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Boxed sets provide hours of Elvis fun

Elvis or Jesus?

That question - a variation on such puzzlers as “Sin or salvation?” and “Blues or gospel?” - is pondered by conflicted nun Mary Tyler Moore in Presley’s last dramatic feature film, Change of Habit, one of several Elvis movies and specials making their DVD debut just in time for today’s 25th anniversary observation of the singer’s unexpected and tragic death.

In the days before cable, Elvis installed three televisions in a basement wall at Graceland because he liked to watch the three major networks at the same time (apparently, he wasn’t much of a PBS fan). But Elvis would need 17 sets just to keep an eye on these new DVDs and videocassettes, which include four Hollywood films, a “video scrapbook” called Elvis: His Best Friend Remembers, a documentary about Elvis impersonators titled Almost Elvis, an eight-disc set, The Definitive Elvis, and the three-volume Elvis: The Great Performances, which is available in a mock “Blue Suede” collector’s package.

Included among the releases is Elvis’s first motion picture, Love Me Tender (1956), so let’s begin there. And remember, as the trailer for Wild in the Country proclaims: “Where Elvis goes - excitement follows!”

– Reviewing Elvis’s performance in Love Me Tender, The New Yorker called the singer “thick-lipped, droopy-eyed and indefatigably sullen,” while the New York Times wrote that Presley can be seen “whacking his gee-tar and writhing away as if he had just sat down on an ant hill.” Time magazine, meanwhile, compared Elvis to a corpse: “The face just hangs there limp and white with its little drop-seat mouth, rather like Lord Byron in the wax museum.”

Needless to say, publicists for 20th Century Fox had their own assessment of “the Atomic-powered singer’s” movie debut: “Here he comes! Mr. Rock `n’ Roll Himself!” proclaimed the film’s trailer, which is included as a bonus on the DVD. “He’s a rugged fighting man . . . A wonderful loving man . . . A terrific singing man.”

Most of Elvis’s movies were produced by MGM or Paramount, but Love Me Tender is one of three movies Presley made for Fox, all of which were released Tuesday on DVD and in new VHS editions by Fox Home Entertainment. All three - Love Me Tender, Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961) - are unusual features that abandon the usual girls-plus-guitars formula and present Presley in serious, challenging roles, with only a few songs thrown in to satisfy the demands of fans and the need for a hit single and soundtrack. These movies are not only ambitious but they offer endless avenues of exploration for eggheads interested in the cultural significance of Elvis as a manifestation of the tensions between black and white, rich and poor, country and city, learning and instinct, reason and emotion, and so on.

In the black-and-white Love Me Tender, Elvis - “El Nuevo y Sensacional Cantante,” according to the Spanish-language trailer that also is on the DVD - plays Clint Reno, who is delighted but surprised when his older brother, valiant Confederate officer Vance Reno (Richard Egan), returns home after the Civil War. Trouble is, Clint married Vance’s tight-jeaned, jutting-breasted girlfriend (Debra Paget) after the family received an erroneous report that Vance was dead.

The film, blandly directed by Robert D. Webb, functions almost as a metaphor for the Civil War itself, as brother eventually battles brother - a situation that can only end in tragedy for the less mature, less sophisticated combatant (Elvis, or the South). As in most of the Fox films, Elvis is almost a feral child here - impulsive, quick to anger (one character calls him “a mad dog”) and somewhat animalistic (we first see him plowing a field, like a beast of burden). He even hits his wife. In death, however, he becomes angelic, and the movie ends with a semitransparent Elvis crooning the title tune, his ghostly image superimposed over a shot of his bucolic grave site.

Elvis’s hip-swiveling gyrations hardly enhance the accuracy of the film’s 1865 setting, but Love Me Tender contains only four songs. Flaming Star - another rural period piece with family friction at its core - dispenses with Elvis’s singing almost entirely, with the exception of the title theme song and another ditty that Elvis belts out during a family hoedown sequence. Instead of focusing on Elvis the Pelvis, talented director Don Siegel - who four years earlier helmed Invasion of the Body Snatchers and seven years later would direct Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry - emphasizes Elvis the actor in a tense and sometimes violent tale of racial conflict.

In Flaming Star, Elvis - the man who merged “white” and “black” musical styles, whose records were hits on the Pop and R&B charts, who was accused of “stealing” black music by some and of corrupting white youth with “jungle music” by others - is Pacer Burton, who is half Kiowa Indian and half white. Pacer is accused of being a “godless savage” by the white settlers who don’t trust him, while his brother Clint (Steve Forrest) is said to be “the only real white man in the family” (interesting that Elvis, whose twin Jesse Garon was stillborn, is incapable of getting along with the brother figure in each of these Fox movies).

Like the real Elvis, Pacer is fiercely loyal to his mother (Dolores del Rio), a Kiowa, and respectful of his white father (John McIntire). “To tell the truth, I don’t know who’s my people,” he says, voicing a sentiment Elvis himself may have felt as he moved from Tupelo to Memphis to Hollywood. “Maybe I ain’t got any. . . . All ma and me ever got from whites was mean looks, and `Don’t get uppish with us.’ ” In the final act, whites kill Pacer’s ma, Indians kill his pa, and the weary, lonely Pacer rides off to die. Obviously, Flaming Star offers much grimmer Presley fare than the usual likes of Girl Happy and Fun in Acapulco.

If Elvis dies for the sins of an intolerant society in Flaming Star, his next film, Wild in the Country, finds him literally intoning “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Wild in the Country is Elvis’s most ambitious film, as befits a project scripted by playwright Clifford Odets with a title borrowed from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and a director (Philip Dunne) who was a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy.

With its incestuous Peyton Place plot, its out-of-wedlock baby and its Tennessee Williams sexual hothouse atmosphere, Wild in the Country also is Elvis’s most adult film - “Tense! Torrid! Tempestuous!” in the words of the trailer. This is another movie that presents an impulsive, animalistic Elvis (”You’re wild and unsettled, like a porcupine that can’t be held,” one girlfriend tells him) who often runs from difficult situations like a startled fawn, raccoon or bear (to name the animals shown during an opening montage in which Elvis flees into the woods). This time, however, Elvis is no moron but an untutored intellect, Glenn Tyler - a backwoods would-be writer who is desired by a solid all-American type (Millie Perkins) and a gum-smacking blond sexpot (Tuesday Weld) but who finds himself falling for the widowed social worker (Hope Lange) who encourages his nascent talent.

Lange and Presley’s unconsummated love scene is, believe it or not, beautifully tender, in contrast to the rougher interplay that occurs between Elvis and Tuesday Weld. “You’re wild, Glenn, just like me - unhappy wild,” Tuesday tells him. “I want you, Glenn, and I mean want, ever since we went wadin’ in Felcher’s Creek.” Replies Elvis: “You done a lot o’ wadin’ since then.”

Wild in the Country also contains few songs (although Elvis does sing I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell), but no other Elvis movie ends on such a civilized note: In the triumphant climax, Elvis enters college.

These Fox Home Entertainment DVDs all present the movies in widescreen editions, and they look wonderful. Extras are confined to trailers and a few options, such as subtitles.

– Elvis may quote Jesus in Wild in the Country, but the link between the King and the King of Kings is impossible to ignore in the infamous and yet unfairly maligned Change of Habit (1969), Elvis’s most blatant post-Summer of Love attempt at being “now,” “relevant” and “with it.”

This change of pace from Universal Pictures finds Elvis playing Dr. John Carpenter, a groovy, guitar-strumming inner-city MD struggling to improve the quality of life “in the ghetto” (to quote the Elvis hit). He is aided by three new attractive young assistants who, unbeknownst to the doctor, are actually nuns in plainclothes disguise - “secret agents from the Little Sisters of Mary,” including a speech therapist (Mary Tyler Moore) who catches the doctor’s eye.

Elvis is shocked to discover he has been flirting, painting and playing touch football (in a UT-Memphis sweatshirt, yet) with a “Bride of Christ,” but the ambiguous ending leaves open the possibility that the sister may choose Graceland over the guarantee of Amazing Grace.

The final scene, presented by cinematographer Russell Metty (Touch of Evil, Spartacus) and director William Graham in a series of quick cuts, finds the doctor performing at a guitar mass while the nun - a beatific look on her face - looks back and forth between Elvis and the other icons in the church, which include the Virgin Mary and the crucified Christ. The film - now available on DVD and in a new VHS edition from Universal Studios Home Video - may be campy but it’s sincere and fascinating and, hey, it contains one of my all-time favorite Elvis songs, Rubberneckin’.

– Universal Studios Home Video also has released on DVD and VHS the fan-friendly Elvis: His Best Friend Remembers, an 86-minute “video scrapbook” from “the private collection of `Diamond’ Joe Esposito,” described as “the highest-ranking member of Elvis’s inner circle.”

Esposito, who befriended Elvis in the Army and was co-best man at Elvis’s wedding and a pallbearer at his funeral, presents a series of stills and film clips from throughout the King’s career, and offers a few insights. (Of the seemingly glamorous “Elvis on Tour” lifestyle, Esposito says: “We saw nothing - we saw loading docks, walked through kitchens, up freight elevators - in and out, that’s the way we traveled”).

The DVD includes an additional 46 minutes of material, including such segments as “Elvis Buys a Chimp” and “A Kiss from Don Ho,” and video clips from WMC-TV’s original news coverage of Elvis’s death (”The medical examiner says drugs were not the cause . . .”).

– “New DVD Reveals Elvis Overpopulation Threat” is the headline on the press release for Almost Elvis, available on DVD and VHS from Blue Suede Films (http://www.bluesuede films.com). The documentary feature, directed by John Paget, examines the continuing phenomenon of Elvis impersonators - or “tribute artists” - of all shapes, sizes, colors and sexes.

– The true-blue Elvis fan won’t want to be without Rhino Home Video’s Elvis: The Great Performances, three volumes of live footage available separately on DVD or VHS or packaged together in a velvety mock blue suede box set.

Volume I: Center Stage, narrated by our own George Klein, features classic Elvis moments with Milton Berle, Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, and others (including Wink Martindale on WHBQ-TV’s Dance Party). Volume II: The Man and His Music, also narrated by Klein, offers a glimpse into Elvis’s private life with rare home movies. Volume III: From the Waist Up, narrated by Bono of U2, follows Elvis’s path to stardom. The volumes contain footage from such sources as the 1968 “comeback special,” Aloha from Hawaii, Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender, among others.

– Passport International Productions’ The Definitive Elvis is for the diehard Presleyphile: an eight-disc set consisting of 16 one-hour episodes, including interviews with dozens of Elvis friends, fans, former flames and fellow entertainers. With its array of talking heads, this is not the set for those who crave A Little Less Conversation, but its 960-minute running time is perfect for those who want to be with Elvis Today, Tomorrow and Forever.