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Show The Newspaper'Thursday, September 10, 1981Page B5 Jfk O Tl O rT -A by Kick Hroiili PRESTIGE HOMES REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT PRICE GROUP Park Meadow s Plaza Box 701 , Park Citv, Utah 84060 649-8 5 75 HOLIDAY VILLAGE Starts DOMT YOU WISH , Minnplli Dudlev -ic Monro J $20Q wmmrrrmwrmmmmwnmmmn wlr F YOU DON'T GO TO THE MOVIES-YOU Sat.-Sun. -Sun. ?-nn 4n 7on.9:05 . ... VS. f Mon -Fri Mon. Fri. 7:00,9:05 "Don't miss 'Blow Out'. John Travolta's performance is strong, assured and genuinely touching. With it's sex, romance, film parody and paranoia, 'Blow Out' will blow you away." -us magazine After the show, visit the ELECTRONIC DOGHOUSE, ' right next to the theatre. We feature Hotdogs and Sandwiches and in our Arcade 1 5 of the most popular Video games. Open 11:00 to 10:00 MALL. PARK CITY. UT Mondays - Ladys Night Tuesdays Economy Night Friday Sept. 11th, 1981 YOCJ WERE ARTHUR? CfJl id IHV II ivfc w. - mnnpv ran hi iv. r OF THE U Li V I rtCT ADU I 1 M M T Mill HARRISON FUHU KAREN ALLbN R Sat. Sun. 2:15,4:30 7:00,9:05 Mon. Fri. 7:00,9:05 649-6541 3 $ooo : : : : : : : : : : :;: Sat.-sun. 2:00,3:45,5:30, 7: 20 9:20 Mon. Fri. 7:20 9:20 ln .1 fli ml WON'T SEE &fjr. .A. IK PG JOHN TRAVOLTA ii NANCY ALLEN 111 'Elvis' captures the songs, sadness, sizzle of rock era A Classic Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only This Is Elvis Did you ever start to write on a subject, and then all of a sudden find things all around you that relate to that subject? This was my week to review "This is Elvis." And it so happens that the newest issue of "Twilight Zone Magazine" is out with a short story called "The Elvis Presley Look-alike Murder Mystery." (Mystery buffs, in case you don't get the issue: The killer is ol Elvis himself; he never really died and is on a campaign to bump off all the ghouls imitating him.) Last Friday, I turned on the late-night news on ABC, which was about two ministers minis-ters preaching against the immoral Satanic influence of today's rock 'n roll. They contend, for instance, that Queen's "We Are the Champions" Cham-pions" is a paean to gay supremacy. The whole idiotic id-iotic philosophy is laid out, leading right up to the small-town folk piling records rec-ords and objectionable books on a bonfire, with its inescapable echoes of the Third Reich (which the loudmouth ministers don't condone, but....) i "This is Elvis," which I saw Saturday night, was like deja vu. Here were the same scenes only from 25 years ago, of public safety commissioners, com-missioners, parents and ministers min-isters condemning, in one man's words, "the animalistic animal-istic nigger bop of rock 'n roll." If Elvis were still around, we could tell him that the more things change, the more they remain the same. To be sure, rock'n roll has had its good and bad side. Rock was a healthy, liberating liber-ating force. It unleashed heat and passion and their natural corollaries, and a tendency to rebel and to question the old tired dogmas. I TIF? IF"" " 9 J r--kfij::' y) Q ITALIAN RESTAURANT j- OPEN 6-11 I 7 days a week I 412 Main Street 1 649-8211 A I At the same time, it never taught its disciples how to control the energy, so in many cases, the lifestyles influenced by rock led to burn-out, crashes, early death or zombie lives. The most horrifying proof comes from the rock stars who fell prey to drugs, alcohol and violence Sam cooke, Jop-lin, Jop-lin, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, Sid Vicious, and Presley himself, the facts of whose death are still covered by a mountain of pills and suspicious prescriptions. Presley's story is, in a way, the history of rock, and it is capably displayed in "This Is Elvis," which is gripping in spite of the Presley look-alikes scattered through the movie and the Presley sound-alike who narrates. nar-rates. (If we're lucky, maybe may-be they'll get bumped off one by one.) The title is almost ironic. For almost the first 20 minutes, this isn't Elvis. It's his clones. But the actors are necessary to tell the early part of his story. Elvis grows up in Louisiana, Louis-iana, nurtured on the gospel music of his church and the blues from the other side of the tracks. His family moves to Memphis, and as a teenager his sideburns and greasy long hair make him an outsider, but he wins acceptance, then fame, through his music. (The scenes here look like moments out of any cliched musical biography, especially especial-ly the bit with Elvis in the studios of Sun Records. He just can't find the sound until "hey, let's try that blues song we were workin' on the t'other day" and a star is born! When the real Elvis shows up, the screen is blinded, even if he's on an old TV tape from the '50's. In this first appearance, he goes from a fast beat his lips working as fast as his hips, throwing out snarls, passion, lust to a slow beat, grinding out "Hound Dog" with his pelvis, pel-vis, and enjoying the effect he's having. You can almost understand those horrified censors who had Ed Sullivan chop him off below the waist. Presley rides the crest of the Rock Revolution into movies, concerts and legions of screaming fans. Fame is interrupted by a stretch of Army duty in Germany, during which his mother dies and he meets his future bride, Priscilla. Elvis ultimately comes to rest on a plateau of hit records and increasingly predictable movies a position pos-ition that becomes uncomfortable uncom-fortable when he's shouldered shoul-dered out of the limelight by the Beatles. A screaming Beatle maniac from another generation holds a sign saying, "Elvis Presley is Dead." But as the '60's recede into the '70's, Elvis becomes a TV and concert attraction again, perhaps most potently in a 1968 TV special. In the whole movie, Presley's stage presence pres-ence is most effective here he's reached a happy medium medi-um between the awkward '50's kid and the fat, caped character of the later concerts. con-certs. He trades jokes with his old musicians, mocks the old snarl, and launches into a sizzling version of "Blue Suede Shoes." "Saturday Night Live" once called the next years, with black humor "the period of the King's life after he discovered carbohydrates." carbohy-drates." More properly, after af-ter he discovered loneliness and drugs. The marriage to Priscilla ends, and Presley surrounds himself with flunkies and 7 ,r-. Elvis Presley and Ann-IVlargret musclernen (The movie, with surprising objectivity, includes a scene on the three ex-bodyguards who wrote a despairing book about his deterioration). At one of his last concerts, he is grossly overweight and sweating profusely. Midway through "Are You Lonesome Tonight" he forgets the words to the molologue portion, fumbles some funny, fun-ny, but desperate adlibs, and finally says, "Aw, the hell with it," laughing. In six weeks, the narration tells us, he will be dead. The moment is even worse because the grainy documentary docu-mentary footage of the beefy Elvis is contrasted with clear, sharp shots of him from his early movies-young movies-young and vigorous. "This is Elvis" focuses unblinkingly on Elvis' rise and fall, with sketchy but skillful use of footage from TV, the movies, and Presley home movies never seen before, which deliver no great revelations, but touch on interesting moods in Presley's life, (in one living room epic, Priscilla descends des-cends the stairs with an apprehensive look, not sure what role she is supposed to play here. Then she catches sight of Elvis' portrait above her and, for lack of anything else to do, mugs adoringly above it. It's a revealing moment in the marriage, if you choose to read it that way.) The film, thankfully, uses the real Elvis whenever it can and dispenses with the look-alikes. In the later "Operations and hospital rooms cost a lot more than you think!' o SeemeforState Farm hospitalsurgical insurance. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Stel Farm Mutual MrtomoW Insurance Company Horn Otltce: Btcormngton, Wwxs stages of his life, the Elvis clones are either used sparingly spar-ingly or blended so skillfully with old footage, I couldn't detect them. Occasionally, the film suffers from artificiality artific-iality (the women dubbing Priscilla's voice sounds like a mincing schoolgirl) or padding (the films of Elvis' karate sessions go on too long, creakily accompanied by an old soul hit, "Kung Fu Fighting." The most intriguing unanswered unan-swered question centers on the 1958 death of Elvis's mother. What kind of a hole did it leave in his life, and did the loss lead in some way to his later problems? The movie implies it, but never explores the question. The best moments in the film are the quiet feelings that flicker over Presley's face his abashed emotion when Ed Sullivan spontaneously spon-taneously praises him on national TV, or the embaras-sed embaras-sed way he ducks a question about student protest in the Ws. The guts of the picture, of course, is his music. Even those two rock-hating ministers minis-ters on ABC would feel a lump in the throat listening to Presley's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" used over film footage from his funeral cortege. But Presley in his prime is something to whoop about. And members of the audience audien-ce did when I saw it. Despite the sad moments and the controversy, "This is Elvis" is at its heart a rattle 'n roll salute to the still-undisputed King. MaxO. Vierig 1700 Park Avenue (Mt. Air Mall) 649-9161 Mon. -Fri. 9-5 StM M INSUIANCI m |
