While the novella and film revolve around an ancient Egyptian mummy (played by Bob Ivy) terrorizing a retirement home, Bubba Ho-Tep also deals with the deeper theme of aging, identity, mortality, and existentialism.

An elderly man at The Shady Rest Retirement Home in East Texas is known to the staff as Sebastian Haff, but claims to be the real Elvis Presley.

Eventually, Elvis and Jack are forced to face off against a re-animated ancient Egyptian mummy that was stolen during a U.S. museum tour, and then lost during a severe storm in East Texas when the thieves' bus veered into a river near the nursing home.

With the mummy doused, set aflame, fallen on the ground, and burning, Elvis rouses the dying Jack long enough to receive a useless incantation.

[4] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three out of four stars saying, "This absurdly clever caper is elevated by Bruce Campbell's pensive Elvis into a moving meditation on the diminutions of age and the vagaries of fame.

"[5] Todd McCarthy of Variety gave a negative review, stating, "[The] introduction of the mummy plot basically derails the film at about the 45-minute point, and the silly climax...is so rote and generic that it could have come out of any ordinary horror film", although McCarthy does admit, "Campbell's Elvis stands as one of the very best screen interpretations of the King seen thus far, even if he's arguably not even playing the real thing.

[10] The project was briefly reported as "dead" by Joe Lansdale in February 2008,[11] but later that same year Giamatti asserted that the film was still alive and that Ron Perlman was interested in taking over the role of Elvis.

[12] Due to the amount of time that had passed since the release of Bubba Ho-Tep, Coscarelli and Giamatti had trouble raising funding for the film and the movie went back into development hell.

[16] This story took place earlier in Elvis's life, during a period in which he worked for Colonel Parker battling monsters prior to exchanging identities with Sebastian Haff.

In 2018, IDW Publishing released a five-issue limited series adaptation of the novella, retitled Bubba Ho-Tep and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers.

[17] In 2019, Dynamite Entertainment published a four-issue crossover miniseries, Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep, which followed up the original story and saw Elvis team up with Ash Williams, another character portrayed by Bruce Campbell.