“If you’re going to see one Elvis vs. a mummy movie this year,” director Don Coscarelli… “If you’re going to see one Elvis vs. a mummy movie this year,” director Don Coscarelli chuckles about his film “Bubba Ho-Tep” before quickly turning serious. “No, honestly, one of the things we don’t acknowledge in the advertising is that it’s a film that’s very serious in a lot of respects.”

This is an obvious means of deterring people from writing off the film as a silly, campy exercise. Most wouldn’t read the synopsis of “Bubba Ho-Tep” and think that it had some seriousness to it. Two old guys who think they’re Elvis and John Kennedy fighting a mummy in a nursing home isn’t exactly “Terms of Endearment.” But Coscarelli wants audiences to know that it’s more than a cheap, comedic horror movie.

“It’s got some silly stuff that pretty much anyone can enjoy,” says Coscarelli, “but it deals with other topics like aging and death and rest homes that you won’t get in other movies.”

And with such content in the film, the fight to get it made and out there for people to see was a struggle for this director whose previous works include “Phantasm” and “Beastmaster.”

Originally a short story by Joe Lansdale, Coscarelli came across “Bubba Ho-Tep” in a small horror/sci-fi bookstore because one of the guys working there said Lansdale’s work had “a high body count.” “Bubba Ho-Tep” doesn’t have the body count, but it attracted Coscarelli all the same, thanks to numerous elements in the story, like the relationship between Elvis and Kennedy, and the way Lansdale explained the “whole latter part of the Elvis myth.”

“It just seemed to me that the reason there were so many Elvis sightings after Elvis was gone was that the fans couldn’t accept the official record of how he died,” Coscarelli says. “The King wouldn’t go out that way. And this story provided a way to kind of sum up the guy’s life and give him a shot at redemption.”

But as a director like Coscarelli knows, wanting to make a project and actually doing it are two different things. He was faced with a story that seemed too eccentric for mass audiences, a tight budget and difficulties in finding resources to make the film. But, as directors also know, there are times when luck strikes, and their seemingly unfilmable projects get made.

This was such a case. And Coscarelli is quick to point to the biggest gift his film received – the participation of Bruce Campbell.

“We had this question of who we were going to get to play Elvis that we could afford who would want to do this,” says Coscarelli. “We got Bruce Campbell, and he rose to the occasion and gave a fantastic performance that I certainly didn’t know that he had in him. I certainly knew he could handle the physical comedy aspects of it. But early on, it became apparent that Bruce was going to be able to make this work.”

And because Campbell was on the project, a group of effects people from Sony Animation came onto the film to work on the mummy effects. They wanted to work on the film because Campbell was involved. More importantly, though, Coscarelli was able to get his audiences.

Bruce Campbell is a cult figure in modern movies. Starring in films such as “Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead 2” and “Army of Darkness,” and in television shows like “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.,” he has cultivated the status of B-movie star extraordinaire. His autobiography is even subtitled “Confessions of a B-Movie Actor.”

He’s content in this role because, like anything that falls into the realm of “cult,” there is a fan base that follows his every move and supports his every venture. “Bubba Ho-Tep” is no exception. Coscarelli points out that “there’s a big Bruce fan base” and that, when they opened the film in Dallas, it sold out numerous times because these fans descended on the theater in droves.

Coscarelli also points to the relationship between Campbell and Ossie Davis, playing John Kennedy, as a positive force for the film – if the two leads in a film with only two leads don’t get along, after all, the film is doomed to failure.

“Bruce and Ossie had a bond,” Coscarelli says. “Ossie keeps his own counsel, but you could see when he arrived on the set and Bruce came swinging down the hall wearing that fat suit and Elvis gear – ‘Hey baby, what’s up?’ he’s in that Elvis shtick – Ossie would light up. The two of them really had a great rapport.”

Despite some difficult trials and tribulations – like an advertising snafu in Dallas where none of the ads for the film made it into newspapers, in addition to the budget and resource woes – Coscarelli places this film high on the list of his favorite works.

“It’s one of my favorites. My top three would be the original ‘Phantasm,’ which was such a great experience. Here we are 25 years later, and I’ve made some of the great friends of my life on that film,” Coscarelli says. “I did this other movie that very few people have seen – called ‘Kenny and Me’ – when I was a kid, and that’s a real nice movie. But, boy, this ‘Bubba Ho-Tep,’ it’s a fun movie to watch with audiences.

“It’s something that I’m really proud of. I think it’s got some lasting value, and people seem to really like it.”