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TRE FILMs OF FiViIS PRESLEY
DEATH TAKES A HOLOCAUST... In Patti Duke’s first four celluloid efforts she didn’t get killed a single goddam time. Ditto for Ernie Kovacs’s first four and Buster Crabbe as well. Even James Dean didn’t leave the planet, for even a second, in his first quatre (needed “real life” to accomplish the feat — no mean one to say the least, but all he could come up with in that regard was a lousy once). ELVIS GOT TO CROAK TWICE IN HIS FIRST FOUR PITCHERS!!!
Love Me Tender (November °56) and King Creole (May °58). Former of which was even his very first venture into the land of sprockets ever and whaddathey do, they kill him off, jeez. Bad enough to stick him in a B& W piece of shit to begin with, but plus they hadda kill him off. KILL THE KING! And he was the goddam biggest king of them all, the biggest whatsit ever to hit the pike in these North American states & provinces. Really. The man who invented the 20th century as a concrete something-or-other for cryin’ out loud! Y°know? Well so anyway here he is in his first role ever, and it ain’t even starring and the title song they got him singing is didja ever! his first. mere ballad. Like J Want You, I Need You, I Love You was at least a trifle R&R, but not this one; just imagine the king of ass-shake/ass-kick being reduced to that. Woulda been okay if he just sang it in the picture, but why call extra attention to it by titling the picture after it for Christ sake? Plus you got him playing a doomed younger brother of Richard Egan, who’s the spittin’ image of coach Larry Popein of the New York Rangers (a real ugly finger-chewer type of guy, and Richard ain’t much better altho you gotta admit he beats that other Dick by the name of Conte by a country mile) while meanwhile Elvis has a look that sinks ships (the manic eyes of Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and nookiecurdling smile of Marlon Brando from The Wild One) and all you got good about the thing at all, besides those real good Elvis buttons they had at the theaters (only 50¢ with a damn good color photo of the Pelvis and his autograph), is the long-forgotten Debra Paget whose performance is totally forgot. And they kill Elvis off so Egan the pee-gun can have her! Shee...
Anyway it was as fucked up a debut as Dylan later got stuck with in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. But even worse: ‘cause Elvis was then well on the way to doing many many more more more of just the same! Whereas Dylan wouldn’t dare do another unless he’s totally a fool, or wants to seem like one in order to actually be the heir to the actual Elvis — he sings them Elvis throwaways on his new LP, so it might just be... But there’s a distinction here, which is Elvis was in his goddam fuckin’ PRIME when he was forced to insert himself in Love My Turkey; the Colonel must’ve been tryin’ to eclipse the pelvic side of things right away.
So killin’ him offs the best metaphor around, kill kill kill him ’cause you’re killin’
By Richard Meltzer
Richard Meltzer's quietly understated rock criticism has appeared in Rolling Stone, New York, Creem and many other places. He is the author of The Aesthetics of Rock and Gulcher: Post-Rock Cultural Pluralism in America.