1967, United States. Starring Elvis Presley, Dodie Marshall, Pat Priest, Pat Harrington Jr., Skip Ward, Sandy Kenyon, Frank McHugh, Ed Griffith, Read Morgan, Mickey Elley, Elaine Beckett, Shari Nims, Diki Lerner. Directed by John Rich. Available on DVD from Amazon

Time for another Elvis movie (is it ever time for another Elvis movie?), this time one of his most curiously square. I don't need to go over yet again how most of Elvis' films made him out to actually be less hip and daring than Frankie Avalon, quite a feat given who and what Elvis was before they had him mugging for the camera and singing show tunes. Like most fans of Elvis, I've lamented how goofy the majority of his films were, even if some of them remain enjoyable never the less. In defense of the films as a whole, though, and in particular of Colonel Parker's decision to keep Elvis firmly planted in the world of breezy musical comedy, the few times Elvis was allowed to flew his dramatic muscles in a more challenging film, the films almost always flopped. Older filmgoers didn't want to see Elvis in anything, and younger filmgoers didn't want to see him suffering and dying and killing or other dark things like that. So from a financial standpoint, which seems to be the only standpoint the Colonel ever recognized, Elvis comedies were the better bet.

But money couldn't keep Presley interested, and by the middle of the 1960s, his performances were becoming as shabby as the films surrounding them, just as his physical appearance was deteriorating from lack of care as well. By 1966's Paradise, Hawaiian Style, Elvis hardly even looked like himself, and shades of the sweaty, fat Elvis we endured just before his death hover over the images of Elvis in that final Hawaiian escapade.

Someone must have kicked the King into gear though, because a couple films later, we find him looking in much better shape. Perhaps because he was getting primed for his fabled 1968 comeback, the Elvis on display in 1967's Easy Come, Easy Go is a much trimmer, fit, and handsome man than the weirdly bloated and bleary-eyed shadow from the past couple films. Unfortunately, no amount of Elvis working out to get back in good physical shape can help him come out of the monumentally dippy film around him looking anything but a clueless square. Easy Come, Easy Go finds Elvis films trying to relate to those crazy beatniks, freaks, and other counter-culture creations that were emerging as the United States was plunged into its famously tumultuous late 1960s. Since it was all old Hollywood men trying to write hip, the movie isn't so much a trip to the counter-culture for Elvis as it is a slightly less hip Frankie and Annette beach movie full of fake beatniks, "crazy" artists, blessed out hippies, and yoga.

Elvis stars as Ted Jackson, fresh out of the Navy where, completing his work as an underwater demolitions expert who was defusing leftover floating mines, he finds a sunken ship containing a treasure chest. Determined to get the treasure before the standard-issue Elvis movie rich guy, he enlists the aid of his old musician-turned-beatnik pal and a typically cute Elvis movie beatnik girl, Jo, played by Dodie Marshall.

Of course, chasing after a beatnik girl, even one that tends to don skimpy, brightly-colored bikinis and frolic about when she isn't trying to raise money for an alternative art center or raise consciousness with yoga, means that straight-man Elvis will be placed in a variety of wacky situations where he'll have to wear black turtlenecks or deal with spaced-out performance artists covered in spaghetti. He'll also have to sing a few songs with his old buddy while the girl go-go dances. And even though the movie requires the resident freaks to groove to Elvis' crooning, the songs are the painfully out-of-date show tune quality fluff we've all come to expect from whomever the hell was penning Elvis movie songs. In other words, it's not the kind of stuff you typically find beatniks enjoying. Hilarity also ensues when Elvis inadvertently finds himself twisted into a pretzel during some obnoxious hippy woman's yoga class.

And it is at this point that I have to issue an apology to "Song of the Shrimp." That awful tune from Elvis' Girls! Girls! Girls! has been the butt of countless jokes any time I needed a good example of the worst music and Elvis movie has to offer. Well, "Song of the Shrimp" can rest easy now, smug in the fact that I've learned a valuable lesson upon hearing the phenomenally, indescribably, incomprehensibly awful "Yoga is as Yoga Does." Making matters worse is that this song is partially performed by a rather beefy woman in the typical "earth mother" flowing hippie dress. I didn't even realize until looking at the credits that this was Elsa Lanchester. Yes, the bride of Frankenstein herself, looking somewhat worse for the wear - and I always thought the bride of Frankenstein was weirdly hot.

The other songs aren't nearly as bad as some in previous Elvis movies, but there's a reason you've never heard of any of them. There were surprisingly few musical numbers in this movie, especially compared to some of the previous movies I've seen where there is more singing than talking, and sometimes there's no talking at all before the next musical number fires up. There are only a handful of musical numbers here, and none of the big "blow-out" type of musical finales that you might expect. They're all pretty low key and revolve primarily around performances in the music club or art colony.

The only surprise from this otherwise typical Elvis vehicle is how surprisingly un-awful it is. By this point, Elvis movies had really started to hit rock bottom, but Easy Come, Easy Go finds the King at least marginally engaging in a film that is more enjoyable than it should be, and certainly more enjoyable than the last five or six films, primarily because its attempts to relate to the burgeoning counter-culture (not that beatniks were exactly new in the late 1960s In fact, they themselves were somewhat anachronistic by the time) are so hilariously misguided and nerdish. I'm not happy that it made Elvis himself, the coolest cat ever to prowl the planet, seem like such a goofball, but at least the film around him is fun enough so that you don't mind so much. It's nowhere near as creepy as watching him sweat and wheeze in Paradise, Hawaiian Style. And I guess, in it's way, it was sort of a true rendering of what Elvis was becoming as the Summer of Love drew nearer: outdated. Unable to relate to the kids. Someone their parents liked. A straight who couldn't dig the things being done by The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. Sha-Na-Na at Woodstock, if you will. Out of his element, all Elvis has to do is marvel at the kooks and their crazy art happenings.

Actress Dodie Marshall didn't have much a film career before or after this movie. In fact, her only other film credit comes from the previous year in Elvis' Spinout. Despite her limited filmography and the obvious fact that she was more or a less a non-actress cast simply because she was so darn cute, she acquits herself fairly enough here, although in typical Elvis movie fashion about all she has to do is pout or beam, depending on the scene. Like Ann-Margret before her, she's also obliged to attempt some go-go dancing from time to time, and as cute as Dodie is, I'd have to say that the go-go dancing should be left to Ann-Margret or that insanely gyrating Candy Johnson from the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello beach movies.

Since all Elvis movies have to feature the slightly evil (but usually redeemed by Elvis' charms) bombshell, this movie also gives us the delectable Pat Priest as Dina, funder of the evil rich guy's schemes to swindle Elvis out of the treasure salvage. If Pat is well known for anything, it's as daughter Marilyn on The Munsters. She's looking positively gorgeous here, where she is required primarily to lounge about in a bikini, pilot her yacht, insult the prep school bully she's funding, and flirt with Elvis.

Other supporting cast perform to the usual serviceable to over-the-top standards, with veteran Frank McHugh as Captain Jack and Diki Lerner as the space cadet beatnik artist Zoltan really hamming it up. Elvis, as I said, seems at least partially interested and puts more effort into this role than most of his most recent previous roles. He's back in shape and his hair is looking good, and he was probably happy that he got to beat a guy up and parade around in diving gear. Pat Harrington as Elvis' beatnik buddy is pretty good, though he's even less of a believable beatnik than Bob Denver's Maynard Krebs from The Doby Gillis Show.

I'm guessing the plot as well as some of the underwater action was heavily influenced by 1965's underwater James Bond extravaganza, Thunderball. That movie proved to be the exception to the rule that scuba and underwater scenes drag a film's pacing to a screeching halt. While the scuba scenes in Easy Come, Easy Go aren't so bad as to derail a film that arguably isn't exactly on any rails to begin with, they aren't exactly scintillating. Still, most of the time all you can ask for in an underwater action scene is that it doesn't bore you to tears, and Easy Come, Easy Go managed at least to refrain from mind-numbing tedium when it dips below the surface of the ocean.

If you're in the mood for any later-era Elvis movie, then Easy Come, Easy Go is among the least harmless. While it's nowhere near the caliber of film that either Blue Hawaii or Viva Las Vegas were, this is probably one of the better, if not the best, late-era Elvis movies. The songs are forgettable, with the exception of "Yoga is as Yoga Does," which is memorable for all the wrong reasons. But nothing here is especially bad, at least not relative to the standards of an Elvis movie. And heck, anything that involves treasure hunting is going to be slightly interesting to me, if nothing else. Plus, the film's hilariously square attempts to seem hip within the reference frame of the late 1960s make it funnier than it actually is. Most of the actual attempts at humor fall flat, the worst of which is the comic relief in the form of the old salt of the sea who has never actually been out on the ocean. So I wouldn't urge you to rush out and see Easy Come, Easy Go, but I wouldn't warn you away from it, either.

Labels: Musicals, Netflix Diary, Stars: Elvis, Year: 1967