Spinout (1966)

Spinout, released in 1966, isn’t one of Elvis Presley’s most highly regarded movies and it is pretty lightweight. But lightweight isn’t necessarily bad, as we will see.

Mike McCoy (Elvis) races cars and sings rock’n’roll and does both fairly successfully. His life starts to get complicated when a beautiful girl causes him to run off the road. Then rich businessman Howard Foxhugh (Carl Betz) starts to use his money and influence to try to force Mike to do things he doesn’t want to do. Fitzhugh wants him to drive his new racing car and he wants him to sing at his daughter Cynthia’s birthday party.

Now it’s not that Mike has any real objection to driving new racing cars and singing for girls on their birthdays. But Mike is a free spirit. He only does things when he wants to do them. He hates being pushed around. He’s terrified of the prospect of living a conventional life and accepting responsibility. He’s particularly terrified of the idea of marriage.

There’s obviously going to be a battle of will between Mike and Fitzhugh and Fitzhugh’s daughter Cynthia is going to be involved as well. Cynthia by the way was the girl who caused him to crash his car.

Mike has another problem. He’s being stalked by crazy writer Diana St Clair. She writes books about snaring the perfect man and she’s decided that Mike would be absolutely the perfect husband. In fact he’d be the perfect husband for her.

Cynthia Foxhugh and Diana St Clair are not the only women making his life complicated. His cute but ditzy girl drummer Les (Deborah Walley) is hopelessly in love with him.

Fitzhugh and his daughter come up with all sorts of schemes to manipulate Mike. The romantic complications escalate. And there’s the big road race coming up.

There’s nothing more than that to the plot but the script has plenty of zing.

This is very much a feelgood movie. It has lots of songs (which are mostly quite good), it has cars, it has girls. Lots and lots of girls. There’s a bit of race car action, there’s romance and there’s humour. This is a genuinely funny movie and it’s funny in a way that is both witty and good-natured. The characters are a fine collection of eccentrics, and they’re likeable. Even Fitzhugh, who at first seems like he might be a villain, turns out to be a pretty nice guy.

The acting is excellent. The three main female characters, all determined to marry Mike, are all totally different women with sharply defined personalities which gives the actresses (Shelley Fabares as Cynthia, Diane McBain as Diana St Clair and Deborah Walley as Les) something to work with and they make the most of it. The supporting cast is good.

Elvis is in fine form, breezing through the picture with effortless charm and charisma and with a good script to help him he manages to be quite amusing.

Norman Taurog directed no less than nine of Elvis’s films and in this one he keeps things brisk and snappy. Theodore J. Flicker and George Kirgo wrote the screenplay. A year later Flicker would write and direct the superlative spy spoof/satire The President’s Analyst.

The Warner Brothers Region 4 DVD offers an excellent anamorphic transfer. There are no extras.

Spinout might be lightweight but it has every ingredient you could ask for in a light-hearted Elvis Presley romantic comedy, and every one of those ingredients works. It’s a must-see for Elvis fans and even if you’re not particularly an Elvis fan you might well find yourself thoroughly enjoying this picture. Maybe it’s not quite as good as Viva Las Vegas but it’s still very very good. Highly recommended.

King Creole (1958)

King Creole is a 1958 Elvis Presley musical drama. The movie was a major box-office hit and was well received by critics. Like several of his early films this one gives Presley a chance to prove himself as an actor and it was his favourite film rôle.

The movie was based on a 1952 book by Harold Robbins.

It opens in New Orleans. Danny Fisher (Presley) is about to graduate from high school. He lives with his sister and his father. His father (played by Dean Jagger) has fallen on hard times. He just gave up on life when his wife died. Danny loves his father but he despises him as well. Danny hates to see a man crawl and his father has spent his whole life crawling. Danny has to work before school and after school. At his job sweeping floors in a bar he encounters a girl named Ronnie (Carolyn Jones) who’s with a bunch of rich drunks. He rescues her but he’s late for school and when he gets to school he gets into a fight which means he won’t graduate.

Danny is basically a decent kid but he’s a little embittered by a life that seems to be going nowhere fast and he’s getting fed up. He gets in with a juvenile delinquent gang led by Shark (played by Vic Morrow who specialised in such rôles although by this time he was ridiculously old to be a juvenile delinquent).

Danny also has a run-in with a big-time hoodlum named Maxie Fields (Walter Matthau). Ronnie is Maxie’s girl and Maxie gets real jealous.

Danny gets forced to sing one night and it turns out he’s a great singer, which attracts the attention of honest club-owner Charlie LeGrand (Paul Stewart) and Maxie. Danny’s singing career starts to take off at Charlie’s King Creole club but his problem is Maxie - Maxie doesn’t like the idea of there being anything good in the world unless he owns it. Maxie intends to own Danny Fisher. And Danny does not intend to be owned.

So Danny, who really doesn’t mean any harm to anyone, seems to be drifting inexorably towards big trouble. He just makes a few mistakes but when you’re dealing with a guy like Maxie one mistake is all it takes. Once he gets his claws into you he doesn’t let go, which is something that both Danny and Ronnie find out the hard way.

Danny has major woman problems, or rather the problem is that he’s caught between two women. Nellie (Dolores Hart) is a sweet kid but she wants marriage and babies. But there’s Ronnie as well. He’s not sure what Ronnie wants and maybe Ronnie isn’t sure either. But Ronnie is likely to get him into big trouble with Maxie.

Elvis was a competent actor but as his movie career progressed he was given fewer and fewer chances to show his skills. In this movie however he has to do real acting and he handles the challenge pretty well. He'd shown real promise as an actor in Jailhouse Rock and he's even better in this movie. Naturally he gets to sing as well, and naturally his singing is terrific (and he gets some very good songs).

Walter Matthau as Maxie surprisingly makes a reasonably effective slimy villain. The whole supporting cast is pretty good. Dolores Hart’s problem is the problem that most of Evlis’s leading ladies had - Elvis just had so much charisma that (apart from Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas) that they tended to get completely overshadowed. Carolyn Jones is a better match for Elvis in that respect. In fact she’s excellent. She’s not quite a femme fatale but she’s about as close as you’ll get to one in an Elvis Presley movie.

King Creole was directed by Michael Curtiz. Curtiz managed to make good movies in just about every genre going. Curtiz was maybe an artisan rather than an artist but he was an extraordinary skilled artisan.

King Creole looks great in an anamorphic widescreen transfer on DVD. The film was shot in black-and-white (which for some reason really seems to work for films set in New Orleans).

This is a musical but it’s not a frothy musical by any means. It’s quite hard-edged and almost qualifies as a noir musical. Maybe you could call it a noir musical melodrama. It is definitely melodrama but that’s OK because I like melodrama. Whatever you call it it’s an excellent movie with Presley in good form in both the singing and acting departments. Highly recommended.

Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Viva Las Vegas is a pretty lightweight movie. Which is OK. It’s an Elvis Presley movie so you’e not going to be expecting Citizen Kane. The important thing is that it’s a great deal of fun. And unlike some of Elvis’s movies, it’s well-made stylish fun.

The plot is thin, and that’s putting it mildly. Lucky Jackson (Elvis) is an up-and-coming race-car river who heads off to Las Vegas to win enough money to buy a new engine for his race car so he can enter the Las Vegas Grand Prix. He wins the money at the gaming tables, and loses it in bizarre circumstances (well maybe not so bizarre since he was pursuing a young lady at the time). Now he’s forced to work as a waiter but the upside is that he’s met Rusty Martin (Ann-Margret) and he’s pretty sure that she’s the girl he’s been looking for all his life.

He has a rival both romantically and on the race-track, a suave Italian count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova). The count is actually a pretty nice guy but you might think twice about  trusting him with your car or your girl.

Rusty falls for Lucky just as hard as he falls for her but there’s a snag. She’s worried about his driving. She doesn’t want to be the widow of a race-car driver. Lucky is equally determined not to give up his dream of success on the race-track.

Lucky’s immediate problem is how to find the money for that engine he needs but at the same time he’s not going to give up on Rusty. That’s pretty much it for the plot, and for the type of movie this is it’s perfectly adequate. There’s the right mix of humour and romance. The humour isn’t overdone. The temptation to resort to overly broad comedy or slapstick is resisted, and quite rightly.

However slight it might be plot-wise and thematically this movie has several very big things in its favour. Firstly there’s Elvis. It’s not a demanding rôle (he was a decent actor and could handle more ambitious parts) and mostly what he has to do is to be charming, likeable, sexy and charismatic. All of which he manages with ease.

Secondly there’s Ann-Margret. She’s the perfect leading lady for him. She can match him charisma for charisma and star quality for star quality and she seems like exactly the sort of gal that a character played by Elvis would fall in love with. She gets to do several songs including a showstopper Las Vegas-style big production number. Her acting is more than adequate, she makes Rusty feisty but cute and she looks stunning. And she gets a memorable entrance that lets us know we’re in the presence of a star.

Thirdly there’s the fact that MGM spent some serious money here and they hired some very competent people. Screenwriter Sally Benson had written Shadow of a Doubt for Hitchcock and she wrote the screenplay for Anna and the King of Siam. Director George Sidney had helmed a string of classic musicals such as Anchors Aweigh, The Harvey Girls, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat. Viva Las Vegas is a slick, polished well-crafted musical and Elvis’s performance of the title tune in the talent contest is a highlight.

And lastly there’s the other major star of the movie - Las Vegas itself. There’s quite a bit of location shooting, in places like the Flamingo Hotel and the car race through the city. This was the old Vegas - brash, vulgar and pulsating with life and excitement.

This is also a very good-natured movie. There’s no villain. Count Elmo will try his darnedest to win Rusty but he won’t cheat to do it and he won’t cheat to win the Grand Prix either. He’s a sportsman. His rivalry with Lucky is a friendly rivalry.

Then there are the songs and on the whole they’re pretty good.

The Deluxe Edition DVD offers a very good 16:9 enhanced transfer, an audio commentary and an excellent documentary on Elvis in Vegas.

Viva Las Vegas is immense fun. Very highly recommended.

You might also be interested in my review of Jailhouse Rock.