06.14.16
Pasadena Elvis Presley Film Festival: “King Creole”
“King Creole,” from 1958 and in black & white, is one of the diamond shards in the big pile of Elvis movie jelly beans.
The cast: Walter Matthau as the urbane heavy, Carolyn Jones as the doomed beauty, Pat Stewart as the noble but broke club owner, Dean Jagger as the redeemed and Vic Morrow as the henchman you want to see die. Through brute force of talent they haul the movie from musical into almost classic Hollywood noir melodrama.
Shot in the French Quarter, or what passed for it on a back lot, it has the cinematographic B&W flavor of “Too Have and Have Not.” Hey, even Elvis rose to the occasion, throwing in maybe 20 seconds of a very poor man’s Bogart in the final scene.
There’s a foot chase, organized shop-lifting, beatings, rain-swept streets, a house on stilts in the backbay, vicious blackmail, and murder in all degrees with Elvis sticking a switchblade deep in the chest of Shark, played by Vic Morrow, his tormentor.
And the music? It’s the best of all in the film fest so far, even if you don’t quite notice. From end to end, good, “King Creole,” “As Long as I Have You,” “Trouble (think “Framed” or “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”), “Hard Headed Woman” and “Dixieland Rock.” You can’t beat them.
One bucket of buttered popcorn and a cotton hanky, easy.