FLAMING STAR (1961)
***1/2 (out of four)
also starring Dolores Del Rio, John McIntire, Steve Forrest
screenplay by Clair Huffaker and Nunnally Johnson, based on the novel Flaming Lance by Huffaker
directed by Don Siegel

DVD - Image: B, Sound: B+

"On the other hand, Brando's no Presley," Weisbart retorts, creating a kind of Lewis Carroll logic loop from which the only escape is to concur. Siegel is later ironically relieved to hear that the esteemed Johnson has bailed on the project in protest, as it confirms he's not the only one not taking the recasting lightly.

What's maybe not quite as mystifying is Elvis's acceptance of the role, despite his own misgivings about its dramatic challenges. (He would go so far as to bribe Siegel with the use of his Rolls-Royce into putting off a particularly challenging piece of acting until the end of the shoot, then still try to weasel out of it at the last minute.) The King had something to prove--to himself, to his play-it-safe handlers, to an audience that saw him as a singer first and foremost--and, moreover, having recently lost his darling mother Gladys, likely felt a tremendous sympathy with the material, in which a boy's love for his mama can't save her from the Flaming Star, a hokum-folklore version of the white light people claim to see when they die. (Oddly, the film was originally called Black Star.) In a scene that looks as though it must have been as savagely cathartic for Elvis to play as it is for us to watch, a pair of would-be rapists menaces Neddy (Dolores Del Rio) in her own kitchen. Son Pacer (Presley) returns with firewood in the nick of time, susses out the situation, and takes the two out back for a beating that would do Sonny Corleone proud, although without the ostentatiousness that implies. It's a poignant touch: she knows what he's up to and he knows that she knows what he's up to, but as long as he does it quietly, she isn't forced to acknowledge it, nobody's really implicated, and that bubble of innocence protecting their image of each other goes unpunctured.

Neddy is a Kiowa woman married to a white man, Sam Burton (John McIntire), with whom she sired Pacer. Sam has a white son, Clint (Steve Forrest, brother of Dana Andrews), from a previous marriage, and these four individuals appear to live together in Brady Bunch harmony. They're an uncontroversial lot within the community, too, until one morning the Kiowa ambush a neighbouring family returning home from a surprise party for Clint, an attack that leaves its few survivors shell-shocked and vengeful. (Almost anachronistically horrific and kinetic, this sequence is quintessential Siegel, who, probably from having learned the filmmaking discipline through editing and second-unit directing as the de facto head of Warner Bros.' montage department in the late-'30s and early-'40s, could always be counted on for these violent explosions of pure cinema. (No surprise that Sam Peckinpah was his protégé.)) Under the leadership of a new chief, Buffalo Horn (Rudolph Acosta), the Kiowa are on the warpath trying to undo the previous generation's mistake of surrendering their land to white settlers. Caught in the sometimes-literal crossfire are the Burtons--Pacer, the half-breed, in particular: suddenly viewed as a double-agent of sorts by his white peers, Pacer also receives a not-so-thinly-veiled "you're either with us or against us" ultimatum from Buffalo Horn, who spends a day ominously surveying the Burton home from a hilltop perch.

The filmmaking may be a little ramshackle (another Siegel signature), but it's sensitive (ditto), and the performances are soulful. The most highly regarded of Elvis's pictures, at least among cinephiles, Flaming Star nevertheless flopped hard at the box office, giving Col. Tom Parker license to exert an even more Machiavellian influence over the King's movie career. Elvis would make only one more quasi-"straight" picture, the Sirkian Wild in the Country, before relenting to brand expectations for an endless string of bubblegum musicals. But while Elvis is perhaps an irreconcilable enough presence here that he didn't help the grosses ("He is also allowed to twang the guitar in one cowboy ballad, so the film cannot be listed as a total loss by the rock [and] rollers," the NEW YORK TIMES warned/reassured), it's difficult to imagine Flaming Star being a substantially bigger hit with Brando in the lead. The picture is, very simply, a downer--and not, alas, of the Stanley Kramer, liberal-guilt-inducing variety that makes people feel as though they have to see it out of civic duty, whatever its banning from South African movie theatres (for its implicit message of anti-Apartheid) might lead one to expect. Pacer dies at the end, Shane-style, and much pointless feuding has left his mother and father dead and his brother convalescing from arrow wounds. Although a self-described Hollywood Lefty, Siegel was no Pollyanna; if the film could be said to intentionally allegorize the dawning Civil Rights movement in showing suppressed racial tensions finally simmer over--and throughout his career, Siegel was so hip and socially engaged that this doesn't seem too far-fetched--then it mainly anticipates with palpable dread the collateral damage the more militant campaigns will incur. Is it overreaching to say that, in hindsight, the casting of Elvis as a cultural misfit with a fragile status quo seems apt? What is the title if not a retroactive metaphor for Presley himself, the star who burned twice as bright and half as long?

Originally pressed in 2002, Fox's DVD release of Flaming Star frankly leaves something to be desired. Sourced from a less-than-pristine print, the 2.35:1, 16x9-enhanced transfer has faded colour and contrast, smudgy detail that's just this side of dupey, and some gratuitous edge-enhancement. It's OK, don't get me wrong, but the picture deserves better. Meanwhile, the attendant Dolby Surround audio is maddeningly directional in typical Fox CinemaScope fashion, though it has a nice, warm timbre and decent dynamic range. Extras are limited to trailers for Love Me Tender, Wild in the Country, and two for Flaming Star (the second intended for Portuguese venues).-

2.35:1 (16x9); English Dolby Surround, Spanish Mono; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; 92 minutes; Fox

IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR (1963)
*1/2 (out of four)
also starring Joan O'Brien, Gary Lockwood, Vicky Tiu
screenplay by Si Rose and Seaman Jacobs
directed by Norman Taurog

DVD - Image: B+, Sound: A

The main reason to see It Happened at the World's Fair, other than for the screen debut of one Kurt Russell ("Adults--they're all nuts!"), is that it was actually shot on location at the titular site, giving it an undeniable time-capsule quality/appeal. Blessed with ready-made, Playtime-esque sets, studio workhorse Norman Taurog, alas, proves he's no Jacques Tati, and the one attraction he lavishes with any attention, the Space Needle, is the one that's since been photographed to death. (On the other hand, a protracted shot in which Mike and sleepy Sue-Lin ride a chair lift as the day turns to dusk is impressively glazed in post-carnival melancholy.) The bulk of It Happened at the World's Fair takes place, like many Elvis pictures hereafter, in a backlot trailer park, where Mike babysits Sue-Lin following the ominous disappearance of Uncle Walter and Danny hatches sinister schemes to refill their coffers. Mike's obligatory love interest is a nurse--their meet-cute in a spartan first-aid station the "it," I guess, that happened at the World's Fair--played by Joan O'Brien, a blonde too icy for Hitchcock, let alone Elvis; Sue-Lin endeavours to matchmake by faking a temperature, knowing that Mike will call Nurse Frigid instead of a doctor. Because the film is essentially a celebrity endorsement pitched to MGM by the governor of Washington, it's probably expecting too much to call It Happened at the World's Fair uninspired, but as you can see, it's definitely overwrought. On the other hand, the Lockwood/Elvis pairing may give contemporary viewers the urge to speculate about an alternate-universe 2001: A Space Odyssey starring Elvis in the Keir Dullea role, creating mental imagery ("Say HAL, howzabout openin' up them pod-bay doors?") that almost makes all that shaggy-dog storytelling worth it.

Warner's 2004 DVD release of It Happened at the World's Fair, recently reissued with the studio's signature Elvis cover art, is of average quality. The 2.37:1, 16x9-enhanced transfer has thick detail, suffers from aliased diagonal edges, and generally looks too pink, though this is coming from a jaded, post-Blu-ray perspective. Accompanying the image is crisp, full-sounding centre-channel Dolby Digital audio that could hardly be better. A gallery featuring trailers for this film plus Presley starrers Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, Tickle Me, and Harum Scarum rounds out the platter, while the reissue's keepcase includes postcard-size reproductions of the lobby cards and original one-sheet for It Happened at the World's Fair. As usual, Warner's subtitling courtesy doesn't extend to music (diegetic or otherwise), meaning you won't be able to follow along with any of the movie's songs.-

2.37:1 (16x9); English Mono, French Mono; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; 105 minutes; Warner

VIVA LAS VEGAS (1964)
*** (out of four)
also starring Ann-Margret, Cesare Danova, William Demarest
screenplay by Sally Benson
directed by George Sidney

BLU-RAY DISC - Image: A+, Sound: A, Extras: B-

Discovered by George Burns, Ann-Margret, like Elvis Presley, was a singer and de facto dancer first, recording a couple of albums on Presley's label (RCA) before transitioning into feature films. Although she was dubbed "the female Elvis" for this similar career trajectory (and the establishment considered both of them menaces to society for their sexual charisma, although Elvis's waggling hips effectively inoculated the culture to Ann-Margret's wild eroticism), the truth is they were flipsides of a sort, she the actress who sang and he the singer who acted. Nevertheless, in Viva Las Vegas, Ann-Margret completed Elvis as few of his leading ladies ever had, ever would, or ever could; for once sharing the Sisyphusian burden of carrying these dopey little travelogues, rarely did Elvis seem so peaceable on screen. Ann-Margret holds her own in solos, duets, and in a sequence where her Rusty spends an afternoon being courted, Elvis-style, with silly costumes, helicopter rides, and rear-projection water-skiing. She's so much Presley's equal (and here, at least, maybe his superior), in fact, that it's aggravating to see her subjected to a scene of retrograde sexism in a mechanic's garage, where she does girly things like mistake a screwdriver for a wrench.

Introduced as a great pair of pins on which the camera lingers before deciding to luxuriate in her strawberry-blonde mane instead, Rusty crosses paths with racecar driver Lucky Johnson (The King) when she pulls over for a tune-up. "I'd like to check my motor. It whistles," she says. "I don't blame it," Lucky replies. This brief encounter sidetracks Lucky, who's days away from entering the entirely fictitious Vegas Grand Prix if he can just get the money for a motor. Rusty's the pool manager at a hotel where Lucky gets a job as a waiter and eventually competes against Rusty in a staff talent show, but before it comes to this there's a magical first date that ends in Rusty and Lucky symbolically consummating their relationship by verbally thrusting "hey"s and "ho"s at each other during the chorus of "What'd I Say," here covered peerlessly by Presley. (From the accelerating intercutting of close-ups of the two stars to the orgasmic expressions on their faces, it's an astoundingly lewd moment still, and--something that's surprisingly uncommon in Elvis's girl-soaked films--sexy as hell.) Rusty sours on Lucky because he insists on going through with the big race, even after she delivers an inane speech that surely stuck in David Lynch's ear about how when she gets married, she "wants a little white house with a tree in the front yard. A real kind of tree, with green leaves." Her point is that Formula One drivers sometimes meet grisly ends and Lucky has something to live for, i.e., her, and the implicit promise of domestic bliss. For Lucky, all that stuff is secondary to the goal of becoming champ.

While this particular relationship impasse is revisited, along with the archetype established by Cesare Danova's European charmer Count Elmo Mancini, in John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix, suffice it to say Viva Las Vegas is not a serious film about auto racing, and, realistically, I don't imagine its scope of influence extends much past the "Speed Racer" cartoon. (Like Speed, Lucky has his best gal and crew loyally tracking his movements in a helicopter.) Rusty's "rivalry" with a "baby-blue racing car" is nothing more profound than era-typical battle of the sexes stuff, in other words, but the picture isn't always so boilerplate. Being an MGM musical (the last, in the classical sense), Viva Las Vegas certainly breaks form for Elvis movies as a genre unto themselves; that Col. Tom Parker was for once not credited as "technical advisor" says everything there is to say, really. Perhaps stinging over the lame Elvis caricature in director George Sidney's previous film, Bye Bye Birdie (which gave Ann-Margret her breakout role), the mercenary Parker chastised Sidney and studio impresario Jack Cummings (who produced Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Sidney's Kiss Me Kate) for devoting too much time and money to the musical numbers, which are lavish by Presley's standards--even the ones that continue in the minimalist vein set by Ann-Margret's famous performance of Bye Bye Birdie's title tune against a stark blue backdrop. Viva Las Vegas had a tradition of showstoppers to uphold, and uphold it it does. By the same token, Elvis's rock-and-roll energy revitalized the moribund MGM musical--a hollow gesture ultimately, but it's got to count for something.

It's difficult to be offended by an early tour of the showgirl circuit that functions like the "It's a Small World" ride, not only because it's a historically valuable précis of the racial stereotypes of the day, but also because this montage has the cumulative impact of a Busby Berkeley or an Esther Williams routine. And if Viva Las Vegas loses some of its effervescence once the romance between Lucky and Rusty hits the skids, a Hawksian sequence in which Lucky sabotages Rusty's date with the Count and the aforementioned talent show keep the picture from going altogether flat. It's not magic, this movie, but it is alchemy of a kind, something Sidney and Ann-Margret proved when they reteamed for the disastrous The Swinger and Elvis proved with the rest of his film career, thanks to the Colonel's penny-pinching and surrogate vanity.

We'll always have Vegas. Recently reissued in a three-disc set with Jailhouse Rock and Elvis on Tour, Viva Las Vegas was one of the earliest titles Warner released on the Blu-ray format. Yet the 2.42:1, 1080p transfer withstands contemporary scrutiny, exhibiting vibrant pastel colours in endless permutations, crisp detail beneath fine grain, and remarkable dynamic range. Restored to mint condition, the image compares very favourably indeed to a freshly-struck print that played at the Cinematheque Ontario in the late-'90s. One review I read complained of lost sharpness in wide shots, but aye, there's the rub of the anamorphic lens circa 1964. The 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio, meanwhile, is markedly superior to the mono alternative (offered in DD 2.0), as the latter's lossy compression makes the music sound plugged-up. An OK compromise, the lossy DD 5.1 track still lacks the clean bass and sparkling clarity of the otherwise-unassuming TrueHD option--which additionally responds the best of the three to amplification.

Also attending the film is an engaging feature-length commentary from Elvis in Hollywood author Steve Pond, who maps out a cultural context for the production (shedding light on bit players like Nicky Blair in the process) before either running out of steam or becoming too engrossed in Ann-Margret's gesticulations. In "Kingdom: Elvis in Vegas" (21 mins., SD/4:3 letterbox), Pond, ROLLING STONE's Joe Levy, entertainer Danny Gans, and many others recount Elvis's inauspicious Vegas debut and triumphant return to the city in 1969. It's an upbeat piece that stops well short of "and then he did a shitload of drugs and died on the toilet," but it does acknowledge the rumours of Elvis's affair with Ann-Margret--and then some: singer Carol Connors says he was two-timing her with Ann-Margret, but if my calculations are correct he was actually three-timing Priscilla Beaulieu. The theatrical trailer for Viva Las Vegas, in HD, rounds out the platter.-

2.42:1 (1080p/VC-1); English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD, English DD 5.1, English Mono, French Mono, Spanish Mono; English, French, Spanish subtitles; BD-50; 85 minutes; Warner