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 that made their DVD debut last month.
Included among the releases is Elvis's first motion picture, "Love Me Tender" (1956), so let's begin there.
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."
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.
Most of Elvis' movies were produced by MGM or Paramount, but "Love Me Tender" is one of three movies Presley made for Fox, all of which have just been released 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.
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 girlfriend (Debra Paget) after the family received an erroneous report that Vance was dead.
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 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."
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."
"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"-style 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.
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 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."
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.
In the infamous and yet unfairly maligned "Change of Habit" (1969), Elvis reveals his 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." 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 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 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'."