Easy Come, Easy Go

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.

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.

Easy come, Easy Go was released in 1967, two years before Elvis' last feature film, "Change Of Habit." Elvis plays a frogman who is about to complete his time with the U.S. Navy. He stumbles onto a sunken treasure on his final dive. One big problem..... someone else has made the same discovery. This makes for a fairly compelling story line.

Of course there are plenty of pretty girls. The cast was wonderful. Dodie Marshall, the beautiful Pat Priest, and the wonderful Frank McHugh who played the (frightened of water) Captain Jack. The whole cast was great.

The photography was stunning. Hats off to William Margulies for his incredible Cinematography. The scenery and settings were wonderful. The underwater scenes were very well done. This was a tough shoot. The credit goes to underwater photographer Michael J. Dugan.

The drawback in this film was the Yoga scene. This has to be one worst scenes ever shot in film history. What was John Rich thinking? For that matter what was film editor Archie Marshek thinking. This was a no brainer. That scene should have been cut. I really believe that if it wasn't for that one scene, This would be one of Elvis' best. It was really that good. Well acted and Elvis looked like he really cared. If you can overlook the (Yoga) scene, this film is well worth watching.

By 1967 Elvis Presley had long since had enough of the formula of his movies, where he would triumph over the bad guys, kiss the girls and sing songs to all and sundry. Even when a good Presley movie surfaced, and there are a few bona fide good ones, casual film fans are required to be in a light and unforgiving mood to enjoy the malarkey on offer. Easy Come, Easy Go is pretty average stuff, both in quality of narrative and performances and that of the tunes within. Dialogue is unleashed in scattergun fashion without due care and attention for dramatic worth, there's no strong female lead for Presley to bounce back and forth from, and the humour is tired and weary.

Yet for all of the evident problems, it's a safe enough recommendation to those after a time filler who are armed with the knowledge this isn't going to tickle the cranium! It's all very colourful with nice exterior work at Long Beach Naval Station, Presley looks just terrific in uniform and the cast is spruced up by the presence of Elsa Lanchester and Jack McHugh; the former of which sings a bit and gets the giggles as a hippie type yoga teacher who ties "The Pelvis" in knots. Stand out tune is I'll Take Love, while the race for buried treasure plot remains airy enough to let the adventure yarn breathe.

Foot tapping assured and unintentional giggles, too, set the dial for family friendly fodder and wallow in the froth. 6/10

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.