ELVIS: WILD IN THE COUNTRY!(1961):
The last of the "I'm angry and want to be a real actor"
movies for Elvis. Thank God! I just don't find these
appealing at all! Not that they are bad movies, but
just bad for Presley! This has a good story line, and
some decent acting, but the music leaves a lot to be
desired! An ok movie, just not what I want to see in
an Elvis movie!
An aside here: IMDb incorrectly has Surrender as one
of the songs in this movie! It is not!!
Another aside here, it's a little disturbing that Elvis'
character is fooling around with his uncle's daughter!! C+
From another reviewer at Amazon:
Elvis plays a roughneck country boy, seething with
hostility but gifted with literary talent. In the
occasionally precious Clifford Odets script, this
comes across as James Dean by way of a Thomas
Wolfe novel--and not a bad shot at respectable
acting by Elvis. His monologue about his dead
mother, delivered to sympathetic shrink Hope
Lange, is one of the most affecting things the
King ever did in a movie. The songs are kept to
a minimum, and Presley has some good, thrumming
energy with the young Tuesday Weld (bad girl)
and Millie Perkins (good girl), two uncommonly
smart actresses. This is one of many Hollywood
melodramas suggesting the angst brewing beneath
the prosperity of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era,
and it holds up decently, if not spectacularly.
For Elvis fans, it's a poignant glimpse at a performer
still in the young-buck stage of exciting
possibilities. --Robert Horton