Easy Come, Easy Go

In this movie Elvis plays a Navy Seal. This is not one of my favorite Elvis movies. It's not the worst movie that he did, but it is the best of the worst. There were some good scenes, and having Pat Priest in the movie made it worthwhile. There were some funny scenes but nothing great.

Easy Come, Easy Go (1967)

** (out of 4)

Elvis plays a former Navy frogman who discovers a buried treasure and must try and reach it before anyone else can. This is a pretty bad and stupid film but it thankfully enters into the camp territory and gets a few laughs along the way. The story is pretty bland and something we haven't seen in countless other films and lets not forget the subplot of Elvis and his women, which we've also seen in countless other films of his. As for Elvis, he isn't horrible here but there's not too much to the performance. He seems a bit livelier here than in the previous picture I watched but he's still a long way off from an actual good performance. The title track and "The Love Machine" are pretty good tunes but "Yoga Is As Yoga Does" is pretty embarrassing. "I'll Take You", written by Ed Wood's former lover Dolores Fuller, isn't too bad and Ray Charles' "Leave My Woman Alone" comes off fairly good.

Well, I'll give Easy Come, Easy Go this - it's not as unwatchable as Harum Scarum.

Watching Elvis films is a bittersweet experience. I love seeing him - he had such an incredible voice, presence, and energy, but what a waste as far as his films. Had he not been tied to Colonel Parker, film-wise, he could have done some interesting roles.

I'd say let's not dwell on the past, but unfortunately, with Elvis, it's all we've got. "Easy Come, Easy Go" was one of his last films, and it was made during the hippie movement, so Elvis has to deal with a lot of free spirits. He's after some underwater salvage, and he has competition. There's the story right there.

There is a yoga class headed by Elsa Lanchester who sings a little song - I guess at this point, they threw everything but the kitchen sink into these films to make them bearable.

Frank McHugh turns in the best performance of the film. He's wonderful and very funny in what would be his last film.

Elvis is charming, of course, although by 1967, doing these films was a painful and angry-making experience for him.

The songs are terrible - my understanding is that Colonel Parker figured out by the mid-60s that the lower the budget, the more money he made, so apparently, there were no songs written expressly for the movie.

Elvis could have been in "Midnight Cowboy" or the Streisand remake of "A Star is Born" but the Colonel was afraid of losing control of him, and Elvis was afraid to leave. Colonel Parker was his lucky charm. Colonel Parker had given him all his success.

Colonel Parker was taking 50% of everything Elvis made. Colonel Parker made Elvis a slave to the Hilton Hotel because he kept telling the management to take his gambling debts out of Elvis' deal.

Colonel Parker wouldn't look at Elvis' dead body, but took Vernon aside and made him sign a document that the court later negated since it was detrimental to Lisa Marie's inheritance.

Yes, Colonel Parker was a prince. This movie is just one example of everything he did for Elvis.

A frogman (Elvis) working for the Navy discovers treasure in a sunken ship and once he becomes an ordinary citizen he sets out to retrieve it; but he's got competition for it.

One of Elvis's later entries; quite shallow and cheesy but fairly enjoyable. The slapstick humor works OK in parts and there's an underlying comic jab at the hippie lifestyle that's well played out. There are also some impressive underwater sequences here; "Easy Come, Easy Go" is a little more visually compelling than other Presley flicks around this time.

The songs are few but pretty good (6 in total) and many have commented on "Yoga is as Yoga Does" as Elvis's most embarrassing moment on film. Personally I think nothing can top his singing to the dogs in "Paradise, Hawaiian Style" but I also think the Yoga moment here is pretty funny and the song OK; in a cheesy sort of way. You gotta admire how the King was a professional through and through and pulled this off and manages to be funny as well in his bungled Yoga attempts.

Elvis Presley was coming to the end of his cycle as a big name movie box office star when Easy Come, Easy Go was made for Paramount. We were deep in the flower power era by 1967 and Elvis was ceding his top spot to the lads from Liverpool and their imitators.

The one thing about Elvis films were was that the whole film was sold on the personality of its star. If it was a good script with an intelligent story line that was gravy. Easy Come, Easy Go was a steak tartar of a film.

No hit songs came out of this movie, but Colonel Tom Parker as he always did made sure the King was always given a good supporting cast of veteran Hollywood players. In this case we have two of the best. Elsa Lanchester has a brief bit as a yoga instructor who literally ties the King in knots. And she even sings a line or two with Elvis. Not a duet combination anyone would ever have dreamed.

Also Frank McHugh plays Captain Jack who owns a marine supply store who's never been to sea. Mr. McHugh graced just about every other Warner Brothers film during the hay day of the studio system and was always a welcome whimsical presence. He's no less welcome here in what turned out to be his feature film swan song. McHugh's problem is that he gets seasick in a row boat.

Elvis is a Navy Seal who on his last day in the service discovers some buried treasure at the same time some other folks have. He enlists the help of his former partner Pat Harrington, Jr. and McHugh in trying to get to the treasure. Of course Elvis has a couple of girls after him, Dodie Marshall and Pat Priest.

It's pleasant and entertaining enough, but not up to the standards of stuff like Blue Hawaii or Jailhouse Rock for Elvis.