LittleStorpingInTheSwuff
Elvis turned in another fine non-musical performance. But apparently his manager Tom Parker didn't want his star singer to go down this road. Too bad because I think Elvis could have been a good serious actor. I doubt he would ever have been Oscar material, but that could be said for thousands of other actors who had successful acting careers. This movie had a good enough plot, with a good cast of known (and some future) talent to make it worth watching.
raymondw63-400-384219
I expected something a with a little more class than this. Elvis goes from girl to girl so fast it's like where's his heart? Then he gets the hots for his counselor, a lady who is significantly older than him. Yuck! This kind of action was being made to look appealing, all the way back then? One of the other girls his age he runs off with is so trashy, and she says the most horrible thing- that she wants to go sliding right down into hell, like it's nothing to fear. In the movie are also some references to the Bible and Elvis quotes some scripture and carries his bible around. This does not make a trashy movie good...it remains what it is.Very disappointed in the content and story lines...I've watched some other movies with Elvis in them that were much better.
mark.waltz
This convoluted psychological melodrama of one man's tortured soul and the women in his life doesn't explode into something interesting until the last quarter. Country boy Elvis Presley is a misunderstood youth, filled with the spirit of God but so desperate for love that no cold shower could calm him down. He goes from young girl (Millie Perkins) to vixen (Tuesday Weld) to a mature young lady (Hope Lange) who guides him into self-discovery and a hopeful future. The mood of the first three quarters goes all over the place that it is difficult to sustain any level of consistent interest. But all of a sudden, Presley's brooding hero (with a fragile ego) begins to open up and you really see the spirit.Clifford Odets ("Golden Boy", "Come Back Little Sheba") adapted the screenplay for this mixed effort that doesn't actually fail because of Presley's participation in it. It fails as a whole because the structure is rather all over the place. It is at its weakest when Presley's character is around both Weld and Perkins, as they don't sparkle with him as he does with Lange, evidenced in their tender but brief love scene. It reminded me of such Southern dramas as "The Chase", "This Property is Condemned" and "Hurry Sundown" in its exploration of mixed up people in rural locations, even though the exact whereabouts was rather vague. Elvis only sings a little bit, most memorably a cute improvised dialog with Lange that is quite humorous.You hope for so much more in the dramatic development in this interesting man's life, but it is never delivered. Presley gives a respectable performance in trying to move past his hip-shaking musicals he'd been making up to that point, yet it is clear that in his hopes to be another James Dean, he had a lot going against him. I don't thin, however, in spite of my mediocre review, that this film isn't not worth seeing: It is, as long as you are aware of the flaws that could have been unavoidable.
JoeKarlosi
My year-long tribute to Elvis Presley took a nosedive with this excruciating drama, which was as heavy as a leaden weight. Here, Elvis plays another angry delinquent country boy who nearly kills a man and then is kept on probation and ordered to regularly see a female psychiatrist (Hope Lange). He gets a job working for his uncle, but Hope recognizes his potential to be a great writer and tries to get him interested in going to college instead. In the meantime, Presley is falling for his analyst while trying to deal with his seductive young cousin (Tuesday Weld) and his usual girlfriend (Millie Perkins, whose character barely figures into this film). Though Elvis isn't bad, the movie's plodding and overlong, and the few little songs sprinkled within don't seem to fit. The title track, though, is nice enough. *1/2 out of ****
AD
