Wild in the Country

With his good looks, sex appeal, detachable rotating hips and immaculate wig, Elvis would have been earmarked to play Marlon Brando/James Dean troubled teen/angsty types at some point in his pre-coconut-clambake film career.

In Wild in the Country he plays a troubled/angsty young teen, let’s call him James Aaron Brando, who gets into trouble with the courts after brawling in a barn and nearly killing his brother. As his father says, he’s mean tempered and likes to drink, fish and read books. These days, they’d give him a Jamie Oliver Cook Book and a Rex Hunt fishing rod, but back then things were different.

"I’m always walkin’ around with a full cup of angry, tryin’ not to spill it."

Naturally, these things are clear cut signs of a troublemaking troublemaker who’s out to make trouble, so he’s put in the custody of his businessman uncle. Sounds like a fine solution? Then you should know that this uncle owns a booze bottling business and lives with his unmarried daughter who wants to run away with Elvis and she has a baby from a one night stand. To top it off, his therapist is a single woman who develops a thing for him as well.

Like he ever had a chance of being rehabilitated around that lot. It would have been quicker and cheaper for the taxpayer to just give him the chair.

But that probably would have made for a much shorter film and certainly would not gone down very well with Elvis’ legion of female fans, so the story probably made some kind of sense financially. It could have been worse, they could have been a bunch of fishermen, novelists and chefs. That would have been an exciting film, eh?

So, working within this, Elvis manages to put in another reasonably good performance, and I guess working from a story that was previously a book, and translated for the screen by Clifford Odets who was responsible for the snappy Sweet Smell of Success, rather than rely on a producer’s wet dream, as was to come later on, probably helped things (I’m definitely not going to point out the pun in that sentence).

Problem is, they still couldn’t move away from having Elvis sing a few ditties, so when he sings it momentarily pulls you back to reality. That and the fact that other than defending himself against his brother who threw a pitchfork at him, he’s not really as bad as they say he is. His saving grace, his undiscovered literary ability which could help pull him out of the slums, isn’t played that hard and never amounts to a whole lot.

Then again, what the hell am I saying? This is an Elvis film, is it not? Sorry. For a second there I was taking it all too seriously. He’s dead now, so it’s not like he’s going to be offered anything better. What we have here is another example of what Elvis could achieve if given the opportunity. It’s not great, but it did show some promise. Enjoy it.

Gotta love CinemaScope. It’s just got that certain look about it that says “Whoa, I’m waaaay bigger and better than television.� Too right it is, too. Whether there’s any real need for it in a movie such as this is another thing. The screen doesn’t too often make much good use of all the space, but turn off that aspect of your head which has nothing better to do than criticise and you’ll be fine.

It’s good and bad, picture-wise, depending on what you can tolerate on screen. Foremost of the distractions, if grain drives you nuts, then parts of the transfer will catch your eye for the wrong reasons, but if you tend to be a little more forgiving, then you’ll see that many parts are looking mighty purdy considering the vintage. Sure, there’s some aliasing and shimmering to be had, and it’s clearly noticeable when it occurs, but it happens for fairly short durations which helps minimise the effect.

Try instead to notice, for example, that colours look great, giving a vibrant edge to the picture and the detail which generates that little extra oomph that does help boost the look of the film greatly.

A Dolby Digital 4.0 mix, but one that does not a thing with the rear channels if my ears weren’t deceiving me. The front stage is fine, nothing exciting or overly distinguishing about it, it just is and does. Clarity is probably its highpoint, with dialogue nary suffering from a blemish, but then the sound design isn’t so complex that it ever risked being muddled or lost anyway, really. The sounds often do sound canned, but none of this is a critique of the transfer, which I’m sure is nigh on perfect, rather than the nature of the original recordings.

A trailer for this and the other two films in this set of releases, Flaming Star and Love Me Tender.

Watching the trailer for Wild in the Country, you can tell they had no idea how to push the story, as they completely sidestep the issue and just feature his songs and mention he’s a bit of a wild boy. They must have breathed a sigh of relief when he started making his coconut movies, as all they had to do was show the songs, some girls and Elvis pashing some chic and the trailer was done.

I quite enjoyed this film, and you will too if you can forget the inadequacies of the story and the songs. Elvis was still early to the game, but was eager and showed a hint of his potential, which sadly was never fully realised, without a doubt.

This wasn’t the one to push him, not for lack of trying, but all the right ingredients weren’t there, it being more of a typical effort to appeal to the angsty youngster of the time, rather than do anything worthwhile.

Wild in the Country is notable only for starring Elvis, otherwise it would no doubt have disappeared off the radar screens completely, but having the King grace the screen will always give it a minor life amongst his fans, and now more so that it’s on DVD.