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We all know that Elvis is dead (or at least left the
building and went to his home planet) but leave it to the
major studios to remind us with this 30th Anniversary set
honoring the "King of Rock 'n' Roll". While Elvis could
shimmy and shake his hips with the best of them and he had
a pleasing presence on screen, even if most of the films
he made were junk. The King's films also weren't much in
the way of films. As entertaining as this bunch of films
are, they still fall into the light entertainment category.
There's certainly no sin in that just as long as you accept
them for what they are---B movie films designed to capitalize
on the popularity of Elvis as a rock 'n' roll icon. ***
The films "Follow that Dream" (1961), "Kid Galahad"
(1962), "Frankie and Johnny" (1966) and "Clambake" (1967)
are a mixed bag of entertainment. These films vary from
good ("Follow That Dream") to awful ("Frankie and Johnny").
The big drawback for fans, though, will be this set itself
with substandard transfers and nada extras. ***
"Follow That Dream" is the best of the lot with a good
screenplay written by pro Charles Lederer ("His Girl Friday",
"I Was a Male War Bride) and directed by Gordon Douglas
(best known for "In Like Flint", "They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!").
Presley gives a surprisingly nuanced comedic performance
in the film. Likewise "Kid Galahad" with Presley playing
a boxer is a solid movie but the other two just aren't very
good films moving from bad to worse. ---
Image & Sound:
The films vary from looking good to bad (sadly, "Follow
That Dream" and "Clambake where the former has faded and
could have used a digital clean up and the later is dark
and grainy with lots of compression artifacts as well as
plenty of grit) and it appears that these are the exact
same transfers from the previous DVD releases. By the way
these are nonanamorphic transfers (except "Kid Galahad")
which might have been standard 10 years ago but just don't
cut it here in 2007 with High Definition monitors and formats.
***
There wasn't even an attempt to clean up or do some
digital color correction on the bad looking print of "Follow
That Dream" that is included here. I'm betting that if MGM
had looked around they could have found a much better print
for "Follow That Dream" in addition to cleaning up some
of the other films included here. Sadly, MGM is treating
Presley fans like RCA once did-put out substandard product
and not caring. ***
Audio sounds solid with dialogue coming across nicely.
An upgrade particularly with the songs (using the stereo
recordings or going back to the original multi-track masters)
would have been a nice improvement for fans. ---
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