![\"acapulcokissin\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/acapulcokissin.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I can see the boardroom meeting now:<\/span><\/p>\n “Listen men, we need a fresh spin for these Elvis movies. Cranking out \u2018[insert occupation] Elvis\u2019 films three times a year is all good and fine, but we need to be one step ahead\u2014this rustling overseas from England is making me nervous.”<\/span><\/p>\n “Well sir, themes are still popular, and heck, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Why, the solution is more<\/i> themes, of course!”<\/span><\/p>\n Cut to: Fun In Acapulco.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fun In Acapulco<\/a> (1963) | 97 min.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Mike Windgren (Elvis Presley) is a captain of a private yacht who gets fired because of his boss\u2019 sex kitten teen daughter, and is forced to get a gig as a lifeguard by-day,\u00a0and a lounge singer by-night, all the while trying to choose between two women and reconcile his deep, dark past as\u2026 an acrobat in the circus.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n No, I’m not kidding.<\/span><\/p>\n The movie starts with Mike getting fired after the owner’s obnoxious tween daughter, who keeps aggressively hitting on him, falsely accuses him of taking her to a seedy bar and buying her alcohol. I gotta pause for a minute here though, because seriously, what’s with these sexual predator teenage girls in Elvis films? There’s even a flat out up-skirt shot of this kid in her bikini within the first five minutes. And, after about ten minutes, she’s we never see her again. This sort of shit is why Nabokov wrote Lolita. And ironically, even though Elvis is always turning these girls down for being \u2018too young\u2019 in his films, in real life he allegedly did have a thing for teenagers. But, it\u2019s not like he\u2019s in control of the camera, so there must be some even creepier shit at work here.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, after he starts singing at a bar, a very young kid named Raoul (Larry Domasin) comes up to him and promises that he can get him a job. Mike decides sure, I may as well trust this seven-year-old, and decides to meet up with him the next day. It turns out Raoul pretty much has a cousin in every hotel in all of Acapulco, and immediately Mike gets hired as a stand-in nightclub singer. Mike is insistent that he also gets a job as a lifeguard, so he can practice on the high dive. We find out via flashback that he used to be part of a trapeze act, but after a terrible accident involving his brother, he now has a crippling fear of heights.<\/span><\/p>\n Also working at this hotel as a lifeguard just so happens to be Mexico’s champion diver\u2014Moreno (Alejandro Rey). Immediately the two clash, specifically over the fact that Mike pretty blatantly starts hitting on Moreno’s girl, Margarita (Ursula Andress) who also works at the hotel. Oh, and Mike is also dating famed Mexican bullfighter Dolores Gomez (Elsa C\u00e1rdenas) whom he met at the first bar.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n The rest of the film revolves around Mike trying to get the highest paying gig as a singer with his seven-year-old manager; standing on top of the high dive and not jumping off; juggling his blonde European “Princess” and his fiery Mexican bullfighter girlfriends; punching the lights out of Moreno, and then having to take his place diving off the 136-foot cliffs of La Quebrada in front of hundreds of people.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n I found this great 1963 New York Times review of the film<\/a><\/span>\u00a0that starts by basically saying ‘Well it’s better than those stupid ugly goddamn Beatles’. Jokes on you, <\/span>Howard<\/i>, because A Hard Day’s Night<\/a> comes out a year later and blows this shit outta the water. That said, I agree with his assessment of Elvis as “relaxed and personable”\u2014he’s easily the best actor in the entire flick, which in this instance, isn’t much of a compliment. Can you believe this was the big follow-up for Urusula Andress after her infamous bikini scene in Dr. No<\/a>? I can, because she’s a terrible actress and spends most of this movie in a bikini. Elvis, on the other hand, genuinely does a good job as nice-guy-with-a-wandering-eye Mike, and looks great doing it in multiple matador outfits\u2014the highlight being one with a hot-pink-and-yellow silk cape.<\/span><\/p>\n Much more interesting than this crazy movie is the fact that Elvis was essentially banned<\/i> from Mexico at the time they were shooting this! They had to hire a double to shoot his wide shots on location, and the rest of the scenes with Elvis were shot in a sound studio. Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re like, \u2018why the hell was Elvis banned from Mexico?\u2019 Then you remember the whole conservative push that was happening around the world to ban Rock ‘n’ Roll as the devil’s music, and you’re like, \u2018oh yeah, makes sense.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Apparently though, the root of the Mexican government’s hatred of Elvis came from alleged riots that took place during screenings of King Creole<\/a> and G. I. Blues<\/a> that lead them to an all-out ban his films. A separate Mexican news outlet also reported Elvis having made racist comments about Mexican women. Elvis directly denied these, and they are believed to be false. More than likely, Mexico just wanted to undermine the influence of Elvis’ American modern values on its own youth by throwing Elvis is a bad light before he became symbol of rebellion. Unfortunately, this propaganda did apparently spread throughout Mexico and there was a backlash against Elvis for it. He\u00a0was also accused of being a homosexual transvestite\u00a0based on how he moved and dressed\u2014the latter of which is hilarious to me considering Elvis basically just wore traje de luces outfits for the rest of his career. But I digress. (For more information on this, there’s a whole book on it called Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>by Eric Zolov.)<\/span><\/p>\n So anyhow, the movie on a whole is pretty ridiculous. I also was not a fan of the yellow hue that they cast over every scene. Did I just get a bad print or what? But, in the end, I might be feeling generous because while this movie was definitely one of the corniest I’ve watched, it didn’t try to be anything it wasn\u2019t, and at least the setting was interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n Best Song:<\/b> Elvis straight up lets loose with “Bossa Nova Baby<\/a><\/span>,” and it is glorious. Seriously though, if you only click one song I\u2019ve posted thus far, let it be this one. His legs are on fire\u2014Elvis has never danced better on film. A pretty easy choice seemingly, though I\u2019ll admit it was a tough, due to the fantastic form-fitting bull fighters outfits Elvis wears in the other songs.<\/span><\/p>\n 2 out of 5 Stars, \u00a0<\/p>\n Kissin’ Cousins<\/a> (1964) | 96 min.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Well, I don’t know what I expected, but boy was this one a stinker. You’d think having two Elvises would make this double-great, but alas, not.<\/span><\/p>\n Second lieutenant Josh Morgan (Presley) is roped into going back home to the Smokey Mountains to try and convince his hillbilly cousins to rent their land to the government so a missile silo can be built. Once he arrives, he immediately runs into the spitting image of himself in blonde, distant cousin Jodie Tatum (Presley) along with the two Tatum sisters,\u00a0 Azalea and Selena (Yvonne Craig and Pamela Austin). The sisters immediately fall for Josh and promise to help him convince their Ma (Glenda Farrell) and Pappy (Arthur O’Connell) to let the government do its thing.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Between Pappy’s moonshinin’, Ma’s home cookin’, soldiers outta their element, those crazy Tatum sisters fightin’ for Josh’s affections, Jodie\u2019s penchant to wrassle, and the group of a dozen partially clad women from the Kittyhawk clan who literally chase down men in an attempt to get pregnant, hijinks ensue! \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Kissin’ Cousins has all the luster of Lee Marvin’s singing voice in Paint Your Wagon<\/a> mixed with the complexity of Elmer Fudd. They clearly cranked this one out in a last ditch effort to keep up their at-least-two-a-year pace.\u00a0 However, for all its badness, I think Kissin’ Cousins gets a bit of a bad rap\u2014the problem is not that it’s unaware of itself, the problem is that it’s just boring.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n The movie is cartoonish, and obviously meant to be\u2014Captain Salbo literally turns green when he finds out he’s eating possum tails and owl gizzards. This could have been great\u2014a live-action cartoon starring hillbilly Elvis genuinely sounds like a movie I want to watch (I\u2019m thinking something along the lines of Raising Arizona<\/a>). But unfortunately, they just drop the ball for the most part. Once in a while the movie has a good line, such as Jodie’s first line after encountering his doppelganger: “What’re you doing with my face?” But, for the most part, it’s just barefoot mountain men, G-rated horny women, and low-IQ jokes.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n I will also say that the Kittyhawk horde ravenously abducting the entire army (including an eyebrow-raising moment as Elvis squirms to get away while another officer tells him to “just relax and enjoy it”) might be some proto Monty Python<\/a>\u00a0shit\u2013 we’ll have to ask John \u201cShot Context<\/a>” D’Amico about that one. By the way, one of the Kittyhawk sisters is played by Ronald Reagan’s daughter Maureen! I’m sure he was proud.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Elvis is reported to have initially refused to leave his dressing room with the blonde wig on because he thought he looked stupid\u2014personally, I wonder if it had anything to do with anxiety over his stillborn twin brother Jesse. Not unlike the memory of his mother, Elvis felt continually haunted by his dead brother throughout his life. I’m likely reading too far into that, but hey, it’s not too out there of a theory.<\/span><\/p>\n Best Song:<\/b> The music in this is straight up terrible. They had a real chance to do some genuine bluegrass or country music, but just dropped the ball completely. Honestly, it\u2019s surprising to me that Elvis wasn\u2019t more put off by all the lazy Southern stereotypes and inadequate music.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a tough choice for best song\u2014the opening number is laughably bad, plus there\u2019s a dopey ballad Ma sings with a bloodhound as vocal backups. I\u2019d say “Once Is Enough<\/a>,” about defeatest laziness, was probably my favorite song, but I think I’ll also have to include the “Kissin\u2019 Cousins<\/a>”\u00a0finale song just so you can see how poorly this movie was shot. If you look closely, you can clearly see the face of Elvis\u2019 double.<\/span><\/p>\n 1 out of 5 stars<\/b><\/span>, \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Back to Jenna Does Elvis #6<\/a> | Forward to Jenna Does Elvis #8<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can see the boardroom meeting now:<\/span><\/p>\n “Listen men, we need a fresh spin for these Elvis movies. Cranking out \u2018[insert occupation] Elvis\u2019 films three times a year is all good and fine, but we need to be one step ahead\u2014this rustling overseas from England is making me nervous.”<\/span><\/p>\n “Well sir, themes are still popular, and heck, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Why, the solution is more<\/i> themes, of course!”<\/span><\/p>\n Cut to: Fun In Acapulco.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2563],"tags":[1032,4723,4645,4736,4718,4725,4582,4722,4737,4727,4631,4577,4717,4632,4739,4720,4583,4729,4576,594,5099,4580,4728,4726,4733,4734,4721,1804,4719,4732,4731,716,4738,3548,104,4735,4724,4730],"class_list":["post-6179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-jennas-reviews","tag-a-hard-days-night","tag-alejandro-rey","tag-arthur-oconnell","tag-blonde-elvis","tag-dr-no","tag-elsa-cardenas","tag-elvis","tag-elvis-banned-from-mexico","tag-elvis-double","tag-elvis-matador","tag-elvis-movie-reviews","tag-elvis-presley","tag-elvis-presley-movie-review","tag-elvis-review","tag-eric-zolov","tag-fun-in-acapulco","tag-g-i-blues","tag-glenda-farrell","tag-jenna-does-elvis","tag-jenna-ipcar","tag-jennas-reviews","tag-king-creole","tag-kissin-cousins","tag-la-quebrada","tag-lee-marvin","tag-maureen-reagan","tag-mexico-hates-elvis","tag-monty-python","tag-new-york-times-film-reviews","tag-paint-your-wagon","tag-pamela-austin","tag-raising-arizona","tag-refried-elvis-the-rise-of-the-mexican-counterculture","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-smug-film-2","tag-twin-elvis","tag-ursula-andress","tag-yvonne-craig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6179"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6436,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions\/6436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"acapulco\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/acapulco.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/b><\/span>3 out of 5 Elvises<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/b><\/span>2 out of 5 Elvises<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n