Watching "Blue Hawaii"

I've going through my stack of Elvis Presley movies, watching one after the other.

There's some I don't plan on watching, like "Love Me Tender" or any of the more depressing ones. Any where Elvis dies, gets beat to a pulp, is a juvenile delinquent, or in prison are not my favorites. I may be a minority voice, but I definitely prefer the more happy go lucky movies where there's a good time involved.

Of course even in the good time movies, there's conflict. That's natural to a story. But I like my conflict on the easy side, not the sour stuff that shows Elvis in a bad light. Like his Daddy wants him to go into his business but Elvis wants to be independent. That's the kind of conflict I can tolerate.

Right now -- while exercising mornings and evenings -- I'm watching "Blue Hawaii." This is a good film. There's a lot of good songs and scenery. There's the guy who played Floyd the Barber. Angela Lansbury is Elvis' mom.

Maybe the worst part of the movie is the fact that the girl from the tourist group is pursuing Elvis, and she's underage. To his credit, when she kisses him he pushes her away. Still it's kind of nasty. Then he gets into a fight concerning her and ends up in the jail. That's where I am now, right at the place where his disappointed Daddy has to come bail him out. Bad conflict.

Of course it all works out in the end. But there's some more unpleasantness involving this particular bratty girl, then the teacher with Elvis, before he finally ends up with his true lady love in the film.

Elvis' Short Songs

I got the soundtrack CD of Elvis Presley's "Double Trouble" film today. It's strange but true, and terrible to reveal, but I don't believe I've ever had this album before. I don't know what it is about "Double Trouble," but it's both a film and a soundtrack album (LP, cassette, 8 track tape, and CD) that seemed to elude me.

I got the film then a couple years ago when they released a whole bunch of budget Elvis movies on DVD. Then today, just today, I got the CD. So that took me a long time.

This CD is "Spinout" and "Double Trouble" together. They were put out as "Double Features" some years ago, and this particular CD treats those two together as part of the "Original Elvis Presley Collection," making this one Number 25. So I can't figure that out exactly, since they were much later paired and weren't "original" in the same sense that I normally use the word.

I already had "Spinout" on LP but in no other format, which I had made into MP3s.

Now I have both soundtracks on CD, so that's a good advance, in my opinion.

The thing that first strikes me is the shortness of the songs. They have the timings on the back. There's 18 tracks, and 12 of them are under 2 minutes! That's stunning. It seems like they could've recorded longer versions somehow, even if they only needed a minute or so for the movie. But I guess not.

Speaking of "Spinout," I heard the sessions recordings on this one some years ago, and "Adam and Evil" was tough for Elvis to record. I think they only got one or two good tracks out of around 18 takes. He kept messing up on one part. So with that kind of track record, it might've been tough to record longer versions!

As far as the songs go, I like them a lot. I know it's not a normal opinion to like Elvis' movie songs, but I always do. Of course there are some better than others. "Old MacDonald" isn't a great one. But the others are all good. They just need to be longer.

Finished Fun In Acapulco

I've been in an Elvis mood lately. Which happens to me fairly often, being his youngest original fan. That's what I am. It would be certified if such things were certifiable. Since they aren't it's my claim ... and I don't see anyone disputing it.

I was three or four in '56, baby, doing a great Elvis impersonation. "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog!" with my rattle for a microphone. This is true stuff. I had sideburns in kindergarten.

Anyway, even though I'm old now, I'm actually quite sane -- quite sane, but I'm still certifiable as a diehard Elvis fan. Like we said back in '56, I'm still "Pulling For Presley!"

So I've been engaged in my free time watching some of the King's movies. I just finished "Fun In Acapulco" tonight. I was all the way up to the last five minutes this morning but didn't have time to finish it. So I hit pause and continued with the last song "Guadalajara" tonight.

This is a pretty good movie. Like I just wrote a day or so ago, though, I'm a little bummed out that Elvis wasn't actually in Acapulco. I don't like watching some body double walking around pretending to be him. Especially when you can look, with a trained or untrained eye, and see that it's some other guy. Of course I wouldn't expect Elvis to have done the stunts or the dives, all that. But walking around, holding hands with a girl? He could've managed that.

The little kid, Raul, at the end was going to get to go to Florida with Elvis (Mike Wingert) to be his amigo for life. So if he's still alive, a shout out to him. You did a great job in the film. I wonder what it would be like to work with the Elvis double. Was that freaky?

Now tonight I started "Double Trouble." This is kind of a freaky movie. Elvis is downright surly to the girl at the beginning. But it's all in good fun. Plus she was secretly underage, so it's a good thing that they didn't go too far!