Wild in the Country

A beautiful and passionate screenplay by Clifford Odets. Elvis plays a brawling delinquent with a hidden literary talent. Three women compete for his attention, lust and future. Millie Perkins plays the childhood sweetheart. Tuesday Weld is outstanding as the seductive cousin. The older of the three, Hope Lange, is an understanding psychiatrist trying to lead Elvis' character to college. The songs in this drama are limited, but highlighted by "I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell". An emotional performance turned in by Elvis. Some say this is one of his best movies. Watch it again to appreciate.

This film (written by Clifford Odets of all people) is one of the better ones in Elvis' track record. The women are all beautiful accomplished actresses, especially Tuesday Weld, Hope Lange, and Millie Perkins. Good story-line involving moonshine and other things important to most small-town Americans.

Not as interesting or involving as King Creole, this movie has qualities and showed that Elvis could have been a good actor if he wasn't doing tripe scripts all the time. This is a normal movie without unnecessary fight scenes or boring young actresses PRETENDING to think The King is a hot guy. Check this one out. Well worth your time for movie-lovers and Elvis fans.

J.R. Salamanca's book "The Lost Country", adapted for the screen by Clifford Odets (!), becomes decent though somewhat stodgy melodrama featuring Elvis Presley as southern delinquent who shows promise as a writer, counseled by a female psychologist who believes in him. Critics at the time were calling for Elvis to start doing some decent dramatic work, yet when this picture was released it was mostly ignored (it is often cited as the one Presley-vehicle which failed to turn a profit). The females in the cast (Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld and Millie Perkins) are strong screen-matches for Elvis, and the plotting is good when it isn't being overripe. As for the star, he does his typical thing: singing just a few songs, but performing in his usual shy and self-conscious, overly-polite low key. **1/2 from ****

Funny thing. My local video store had this movie listed under "musicals". If there is one thing this picture is NOT, is a musical. It is the one valid dramatic effort of Elvis' career, and easily the best picture he ever starred in. He sings exactly two musical numbers, both are fairly natural in sequences in the film. The first one early in the film while riding with sweetheart Millie Perkins (as Billie Lee) in a pickup truck. . . Is a bit musical-ISH, if you will, in that it sort of comes out of a stylization contrivance of the film-makers. Yet it is very romantic and sweet. The other one is a serenade to Tuesday Weld (Noreen in the movie) that is very comfortably meshed in with this heartfelt story. Anyway, Elvis plays a young man, Glenn, who comes from a troubled past, evolving from country roots that were wild and unsettled between his father and mother. His father was a lazy good for nothing. His mother, who died in his childhood, is depicted as having been a good hearted woman. So Glenn gets in trouble with the law when he nearly kills his brother in a fight. His father wants him to go to jail, but a compassionate parole board, advised by psychiatrist Irene Sperry (Hope Lange) allows him one more chance with his uncle, where he helps with his uncle's distillery. His uncle has a daughter, Noreen, who has a child but no husband,(wonderfully played by Tuesday Weld) who is kind of wild like Glenn (but also tender hearted). In a complicated plot Glenn has both Noreen and Billie Lee to consider. Millie Perkins, as Billie Lee, is also quite inspiring and sweet. Eventually, as Glenn gets in more and more trouble, he ends up falling for the psychiatrist widow Sperry, and at that point he has more women troubles than any man SHOULD have. . . .BUT. . .it's all good. He gets discovered by the psychiatrist for his natural talent, WRITING! Believe me, the troubles this guy has. . . All of us guys would like to be burdened with. Some of the beautiful scenery from the Smokey mountains in Tennessee is quite stunning. Also, I really enjoyed the natural quality that can never be found nowadays in period pieces from the same era (1961). The cars are distinctly authentic, for instance, not all pristine conditioned masterpieces. I give this movie all 10 stars just from the sweet effort given by cast and film makers to NOT make just another money making Elvis vehicle, but a compassionate dramatic tale of moral strength and sweetness.

Apparently Elvis didn't think much of any of his films. According to "Being Elvis", a recent biography by Ray Connolly, Elvis hated the repetitive nature of the plots - same story different location. He felt he had never been given serious roles where he could show what he could do as an actor - he certainly didn't have to compete with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen for the roles in "Fun in Acapulco" and "Girls, Girls, Girls".

Although he definitely had a point about the films toward the end of his Hollywood career, a number of his earlier films were actually based on novels -"King Creole", "Follow That Dream", "Flaming Star" and this one, "Wild in the Country" - stories that had more substance going in.

"Wild in the Country" has elements we expect from an Elvis picture, but then it gets complicated. This was made a few years after James Dean and Sal Mineo had shown that troubled teens were now a fact of life. Elvis plays Glenn Tyler, one of the troubled. After being placed on probation for injuring his brother in a fight, he receives counselling from psychologist, Irene Sperry (Hope Lange).

The not inconsiderable charms of Millie Perkins and Tuesday Weld can't compete when Irene discovers that Glenn has a talent for writing and Glenn discovers that he has feelings for the older woman. In reality, Hope Lange was only two years older than 26 year-old Elvis.

The film has a script by Clifford Odets, although one suspects he would not have considered "Wild in the Country" as his finest hour. He originally had Irene Sperry's character committing suicide at the end, it was changed, but it possibly reflected how Odets felt about selling out to Hollywood.

However the film has a lot going on with well-defined characters and great locations in the Napa valley. If Elvis felt that most of his films only had stories to separate the songs, that was not the case in "Wild in the Country", there are a few songs, but the film is mainly the drama he craved.

I find a lot of his films are fun to watch in the same way as "Beach Party" movies are. But there are a handful of films that have a depth he may not have appreciated at the time - "Wild in the Country" is one of them.