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Bruce Campbell is a favorite of horror-film geeks, and he’s also a talented actor. As in his cult-hit Evil Dead series, he brings pathos and humor to the most outlandish and gruesome premises. In Don Coscarelli’s adaptation of the Joe R. Lansdale short story, Campbell plays Elvis Presley, now an ailing septuagenarian in an East Texas rest home with a suppurating sore on his pecker. The explanation of how he got there and why he’s not dead is about as plausible as the rest of the story, which has an ancient Egyptian mummy stalking the home’s old-timers to suck out their souls through their assholes. Fortunately, one of Elvis’s fellow residents is former president Jack Kennedy (Ossie Davis, matching Campbell with a touching and hilarious turn), now an elderly black man ("they dyed me from head to toe") with a sack of sand replacing his brain and obsessed with conspiracy theories. They make an unlikely if formidable duo battling the decomposing, cowboy-booted revenant, but they’re helped considerably by Coscarelli’s understated but electrifying style, which utilizes dark corridors, creepy sound effects, and split-second montages and flashbacks to thrilling effect. And Campbell’s embattled but still reigning King brings rueful irony to his voiceover narration and quiet dignity to such scenes as when he chides a young woman for neglecting her geriatric dad. In the end, Elvis and Jack, in walker and wheelchair, brave the darkness to face their enemy, refusing to go gentle into that good night.
BY PETER KEOUGH
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