Reeling Backward: "King Creole" (1958)

Elvis Presley was not much of an actor, and I've not been much of a fan of his movie work.

I've actually only seen some of the hokier stuff from the '60s, "Viva Las Vegas" and such, which was rapidly-produced pop junk built around Presley's rock 'n' roll persona. "Girls, fast cars and some tunes" was the credo. It was less filmmaking than "marketing synergy" before they had a name for that, his movies bolstering his singing career and vice-versa, keeping him top-of-the-bill status even as the longhairs passed him by musically.

I am astonished to learn Elvis starred in 31 films between 1956 and 1969, including two a year between 1960-63 and three a year after that until hanging it up at the ripe old age of 34.

Presley often cited "King Creole" as his personal favorite role, and I'm inclined to agree.

I think it's one of his best because it wasn't conceived as a "Hey, let's make an Elvis movie" project. Having a legendary director like Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca") at the helm doesn't hurt, either. It was shot on an incredibly fast schedule (even by Elvis standards) of just seven weeks, owing to the fact Presley received his draft notice and got a 60-day deferment from the Army to complete the picture.

Based on a novel by Harold Robbins about a teenage boxing sensation pressured by the mob, the movie was actually developed for James Dean before he was killed in 1955. They switched the setting from New York to New Orleans and boxing to singing, and Curtiz insisted upon shooting in black-and-white with a heavy film noir shading, courtesy of cinematographer Russell Harlan ("Blackboard Jungle"), six times an Oscar nominee without winning.

The screen adaptation was by Herbert Baker, who'd worked on a previous Elvis picture, "Loving You," and Michael V. Gazzo, completing his second and last feature film script before moving on to a second career as an actor including playing frickin' Frankie "Five Angels" Pentangeli himself in "The Godfather Part II," and how the crap did I not know that already?

Shades of Ruth Gordon...

The story setup is a classic "boy from nothing hits the big time and is tempted by corruption of the soul" tale. Danny Fisher is a high-school dropout working as a busboy in one of the Bourbon Street saloons owned by local big man Maxie Fields, who he's never even met. On a dare he gets on stage and belts one out, becoming an overnight singing sensation.

He has daddy issues, vowing never to be a meek sheep like his old man, and is balancing romances between a nice girl and a gun moll. Danny gets squeezed hard by the crimelord and his thugs and is forced into bad choices he'll soon regret.

The supporting cast is simply delish. Maxie is played by Walter Matthau, growly and commanding. Carolyn Jones has a pathetic but alluring pull as Ronnie, Maxie's wastrel mistress/pawn. Dean Jagger, often a cowboy or soldier, plays Danny's pathetic dad, a widower pharmacist who can't keep a job. Vic Morrow, one of those actors you think couldn't possibly have ever been young, has sly charm as Shark, the hoodlum whose blond pompadour is nearly as impressive as Elvis' jet black one.

(Interesting aside: Elvis had naturally sandy blond hair, dying it with shoe polish before getting famous enough for professional color jobs. As the self-appointed Grand Vizier of Cinematic Blondness, I hereby claim Presley for our team.)

Dolores Hart, who also played an Elvis love interest in "Loving You," her film debut, is Nellie, the virginal five-and-dime shopgirl Danny falls for in between being tempted by the older, worldier (read: easy) Ronnie. Hart was pegged as the next Grace Kelly, making 10 pictures in five years before shocking Hollywood by abruptly quitting acting just as Kelly did, only in her case to become a nun instead of a princess.

(More interesting asides: the story of Hart's life was told in the 2011 documentary short, "God Is the Bigger Elvis," which got an Oscar nomination. She attended the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony in full black-and-white habit; the last time she had strolled that red carpet was in 1959.)

Other cast members include Jan Shepard as Danny's long-suffering older sister, Mimi, forced to take on the role of mother after their own passed away. She later falls for Charlie LeGrand, the twice-her-age owner of the titular club played by Paul Stewart. Charlie is pretty much the only guy in Nawlins not under Maxie's thumb, and sees Danny as a way to rejuvenate the failing King Creole.

The movie falls into a pretty steady rhythm of one song every 12 to 15 minutes or so, so there's a pretty decent collection of soundtrack tunes. None of them really stood out to me, though "Hard Headed Woman" hit the top of the charts. Performing as Danny, Elvis does a somewhat understated version of his singular stage routine, a little bit of shakin' but not any egregious pelvis-ing.

I was interested that Danny starts out being backed by bands comprised mostly of African-American jazz musicians, but by the time he's ensconced as the main attraction at the King Creole they've all mysteriously turned white. Perhaps some additional credence for charges of cultural appropriation by rockers, laid out starkly onscreen.

Danny's dynamic with women is... a bit disturbing. On his first date with Nellie, he fools her into thinking he's taking her to a party, when really it's a ruse to get her alone in a seedy hotel room and pressure her into sex. Weirdly, despite seeing right through the ploy she tells him she's still willing to go along, so ensorceled is she by his hunka-hunka burnin' love vibe.

It seems clear they're both virgins, and Danny quickly apologizes for trying to act like the street rat everyone treats him as. From there they have a pretty typical chaste screen romance.

I should mention Nellie first met him when Danny and Shark worked in cahoots to rob her store. They run a couple of jobs together, first on their own then later at Maxie's behest. The latter includes walloping Danny's dad while taking the deposit to the bank, initially thinking it was his father's overbearing boss at the pharmacy. This requires an expensive brain surgery, which Maxie pays for, putting Danny further under his screw.

If the pairing with Nellie is uncomfortable, the one with Ronnie is positively loathsome. She's probably only a few years older but seems worn down as if by decades of abuse, burying herself in drink and self-loathing. She wears an old-school Louise Brooks bob hairstyle, with big pleading eyes and a cynically turned mouth.

Technically she's Maxie's girlfriend, but men like him have little use for women beyond sex, so he's happy to loan her out to his friends or use Ronnie as bait for dumb fish like Danny. They share an early flirtation where he rescues her from some drunks and she makes a pass at him -- while dropping him off at his high school! -- and Maxie, recognizing the attraction, uses her to manipulate Danny.

She's not an innocent by any stretch. In one scene where Danny is forcibly brought to Maxie's place for a meeting, it's clearly a set-up to get him to sleep with Ronnie. She tells him this outright, but uses her victimhood as a weapon, pleading with Danny to stay a few hours to prevent punishment from Maxie.

Ronnie saves Danny's bacon in the end after he's hunted and stabbed by Shark and the rest of Maxie's thugs, driving him to a beach house getaway to get bandaged up and consummate their love without the taint of the city. Of course, the place belongs to Maxie, so he soon shows up for revenge, accidentally shooting Ronnie so she can die in Danny's arms and free him up to return to Nellie.

Elvis did not have the most expressive face in the world, and I noticed that virtually every actor in the movie gets plenty of close-ups from Curtiz other than the star of the show. Still, he's able to put some genuine emotion into his voice and body language that makes us feel for Danny.

I was quite taken with the gloomy sense of doom that feels woven into the very DNA of "King Creole." If it had been made a few years later I think Danny would've been more of an antihero character who winds up perishing in the end, a lesson about the consequence of giving into temptation.

But for an Elvis movie that's only partially an "Elvis movie," "King Creole" stands up well to the test of time. Put it this way: I think it'd be a very watchable picture even if it didn't feature him.

Reeling Backward: "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" (1974)

If "Easy Rider," "Vanishing Point" and "Two-Lane Blacktop" form the triumvirate of iconic counterculture road pictures of the late 1960s and early '70s, then "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" is the sellout poseur, tagging along in their wake with hollow mimicry.

Made in 1974 with a budget of $2 million -- extravagant compared to those other films -- it rode the popularity of Peter Fonda at its zenith, pairing him up with a hippy chickie blonde in a denim halter top (actually British actress Susan George, well concealing her accent but not wonky teeth).

The title and the posters of the comely couple, perched on top of their getaway car or running from a police helicopter, make it seem so exciting and even romantic: impetuous race car driver on the lam with beautiful petty thief. The combination made it a successful commercial hit.

Except there's a third character in the car with them the whole time, and he's actually the most interesting person in the movie.

But I guess "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Taciturn Deke" doesn't make for a very memorable title.

Played by Adam Raorke, Deke is the mechanic to Fonda's wheel man Larry, much like the clearly demarcated roles in "Two-Lane Blacktop." They have dreams of getting to the NASCAR circuit. Deke's already been there, but drank his way out. Larry has the talent and the requisite complete lack of fear. All they need is money for "real speed."

They steal $150,000 from a supermarket by Deke holding the wife and daughter of the manager (Roddy McDowall) captive at home while Larry saunters into his office for the cash out of the safe. They don't even have guns, or bother to wear masks/disguises, using a fancy phone voice message machine to make the manager think they've still got his family.

A couple of questions:

• 150 grand is $732,000 in today's dollars. What the hell kind of grocery store keeps that kind of cash on hand?
• If their scheme is successful and they make it big in NASCAR, wouldn't that mean Larry would at least get famous enough to be recognized as the perpetrator?

You could ask these sorts of questions all day long about the movie. Larry makes a terrible effort at being inconspicuous on the road, jumping his blue 1966 Chevy Impala off a tractor ramp right after the robbery, and otherwise tearing up the street wherever he goes. You get the sense of it's part of his impulsive nature and desire to be a show-off, but that doesn't make the repeated willful stupidity of his actions any easier to swallow.

Later Deke and Larry switch to another car they thought ahead to have ready. Except they apparently parked it 50 miles away in the middle of a small town. When they arrive to retrieve it, there's a large street market going on to draw a lot of attention. If that weren't enough, the other car is a bright yellow 1969 Dodge Charger that any half-blind cop could see coming a mile away.

Often, it seems like they're trying to get caught.

(The Charger's color was actually Citron Yella, which has a lot of green in it, and indeed one police officer describes it over the two-way radio as "light green." Interestingly, the technicians who developed the film thought the greenish tint was a mistake and incorrectly corrected it -- so the movie was always presented with the wrong color palette. It was finally fixed for its DVD release in 2005.)

Larry and Deke's relationship is fraught. They clearly respect each other's skills, but Deke resents Larry's gregarious recklessness while Larry sees Deke as a killjoy, often derisively addressing him as "Bunky." Deke is supposed to be much older (though the actors were really on three years apart in age) and world-weary. Neither ever really tries to order the other one around.

When Larry pulls one of his frequent just-for-the-hell-of-it maneuvers, like slaloming between two semis and earning a cracked windshield in the process, Deke just shakes his head and frets about the damage.

Mary shows up right after the robbery. Much like the Girl in "Two-Lane Blacktop," she squats in his car uninvited and gets sucked up into the action. As she herself says, she didn't really have anything better to do.

She's not a stranger, though: Larry just had a one night stand with her, and she's pissed about being dumped and seeks him out. How she found him, other than his rather ubiquitous-looking Chevy, is left a mystery.

The relationship of the trio gradually evolves as the miles go by. Mary initially finds Deke creepy -- we get the sense most people do -- but comes to resent Larry for making his disdain for her clear. She's a fiery ball of independence who secretly wants desperately to be needed by somebody. When her confrontation with Larry reaches a point of (mild) physical violence, it's Deke who comes to her defense.

The other major character is Captain Franklin, played by Vic Morrow. He's a surly state patrol officer who refuses to wear a badge or gun, talks back to his superior (Kenneth Tobey) and grows his hair out long  underneath his cowboy hat. But he's got serious law enforcement know-how, and leads the chase to catch the miscreants, eventually climbing into a helicopter to personally take on Larry's yellow Charger.

Soon Franklin figures out that the robbers have been monitoring his orders over the CB, and they start to have a running game of taunts and one-upsmanship. It's fun, for a little while.

Larry and company also get a (brief) challenge in the form of an aggressive young cop with a talent behind the wheel named Hank (played by Eugene Daniels, who could be Channing Tatum's dad for the eerie resemblance). Initially crashed by Larry, Hank gets himself a new souped-up police Interceptor and makes a go of it after the robbers flee into a labyrinth of walnut groves.

Director John Hough has a decent eye for the action scenes and car chases. He had a quirky career, mostly bouncing back and forth between horror films and family-friendly stuff for Disney, including both the "Witch Mountain" movies later in the '70s.

Based on the novel "The Chase" by Richard Unekis, which came out in 1963 at the dawn of the muscle car era, "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" helps mark the end of it. Big V-8 engines would soon go underground for awhile, so neither cops or robbers had them to command.

It would take until the "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Cannonball" movies for car chase flicks to become popular again, this time as escapist entertainment rather than commentary on America's competing appetites for freedom and law & order. "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" serves as something of a bridge between the two.

Reeling Backward: "Blackboard Jungle"

"Blackboard Jungle" is an amazing film, but to me this is the most amazing: It was written, shot, edited and released in the space of three months.

It went on to become a watershed movie about youth violence. It launched the career of Vic Morrow, as the chief hoodlum, and gave a big boost to that of Sidney Poitier. Jamie Farr debuted as a slow-witted student. And it was one of Glenn Ford's better-known roles.

If that weren't enough, the last-minute prominent inclusion of Bill Haley & The Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" into the soundtrack was credited with helping launch rock 'n' roll.

How writer/director Richard Brooks (working from the novel by Evan Hunter) accomplished all that in 90 days is beyond me.

Seen today, it's still a gripping account of a well-meaning young teacher faced with a school full of problem kids who don't want to learn. The depiction of social unrest is rather dated -- the worst thing the miscreants do is steal a newspaper truck and beat up teachers -- but the dramatic tension of teachers vs. students has aged well.

There's been a long and often ignoble tradition of movies about teachers in rough schools, and "Blackboard Jungle" kicked it off. It got me to thinking that even over-the-top revenge fantasies like "The Substitute" and "187" are descendants of this film, though the nut has rolled pretty far downhill from the tree.

Ford plays Rick Dadier, a WWII vet who went to a girls' college on the GI Bill and is looking to launch his teacher career at North Manual High School. It's a rough inner-city school where the students all seem to wear greasy ducktail haircuts, leather jackets and perpetually smug expressions. The principal seems delusional in insisting that there's no disobedience problem at his school, as long as it doesn't come spilling in his door.

Things start right off the first day in the classroom when Dadier nearly has his head taken off by a hurled baseball. The crushed section of blackboard, looking a spider web, remains throughout the school year.

The chief troublemakers are Artie West (Morrow) and Greg Miller (Poitier), the leaders of the other boys. Dadier spends most of the movie under the mistaken impression that the two are in cahoots, when in fact they can't stand each other. Miller turns out to be a smart, hardworking kid who's just seen two many adults turn their back on his school, and him.

West is a straight-out criminal, organizing his gang to beat up Dadier and another teacher after they've been drinking in a bar. He even sends letters to Dadier's pregnant wife claiming he's having an affair with another teacher. One day Dadier accosts West on the street after seeing some of his gang knock over a truck. "This is my classroom out here," West warns. "And I'm gonna teach you."

Poitier and Morrow were both pushing 30 when they starred in the movie, which itself has become a long-standing cinematic tradition for films set in high schools. Poitier would go on to star in a similar movie himself -- this time as the teacher -- a dozen years later with "To Sir, with Love."

Louis Calhern has a nice supporting role as a veteran teacher who's given up all hope, but can't help rooting for his enterprising younger colleague. Richard Kiley plays a fellow rookie who isn't as successful in reaching out to his kids. There's a scene where he announces that he's going to bring his swing records into the classroom so his students can study the mathematical construction of the melody, and we already know what's coming.

Despite the slight staleness of the plot, "Blackboard Jungle" remains a riveting drama filled with some wonderful performances. Ford is especially touching as a frustrated guy who doesn't know whether to use compassion, violence, friendliness or some other tool in order to break through. In the end, he does it by showing them a movie.

3.5 stars