. But me and Sebastian, we had us a deal. If I wanted to trade back, he'd let me. It was all written up in the contract. Thing was, I lost my copy in a barbeque accident.

Elvis: What do I really have left in life but this place? It ain't much of a home, but it's all I got. Well, goddamnit. I'll be damned if I let some foreign, graffiti writin', soul suckin', son of a bitch in an oversized cowboy hat and boots take my friend's souls and shit 'em down the visitors toilet!

Elvis: [looking up Callie's skirt] The revealing of her panties was neither intentional or non-intentional, she just didn't give a damn. She was so sentimental on me that she didn't mind that I got a bird's eye view of her love nest. I felt my pecker flutter once, like a pigeon havin' a heart attack, then lay back down and remain limp and still. Of course, these days even a flutter was kinda reassurin'.

Elvis: It's time for A-C-T-I-O-N!

Elvis: [looking at himself in the mirror, thinking] How could I have gone from the king of rock'n'roll to this? An old guy in a restroom in East Texas with a *growth* on his pecker.
JFK: Would you like a Ding-Dong? [Elvis looks towards JFK's crotch]
JFK: Oh, I don't mean mine! I mean a chocolate ding-dong. [thoughtful]
JFK: Of course mine would be chocolate now that I've been dyed.
JFK: I'm thinking with sand here!
Elvis: You got Ding Dongs, man?
JFK: I've Ding Dongs, Paydays and a whole *box* of Baby Ruths.
Elvis: Oh, mama. [JFK opens a dresser drawer filled with goodies]
JFK: So, what'll be? Let's get decadent.
Elvis: [Smiling] I'll have a Baby Ruth.
JFK: [showing Elvis his hidden stash of candy bars] Let's get decadent.

[in the washroom stall, looking at hieroglyphics on the wall] JFK: Now this top line translates into, "Pharoah gobbles donkey goobers," and the bottom line, "Cleopatra does the nasty."
Elvis: Say what?
JFK: Well pretty much, that's the best I can translate it.
Bubba Ho-Tep: [subtitled from the hieroglyphics] By the unwinking red eye of Ra!
Callie: It was nice meeting you, Mr. Presley.
Elvis: Get the hell outta here.

Elvis: Now the two key words for tonight - "caution" and "flammable".
JFK: Also "watch your ass".
Elvis: Shit, Bubba Ho-tep comes out of that creek bed, he's going to come out hungry and pissed. When I try to stop him he's going to shove this paint can up my ass and he's going to shove me and that wheelchair up Jack's ass.

Elvis: T.C.B., baby.

Elvis: Look, man, do I look like an ichthyologist to you? Big damn bugs, all right? The size of my fist. The size of a peanut butter and banana sandwich. What do I know? I got a growth on my pecker!

Elvis: Is there finally and really anything to life other than food, shit and sex?

Elvis: Man, you are one big, bitch cockroach.
JFK: That's where they took a piece of my brain. They got it back in D.C. in that God damn jar. [pause]
JFK: I got a little bag of sand up there now.
Elvis: But Jack uhh, no offense but [pause] Elvis: President Kennedy was a white man. JFK: That's how clever they are. They dyed me this color, all over. can you think of a better way to hide the truth than that?
Elvis: Damn straight, he comes in here tonight, I don't want him slapping his lips on my asshole.
Elvis: Your soul suckin' days are over, amigo!
JFK: [He just got his soul sucked out by Bubba Ho-Tep] The president is soon dead!
[Elvis begins reading an incantation against an unconscious Bubba Ho-Tep from JFK's "Book of Souls"]

Elvis: "You nasty thing from beyond the dead, no matter what you think or do, good things will never come to you. And if evil is your black design, you can bet the goodness of the Light Ones... " [begins to slow the recitation from disbelief]
Elvis: "... will kick your bad behind"? [muttering to himself]
Elvis: For chrissake! [to the heavens] Elvis: That's it? That's the chant against evil from the "Book of Souls"? Oh yeah, right, boss. And what kind of decoder ring comes with that, man? Shit, it don't even rhyme well!
Bubba Ho-Tep: [regains consciousness, rises, and speaks in ancient Egyptian] Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass-wipe!
Elvis: [Sitting down on the wheelchair] It's dog shit!

George Lucas is Franchising my Childhood...

I am a child of the 80s. I was 3 years old in 1980 and 13 in 1990. My formative years were the 90s, but my sweetest childhood memories all lie in the 80s - the toys, the TV, the games, and the movies.

My memories are filled with the innocence and simplicity of the great world events of the 80s - Mexico 86 (the start of rampant commercialism in football?), Ghostbusters, Seb Coe/Steve Cram/Steve Ovett/Daley Thompson, the Fraggles, the Goonies and, most importantly, the great Indiana Jones/Star Wars combo. I remember seeing the 'Temple of Doom' and being amazed. I remember my mum's face and how happy she was seeing how happy I was. The Last Crusade was even better. Star Wars was a different level and I had all the toys - the AT-AT, the Millennium Falcon, the Scout Walker etc. Years were spent in awe of these productions and my memories were entirely positive. I remember when Star Wars was first on TV...and Empire...and Return.. Raiders of the Lost Arc was a must-see too, and still is!

What's my point? Well, the point is that I have just seen the latest Indiana Jones movie and it is truly dreadful. The script, story, acting, FX, photography and directing are truly appalling. How do people not understand that this kind of thing is always a mistake? I would have expected this from Lucas - his second Star Wars trilogy was a disaster - no memorable characters, no zip, no comedy, no acting. Leaving out a Han Solo type character didn't work, but that wouldn't have been enough anyway - Lucas blew millions on new technology that made the films look completely alien and separate from the originals. It looked like the films had been written by a marketing committee and they had decided that the biggest selling point of the originals was the FX and not the storyline or characterisation.

But how has Spielberg connected his name to the latest Indiana Jones picture? The Jurassic Park sequels were formulaic, but had better production values than this latest hunk of junk. I thought better of him and can only presume that Lucas got final say...on everything.

I didn't grow up with the Godfather movies and first watched them in the 90s. There was a mini-renaissance when Godfather pt3 came out, so I watched the first two movies and they were unlike anything else I had seen. Then I watched Godfather pt3... Now it's not necessarily a terrible movie - Al Pacino is now Al Pacino rather than Michael Corleone (SHOUTING!), the pace is slow and the storyline has been rushed, but as a stand-alone movie it probably still merits 3 out of 5. The problem is that it does not stand alone and it tarnishes the others. Coppola did the same thing when he released Apocalypse Now Redux - he had explained in the 'Hearts of Darkness' (making of) why he had left all of these scenes on the floor and now they're back in the movie! I may be cynical, but tell me that wasn't just about money.

Your last memory of Michael Corleone should be at the end of Godfather pt2, your last memory of Obi Wan should be 'as played by' Alec Guinness, Indiana Jones should be standing next to Sean Connery rather than Shia Thebeef, and the last you see of Duvall's Kilgore should be 'Someday this war's gonna end' right after the 'Napalm' speech, rather than flying around in a helicopter looking for his surf board.

It's a sacred thing is childhood and I know they're just movies, but did they not have enough money without having to tarnish my memories? They are film-makers and can pay for their own productions, so why don't they create something new?

Of the four greatest directors of the 70s - Scorcese, Coppola, Spielberg and .. ahem .. Lucas - only two seem to have any passion for film-making any more. I thought 'The Departed' was exactly what cinema needed and still needs. Spielberg's 'Munich' was also excellent and original.

I can only speculate that Lucas and Coppola lost the drive that made them great and original. The storylines and film-making they produced were pioneering and upliftingly special. Now, however, Lucas is cashing in on the past over and over again. He has smeared paint over my childhood memories and I wish he and everyone else would just stop.