Trivia for
Bubba Ho-tep (2002) More at IMDbPro »

• Only 32 prints of the film were originally made as part of a limited platform release. The Soul of Southern Film Festival, in Memphis, Tennessee, paid for a thirty-third print, so that they wouldn't have to wait any longer to show the film. Several other festivals and theaters paid advances in order to secure prints.
  
  
• Despite the fact that Elvis Presley is the main character, not one piece of Elvis's music is heard. Coscarelli explained that it would have cost about half the budget to license one of Elvis's songs for the movie.
  
  
• Most of the movie was shot at an abandoned veterans' hospital outside of Los Angeles. Even the trailer park explosion was done there. They used three hallways of one of the buildings for the interior of the rest home.
  
  
• The trailer park explosion was filmed in one take.
  
  
• Due to all the cameras, lights, and equipment virtually trapping him in his bed, at one point Bruce Campbell was forced to actually answer nature's call by using the same bedpan his character used to capture the giant scarab beetle.
  
  
• The shoestring budget for this movie was a little over a half million dollars, or roughly 1% of an average big-budget Hollywood movie.
  
  
• The filmmakers managed to round up about 100 extras for the Elvis concert scene, but as the filming dragged on, the extras steadily departed. By the end of filming, there were only a dozen or so extras left, which pretty much dictated which camera angles could still work.
  
  
• When Elvis turns on the TV and sees the Elvis Presley movie marathon, none of the clips are from any of Elvis's movies. Because the licensing costs would have been too much for the budget, they used stock footage and never showed the faces of the Elvis-like actors.
  
  
• Coscarelli originally wanted a dual narration, not just an Elvis narration. He had recorded another voice narrating the action as it came from the short story it was based upon, but this was abandoned after his friends told him it was terrible. Some of this narration can be heard on the DVD's deleted scenes.
  
  
• Bruce Campbell helped promote the movie by bringing it along with him on his book tour for his autobiography, "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor."
  
  
• KNB Effects agreed to make the Bubba Ho-Tep make-up and costume for cost of materials as a favor to Don Coscarelli.
  
  
• Before Bruce Campbell accepted the role of "Elvis," he had only one question for director Don Coscarelli: "Are you going to show the penis?"
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Don Coscarelli] [closing line] The closing line of the credits, "...criminal prosecution and the wrath of Bubba Ho-tep," is a variant of "...and the wrath of the Tall Man" from the Phantasm (1979) films.
  
  
• Elvis describes his medicine bag as "mucho mojo," which is the title of another book by Joe R. Lansdale, author of the original Bubba Ho-Tep.
  
  

• SPOILER: Harrison Young who plays Elvis' roommate is revealed to be a veteran of WWII (Elvis requests to keep his Purple Heart). Harrison portrays another WWII Veteran in Saving Private Ryan (1998) as James Ryan as an old man. Of course, his character in Saving Private Ryan was not wounded, but as Elvis' roommate he must have been as the Purple Heart Award would suggest.
  
  

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