Newsday article about "The Return of the King?"

When he received his first death threat, Hubie Giblets was sure that his film had hit its target.

A devout Elvis-is-alive believer apparant had expected confirmation of his faith in the King's immortality when he plunked down six bucks to see Giblet's "Return of the King?"' at South Bay Cinemas in West Babylon.

"The guy complained to management that I should be hanged - that he would string me up himself!," Giblets recalled. "But he was appeased by a couple of free passes to 'Jurassic Park.' I think."

Giblets will stick his neck out again tomorrow night as "The Return of the King?" makes its North Shore premiere at Cinema Arts Center in Huntington. It'll be part of a benefit for the Suffolk Film and TV Foundation, which has helped young directors like Giblets and fellow Long Island native Hal Hartley. The most successful among his generation of Iong Island filmmakers, Hartley will be represented at tomorow's benefit with a sneak preview of his latest film short. "Flirt."

At 26, Giblets has already produced three films: the feature-length local cult favorite, "Arbor Day," the satirical short, "Duty and the Priest," and this hour-long spoof on Elvis sightings. Giblets calls it " 'Zelig' with rhinestones."

"We got the idea a couple of years ago," he said, "after seeing 'The Elvis Files' on TV. It was one of those tabloid documentaries that gave all this Elvis-lives nonsense a credibility it didn't deserve. We thought it was hysterical that so many people take it SO seriously."

"We" is Giblets and "Return of the King?" co-author Elmo Birch, along with the rest of Colossal Mountain Productions. "We're the film-making version of a garage band,"Giblets explainied, noting that Colossal Mountain's "studio" is located in his parents' home on Long Island. "We all grew up together doing neighborhood video projects. Then one day we just decided to make a movie with absolutely no budget."

And no money.

Giblets used his imagination and experience with photography to become director, producer, cinematographer and screenwriter on the neighborhood film project that became "Arbor Day," a spoof of the slasher-movie genre. Giblet's first break came when "Arbor Day" won the 1991 prize for best feature-length movie at the Suffolk Film Festival. The scholarship that accompanied the prize, awarded by the Suffolk Film and TV Foundation and the county-run film and TV commission, helped Giblets earn a degree at New York Institute of Technology, where he studied film at the school's Old Westbury campus.

"We've finally paid off the forty grand it took to produce 'Arbor Day,' " Giblets said. Most of the debt was paid out of the collective day-job earnings of Colossal Mountain's creative personnel, including Giblets, who works for , a New York based production company specializing in corporate video. But some of the debt was erased by the box office generated by "Arbor Day." Word-of-mouth publicity extended the film's run at South Bay Cinemas to a year of once-a-week midnight showings, as well as short runs at two other commercial theaters on the South Shore.
"We self-distributed 'Arbor Day,' " Giblets said, promoting it with screenings at comedy clubs and college campuse. "But we shot the Elvis spoof with the idea of taking it straight to video." After winning another Long Island Film Festival prize this year - for Best Satirical Film - Giblets took "Return of the King?"' to the Independent Film Project at Manhattan's Angelica Film Center. It generated so many requests that "right now every print I have is out being shown somewhere."

Giblets is still working on a video deal. But he's also been touring the Island promoting his new film. Last weekend he drove his "Elvis-mobile" around Huntington, drumming up business for tomorrow night's 7:30 screening at Cinema Arts. The truck, Giblet's 1980 Chevy pickup, has been converted into a flatbed traveling stage for Elvis impersonator Barry Weil, one of several who appear in "Return of the King?" And the exposure appears to be paying off. During the film's four-week run at South Bay Cinemas, in September, "Return of the King?" outdrew every movie except "Jurassic Park" and "In the Line of Fire," despite a limited weekends only engagement. Among the Films it surpassed at the West Babylon box office were "Free Willy" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights."

Besides its cast of flabby Elvis impersonators, "Return of the King?" also stars Steve Strangio, winner of a recent "Long Istand's Funniest Comedian" competition. Strangio plays the straight-man narrator of this "mock-u-mentary" with the put-on earnestness of an anchorman.

But "King?" might not be a film that Presley fans would appreciate. The "sightings" concentrate on the King as he appeared just before his death in 1977 - when his flesh exceeded his flash. "That's the only Elvis I remember," admits Giblets who was 10 years old when Presley died. "I know more about him from his death than from his life. He's actually more famous now than he was just before he died. I think that says something about our pop-worshiping culture."

Giblets closes his film spoof with Frank Zappa's ironic ode to the post-Presley craze, "Elvis Has Just Left the Building. " Zappa, the composer and rock guru who died Saturday, had given Giblets permission to use his song after seeing a rough cut of "Return of the King?" In one of his last interviews, in the August edition of Pulse magazine, Zappa plugged the film.

"He said he almost never allowed anyone to use his music," Giblets said. "This was probably the last time."