A lo loco

This was actually a much better movie than the critics say. It has an interesting plot and great actions. there are a lot of gorgeous women in this film. It's hard to believe that Sam Katzman produced a film this good, and also produced something as bad as Kissin' Cousins. This movie was the exact opposite of Kissin' Cousins, in Kissin' Cousins most of the songs were great, but the movie stank. In this movie, the film was great and most of the songs stank. There were still some good songs, like "Kismet", "So Close Yet So Far From Paradise". It's not that they weren't all good songs, they were just not good songs for Elvis.

Widely considered to be Elvis' dumbest movie ever and the source of many prime gags in Top Secret, Harum Scarum is worth watching only for those Elvis fans interested in answering the question of what went wrong with his movie career. The answer was quite simply that, to Colonel Parker, Elvis was a carnival concession. He was getting million dollar offers to keep at the same old formula junk and since Parker had no idea how good movies were made he kept agreeing to the deals while the money was there. Harum Scarum shows the formula at its most derivative. Elvis himself looked bored and distracted at times on screen and even messed up some of his lip synching! The bulk of the songs are strictly for the Pat Boone set and badly out of date before the movie even came out. At a time of rapid change and great excitement in the music world (the Beatles made HELP around the same time) the music in Elvis' movies did not evolve or change, it just got recycled. The sets are also retreads, studio back lot leftovers from earlier better movies which look about as authentically middle eastern as a Moroccan restaurant in Brentwood. The costumes are a bad joke, and look like I Dream of Jeannie cast-offs. Elvis himself spends most of the movie looking foolish (and a bit like a Popsicle) in lime green pants. Add in a ridiculously predictable hand-me-down story about intrigue in the palace of the sultan and a few unfunny minor characters, and there is not much to like here, even for die hard Elvis fans. Even Elvis haters looking for a cheap laugh will find themselves bored by this exercise.

With a couple of exceptions any Elvis Presley movie was merely a vehicle to display his singing talent. Movie executives thought that because he was such a colossal pop-star that any movie they put him in, no matter how trashy, was bound to sell. They were right, of course, & Elvis fans watched his movies in their droves. Harum Scarum is definitely one of his worst & pure hokum. It is so bad that it has the distinction of being listed in John Wilson's book of "The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made". It definitely fits into the "so bad that it's good" category of movie. It is enjoyable mainly because it is so utterly nonsensical & because, for us lads anyway, it showcases a number of gorgeous hot babes. Former beauty queen Mary Ann Mobley (who sadly died last December 9 aged 77) plays Princess Shalimar. Her talents as an actress are hardly called upon at all so she doesn't have much to do except look gorgeous & she never had any problem doing that. Pretty much the same goes for Fran Jeffries playing Aishah. It also contains a very enjoyable Arabian dance routine done by three more glamorous ladies played by Wilda Taylor (Amethyst), Gail Gilmore (Sapphire) & Brenda Benet (Emerald).

Elvis returns, this time he is slightly weathered, quite a bit more lethargic, and desperate to escape his captors. But, his captors are not the oil paint smeared Arabs, nor the fairly innocuous women that surround him. His captors are much bigger than one motion picture could possibly describe. They are the entire industry he has found himself immersed in. They are the money-hungry culture vultures that readily devour a popular figure like him until he is but a bloated pasty corpse. This film shows them as they are through their sinister machinations. They can be seen with invisible marionette string as they force Elvis to march around in costume, as they prod him with sharp knives into doing little lackluster dances that turn into morose forced marches across the barren tundra of his once mighty career. This is not the Elvis of folklore, nor is it the Elvis that will return one day and save us from mediocrity. This is the dry Elvis, milked fully, udders raw, yet ever sedated. The Elvis that might have died on the screen in front of your eyes and you might have not even noticed it. Don't let the bright lights and forced smile fool you. It is your duty to lament this vision before you, because it is an ugly one.

For me, "Harum Scarum" is a prime example of different people having different opinions...I honestly don't think this is THAT bad, really. I'm an Elvis fan so I can be accused of bias, but I didn't think every film Elvis did was top notch. I'm not a western kind of guy so "Flaming Star", "Love Me Tender" and "Charro", but I think "Harum Scarum" is far more enjoyable and attention keeping than "Girls!Girls! Girls!", "The Trouble with Girls", "Tickle Me" and even "Blue Hawaii"...like I say, different people have different tastes. I know Priscilla Presley certainly doesn't like "Harum Scarum" she slates it in her autobiography "Elvis and Me" and even The King's Manager Colonel Tom Parker didn't like this and he was the man responsible for holding Elvis back in Hollywood. Once again, Mary Ann Mobley appears as the leading lady, looking even more beautiful than she did in "Girl Happy", as a king's daughter, while another beauty - actress and nude model Fran Jefferies also has a starring role as one of the villains. The director was the dancer and musical director Gene Nelson, and the set was used in a Laurence of Arabia type movie earlier. In "Harum Scarum", Elvis plays actor, singer and martial arts Hollywood star Johnny Tyrone, who is kidnapped by naive sheik's who believe Tyrone's movie skills where he can kill a tiger with his bare hands are real, and they want him to kill a king so they can take over control. Once held captive, Tyrone attempts to escape and return to America. En route, he meets and is smitten by Mary Ann Mobley and his escape plan soon makes way for plan B as he plots to save the King from the evil assassins and win the heart of his daughter. The soundtrack is not bad. They only song I'm not fond on is "Shake That Tambourine". "Kismet" and "Golden Coins" are fine songs, but all are nowhere near the sublime "So Close, Yet So Far (from Paradise)". A real hidden Gem from Elvis' movie soundtracks and one of my top 10 Elvis songs he ever recorded, it's a shame it had to appear in one of his most critically panned movies thus gets so criminally overlooked.