Amazon.com video review:
Before his handlers convinced him to settle for the safety of
a screen franchise, the young Elvis Presley harbored riskier dreams as
an actor, not just a star. This 1958 drama, his fourth feature outing,
hints at the underlying seriousness of that goal. Presley plays Danny
Fisher, a New Orleans teenager struggling to graduate from high school
while working in a sleazy French Quarter club to support his
family. He's also characterized as a troubled youth with a dangerous
temper and feelings of shame and resentment toward his meek,
unemployed father (Dean Jagger). When Danny's gift for singing
provides him with a potential career break (and the requisite excuse
for Elvis's production numbers), his involvement with a ruthless
gangster (Walter Matthau) and his sultry, alcoholic moll (Carolyn
Jones) soon threatens both his future and his family.
That story line, with Danny torn between a budding romance with a good
waitress (Dolores Hart) and the bad moll, Ronnie (Jones), proves as
effective as it is predictable, hardly surprising given its source in
an early Harold Robbins bestseller. But King Creole also boasts
an impressive production pedigree (including the team behind no less a
classic than Casablanca, producer Hal Wallis and director
Michael Curtiz), and the supporting cast helps elicit one of Presley's
most emotional performances. Jones in particular rises above her
role's inherent clichés, her self-loathing and sexuality both
palpable. Presley, still a few years away from the more sanitized
image that would be integral to those franchise features, is young
enough to be a credible teen, but more crucially he makes his rage and
yearning largely convincing.
Ironically, the dramatic sparks prove all the more welcome in light of
the largely forgettable music, which variously plunders Chicago blues
("Trouble," a knock-off of "Hoochie Coochie Man") and unconvincingly
crosses Presley's Memphis rock with Crescent City jazz ("Dixieland
Rock"), all to far less effect than Presley's two preceding movies,
Jailhouse Rock and Loving You. --Sam Sutherland
