I've been an Elvis fan for 10 years now, and I've seen most of his 60's movies. For some reason I didn't rent this one till recently- I think it's because I had it confused with "The Trouble With Girls", which I have no desire to see. Anyway, we rented this because we saw it had "A Little Less Conversation" in it and liked it so much we ended up buying it.
Elvis plays Greg Nolan, a photographer who..ok, there's not much of a plot to describe here. The storyline consists of a girl he meets who keeps changing her name (Bernice/Betty/Suzie/Alice) and personality, spending most of the movie alternately screwing with Elvis' mind and coming on to him. Meanwhile, Elvis gets two jobs for girlie-type magazines in the same building- one of them is called "Classic Cat Magazine" (or maybe it's Classy Cat) being a photographer and pretends at both that he only works for that magazine, while he literally runs back and forth between the two jobs, changing clothes and trying not to have one boss find out about the other. Red West makes his usual cameo as a guy in a fight scene whose ass Elvis ends up kicking (always fun to watch).
This is a pretty fun Elvis movie, and since it was filmed in '68, right around the time Elvis did the comeback special, the King was in great shape, looking pretty sharp with his sideburns and tan. He also looks like he's having fun, and doesn't feel too stupid. "Spinout" is entertaining, but half the time Elvis looks pretty unhappy. One of my Elvis trivia-type books said this movie has the distinction of being the only one he ever has sex in (offscreen, of course) but I think the only way you could tell this is by him waking up in a girl's bed. His co-star, who looks like a cross between Sharon Tate and how Liz Taylor looked in the 60's, was kind of annoying (though not as bad as some of the actresses he's worked with, and at least she has a great wardrobe. It was mainly the fact that she had this kind of whispery voice like Taylor. The clothes and hair are all really cool. There are only 4 songs in the movie, but two of them are especially good. I loved "The Edge of Reality"-Elvis has this trippy dream because Bernice/Betty/Suzie/Alice has been messing with his mind so much. The song is great, and Elvis wears this tailored set of pajamas that look more like a blue sharkskin suit. I think whoever designed and choreographed the dream sequence might have paid a little visit to Dr. Nick's, if you know what I mean, but it's pretty cool. The highlight of the movie for me was definitely "A Little Less Conversation", which Elvis sings to a hot babe at a swinging cocktail party as he's getting her to leave with him. Watch for the male red-haired go-go dancer that they pass who dances so furiously and wildly that his gyrations actually make him upstage Elvis for a few seconds, which is no small feat. As he and the chick are leaving, they pass other go-go dancers, saunter out the door of the cool 60's pad, and hop in Elvis' Cadillac that the valets just happened to have pulled up in front at that second, while Elvis smoothly never misses a beat and manages to make the whole thing look like he does it every night. Now that's how you leave a party!
One of Elvis' better flicks from the 60's, and definitely my favorite movie of his to watch from the late 60's.
