Le grand frisson

A talented young photographer (Elvis Presley) lands two jobs in the same building and slinks his way back and forth. One job is for a high tone advertising agency and the other is for a slick girlie magazine. Michelle Carey plays the sex starved landlady. Better than average Elvis flick featuring four good tunes. "Edge of Reality" song and scene are very memorable. So is scene of Presley and Carey in bed. This comedy also stars Don Porter, Dick Sargent and Rudy Vallee. Elvis' movie career on an up swing. Norman Taurog directs.

After the Doris Day/Rock Hudson era, America was moving into the era of the psychedelic sixties. Relationships in movies were less about playing the games of the fifties and more about being direct. So, you are more likely to see a woman be the aggressor in the later sixties. The female lead in this movie chases Elvis until he catches her. The dream sequence is less like a Dali painting than those in the fifties and more psychedelic in lighting. Some seem to equate "kooky" with the sixties, perhaps due to the influence of drugs, and that carries through in this plot and the characterization of the female lead. One might call this film a sex farce set midst the California lifestyle.

I enjoyed this film. Though the story was silly, the energy of the film was upbeat and fun. The women were beautiful, the music was consequential and Elvis actually seemed to be enjoying himself at times (did you ever notice how he seldom smiles in some of his films?). Yes, there are plenty of cinema clichés and some throwaway scenes, but I enjoyed the kooky chemistry between Elvis and Bernice. Injecting the obligatory Elvis fistfight does not help the story or the pacing, but Elvis manages to move the story along with his personality. See Viva Las Vegas for a film with real magnetism between the stars.

This must be Elvis' strangest film. It starts off in high gear, throws in a lot of mysterious twists, features a beautiful and funny co-star (Michele Carey--where are you? We need you back!), and has an intriguing soundtrack which doesn't sound remotely like anything else Elvis ever recorded--it even has a freak-out sequence, with the King singing a psychedelic song! I'm guessing that the creators of this film wanted to make a "swinging sixties" version of a screwball comedy, and they almost succeeded. For the first half, I thought I'd discovered a lost classic...or at least a lost camp classic! However, about mid-way through, the breakneck pace slows down, the weirdness goes away, and the rest of the film stumbles along like a mediocre sitcom. Still, no one could accuse this oddity of being a "formula" film, at least the first half. And this Elvis fan would much rather watch this or the equally quirky THE TROUBLE WITH GIRLS than watch GI BLUES or BLUE HAWAII. TCM showed this letterboxed, the way it should be seen, so you might want to wait a year or two until a DVD comes out...or at least until TCM has another Elvis festival and shows the letterboxed version at 3 a.m...rather than watch it panned and scanned. I think that anyone with the least interest in Elvis would enjoy watching this film, if only for the freakout sequence with the song "Edge of Reality."

Elvis gets into lot of trouble when a girl named Bernice catches him in her eyes on a beach of southern California.

Greg (Elvis) is a free spirited photographer. He's enjoying his life until he meets a girl named Bernice (Michele Carley). Elvis finds that he has a handful of trouble when she starts to show up everywhere in his life.

When I watch some movies from the '50s, and '60s, I really feel that we're sliding backwards in culture. Life was much posher then than it is now. Clothing are beautiful, houses are beautiful, and people had more open outlook about life.

I also have to mention about the women of that era. They really look like women, and I guess so do the men. They're stunningly (and I mean stunning) gorgeous, and much more beautiful than the celebrities of today.

The movie is shot beautifully around Los Angeles. When I watch this movie, I get envious of the people who lived there at that time.

I really loved this movie, because it's a beautiful movie. I don't care if we don't have all the high tech equipments, just move me back to that era !

Nothing about the movie plot here, just the music and the newly revived Elvis. His sideburns were back, his body was slender and more muscular, looking better than he had looked in a movie since "Blue Hawaii". Michelle Carey is his costar, a buxom slightly kooky girl full of energy. There are only about three songs in the movie, but all are first rate, beginning with "Edge of Reality", which came out on a single as the flip side of "If I Can Dream", the single that came from Elvis' 68 comeback TV special. "Edge" is a very good off beat song that to many fans was better than "Dream" and helped make the record a double sided hit. The next is "A Little Less Conversation", an up tempo number that, as you all know by now, was remixed and re-released a couple of years back and became Elvis' 31st number one hit. Then there is "Almost in Love", a great quirky love ballad that is one of his better songs ever. This is a highly enjoyable movie and better than many of his others. See it.