GBW #57: Elvis Has Left the Building (True Romance / 3000 Miles to Graceland / Bubba Ho-Tep)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Good, The Bad, and The What!? The show in which we discuss three films that we have deemed "good," "bad," or "what!?" within a subgenre, theme, motif, director or actor's filmography, and more! This week, in honor of the release of Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" biopic, Chris and Ryan dive into three films in which Elvis drives the narrative and/or enforces the decisions of the lead characters. We start with "True Romance," the Tony Scott-directed, Quentin Tarantino-penned (his first screenplay) lovers-on-the-run flick in which Christian Slater's Tarantino surrogate Clarence Worley takes his cues from an apparition of Elvis (Val Kilmer). While the film has its moments of cringe in the year 2022, it's still a buoyant, joyous, stylish ride that is - to paraphrase Alabama Worley (Patricia Arquette) in the film - so cool. And effortlessly so. What's not cool and is incredibly try-hard is 2001's post-Tarantino garbage "3000 Miles to Graceland," in which a group of try-hard, tough-guy criminals (led by Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner) stage a heist during an Elvis convention in Vegas. Various other moronic subplots occur, but needless to say, this early 2000s trash (complete with horrific speed-ramping and nu-metal on the soundtrack) is the nadir of both Russell and Costner's filmographies. Finally, we come back to the positive with 2002's "Bubba Ho-Tep," Don Coscarelli's ("Phantasm") bizarre, tonally hard-to-place film in which a man in a retirement center claiming to be the real Elvis (a career-best turn from Bruce Campbell) comes face-to-face with a living mummy.  You can find this and future episodes on our website thegoodbadwhat.com. You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Anchor.fm, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, and more! Feel free to email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments, or just want to say hello. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thegoodbadwhat. You can also like us on Facebook. Our logo comes from Michelle Parkos, and our theme music comes from Paco.