For some cinema experiences to be ripely appreciated, the audience need be of a certain vintage, with a tender sense of whimsy regarding youth, age and circumstance, and a full measured feel for life's many might-have-beens. Thus armed, it can respond to those uncommon films which have that happy marvel of conception, often in spite of flaws, of restrictions occasioned by small purses, and even a palpable second-part falling off -- in this particular case in point, a noticeable flatness once plot possibilities have been filled.

Such marriage of imagination and story is rare, perhaps a mere lucky stroke -- sequels fail to rebottle it -- but the initial hour of Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-Tep rekindles faith that magic can be worked with small means, that the right actor in the right vehicle will renew our joy at what life can and cannot offer.

Scripting and co-producing in addition to directing, Coscarelli has taken his text from a Bram Stoker Award-nominated story by Joe R. Lansdale, self-denominated "Mojo" horror and science fiction author. The cleanly simple plot is charming, wish fulfillment for the many, poignant, far-fetched to impossible and yet . . .  There are excrescences, improbably including to a degree the mumbo-jumbo title character--who is not at the heart here, but a tongue-in-cheek figure in Texas-(the "Bubba")-by-way-of-Karloff (the Ho-Tep "surname")--and a crazy, dignified, "dead" President, though, given the story, the existence of both is what calls forth action, and action is the salvation of the King of modern Memphis-on-Mississippi.

At Shady Rest, Mud Creek's down-at-heels old-age home, resident Purple Heart veteran Paul (Harrison Young) coughs his lungs away, abandoned by daughter Callie Thomas (Heidi Marnhout). Michelangelo's Man reaching to hand-touch Sistine God, he gives up the spirit without reaching overweight roommate Sebastian Haff. To callous Callie and cool nurse (Ella Joyce), for the weary nth time Haff insists that he is the man he so closely resembles, an aging, wrinkled, hip-hobbled if less obesely puffed Elvis Aron Presley.

In conversations, thoughtful voice-overs and flashbacks that, like the opening b&w German newsreel about a mummy unearthed in the Valley of the Kings, are inexpensive but effectively placed, Sebastian/Elvis (Bruce Campbell) unfolds his story.

Imprisoned in his fame and dopey on drugs, having lost wife 'Cilla and their young daughter, stripped of honor and musical roots alike and sucked dry by hangers-on (the so-called Memphis Mafia) and Col. Tom, he drove to Nacogdoches and there switched places with one of his many impersonators.

Reborn, so to speak, reveling in again performing spontaneously and intimately, he winds up trapped by fate in his assumed persona. The old story of a tricky devil's bargain gone awry, of being caged in another's existence body or soul, but the boyman from East Tupelo is philosophical and not all that unhappy about it. Like centuries-ago theatergoers, he values the ironic humor of X's playing Y disguised as X.
Ruefully accepting waned sexual prowess, he does, however, regret missed opportunities: the heart's love he was not capable of showering on Priscilla and Lisa Marie, and the heroism of soul that was only scripted fantasy in thirty-three tinselly, profitable movies.

Made up by KNB EFX Group to look more Elvis than Elvis himself, along with the mannerisms and sexy, husky, respectful voice, Campbell is helpless and humiliated in his bed. Only a single other believes in him, a "certifiable" fellow resident: Ossie Davis' "Jack," calm at eighty-three beyond all the scandal revelations of today, the President sabotaged forty years back in Dallas, filled with sand, dyed and shipped here to die.

Relying on The Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul and having roughly translated graffiti hieroglyphics from a bathroom wall, Mr. President knows that, frail and thus only "small souls," they are nevertheless mummy fodder, easy if not filling sustenance for an ancient being oddly come to this scrubby east Texas. Deaths are expected in retirement homes, but as they multiply--including that of a Lone Ranger called Kemosabe (Larry Pennell)--and as snap visions of scarabs and seventeen Egyptian dynasties and silver country bus accidents flash in Elvis' head, with "macho mojo" the two old men will confront the cowboy-garbed, unnatural foe (Bob Ivy). In battle, they will redeem youth, idealism and their souls. "I still have my soul," muses Elvis, "[the other residents] have theirs, too, every single one."

Once all is posited, the film has no place to go, runs out of gas like a pink Caddy. Even dialogue lacks its earlier laconic-obscene sparkle, although the perfectly eyeglassed King manfully carries his load and the good vibes and whimsicalness, irony, and gentle good humor carry the day. Not once-in-a-lifetime, mind you, but, still, a knowingly small and unique experience. One hopes that Coscarelli is wise enough to let sleeping ghosts lie, skip kiddingly discussed prequels and rest content in this vein at no more than his end-joke: "Elvis returns--Bubba Nosferatu: 'Curse of the She Vampire.'"

(Released by Production Magic, Inc. and rated R for language, some sexual content and brief violent images.)