Harum Scarum (1965)........this film by itself, one of the most negligible, silly and embarrassing in Elvis Presley's Hollywood career, is hardly worth discussing in detail.....
But if nothing else, the movie, as dismal as a star vehicle can get, stands as a telling monument to the machinations of 'Col'. Tom Parker, Elvis's nefarious wheeling dealing manager......(soon to be played by Tom Hanks in an upcoming film.)
Parker spent half a lifetime milking the cash cow that was Elvis Presley, with the never ending stream of money spurting from concerts, records albums........and quickie, throwaway movies whose soundtracks could provide even more moola flowing into Parker's coffers.
And herein lay Parker's hugest flaw......he saw the Elvis movies as nothing more than soundtrack generating entities.......he couldn't have cared less about their scripts or overall quality. As long his cash cow did the least required of him for these films.....kiss a few girls, punch a few bullies and most importantly, sing a pile 'o songs for that all-important album.
So the movies, one after the other, turned out mechanical and lifeless. And even most of the songs were just as bad, written like the composers intentionally planned them to become forgettable.
'Harum Scarum' scraped rock bottom for the Elvis vehicles, placing him the middle of a modern day Arabian adventure presented like a tired TV comedy skit version of one of those 1950's Tony Curtis/Piper Laurie Arabian nights swashbucklers.
Visually, it's pathetic......filmed on MGM backlots and sparsely decorated with furniture and props left over from whatever was left in the crumbling studio warehouses. Presley duly trouped through it all, mumbling his lines and barely matching his lips his pre-recordings of the desultory, dreary songs he's forced to sing every 8 minutes or so.
Any high points? For the few guys dragged to this movie by their dates, there was the eye candy of former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley (as an Arabian princess, no less) and nightclub singer Fran Jeffries as some sort of Femme Fatale in the story's loony plot.
Low points? Basically everything else......and truly sinking into the abyss with a bizarre musical number featuring a ten year old girl wiggling her hips like a harem babe while Elvis sings to her.......a sequence only 'Lolita's Humbert Humbert could love.
The real auteur of 'Harum Scarum' is Col Tom Parker........everything about this misbegotten mess came from Parker's short-sighted schemes to squeeze every last buck out of Elvis Presley's career........ and to Parker, the movie was nothing but collateral damage left over after its soundtrack was extracted for further profits.
Zero stars. (0). If Presley had ever found an astute, savvy creative manager to negotiate and package his film projects, there's no telling what heights he might have hit. We can think of least one....remembering how Parker's greedy maneuverings blew Presley's chance to co-star with Barbra Streisand in her re-make of "A Star Is Born".
Sad, sad, sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment