Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

zardoz-13 "Casablanca" director Michael Curtiz helmed "King Creole," Elvis Presley's fourth feature-length film, about a troubled teenager who becomes a popular crooner in a Bourbon Street cabaret in New Orleans. Interestingly, "King Creole" is based on the Harold Robbins' bestseller "A Stone for Danny Fisher," and the action has Elvis behaving a little shady before he straightens out. Lensed in black & white, this 117- minute musical drama isn't as carefree as Elvis' vehicles in the 1960s would be. Elvis is at odds with his father and he isn't reluctant to bust his knuckles if he feels threatened. No, he isn't as insolent as he was in "Jailhouse Rock." Far from Curtiz at his best, this Paramount release has its moments. Carolyn Jones and Dolores Hart are cast respectively as bad gal and good girl. Walter Matthau is appropriately sleazy as a villainous mobster who owns most of the night clubs on Bourbon Street. Danny Fisher has had a rough time since his mother died and his father (Dean Jagger of "Twelve O'clock High") couldn't hold onto a job. Mr. Fisher has moved his older daughter Mimi (Jan Shepard of "Paradise, Hawaiian Style") into an upstairs apartment on Royal Street. Danny has suffered at school, too. He has failed to graduate. Moreover, since the family need money, Danny and his older sister have gone to work. Danny can only get a job as a busboy in the French Quarter. One evening, while he is cleaning up, he encounters a pair of hoods and a drunken dame, Ronnie (Carolyn Jones of "Last Train from Gun Hill"), in the bar and lounge where he works for Maxie Fields. When the guys get a little too rough with Ronnie, Danny gallantly intervenes with a couple of shattered liquor bottles. Danny and Ronnie leave, but Danny arrives late at school, and his grumpy old teacher, Mrs. Pearson (Helene Hatch of "Halls of Montezuma"), fails him. Naturally, Mr. Fisher is disappointed, but he has spoke with Danny's school principal, and they have worked out a plan for Danny to graduate if he attends night classes. Danny balks at the idea because his father doesn't have a job, but Mr. Fisher informs him that he has an interview for a job as a pharmacist. Surprisingly, Mr. Fisher lands the job, but this doesn't deter Danny from embarking on a career as a night club singer on Bourbon Street. Although Mr. Fisher objects to Danny taking such an unsavory job, Danny's employer-Charlie LeGrand (Paul Stewart of "Citizen Kane")-defends his decision. Meantime, mobster figure Maxie Fields (Walter Matthau of "Charlie Varrick") hears about Danny's rise to fame, and he wants to sign the kid to sing in his cabaret. Danny wants nothing to do with Fields, but Fields have hired some unscrupulous henchmen to do his dirty work. As it happens, Danny knows these reprobates and has little use for them. Unfortunately, he used his musical talents to help them shoplift at a dime store. Shark (Vic Morrow of "The Bad News Bears") wants to draw Danny deeper into Maxie's net of evil. They plan to rob the drug store where Mr. Fisher works. Danny joins them and learns about their plan. Happily, his father won't be involved. Unfortunately, the manager of the drug store turns over the weekly receipts to Mr. Fisher and sends him out to drop it in the night depository. As it happens, a shower is drenching the French Quarter, and Mr. Fisher dons his boss's raincoat and hat and plunges into the wet stuff. Too late, Danny learns that Shark and company not only robbed him, but also they slugged him, and Mr. Fisher required a skilled surgeon to survive. Maxie exploits this opportunity and foots the bill for Mr. Fisher's surgery. At the same time, he pressures Danny to leave Charlie and come sing for him."King Creole" has its moments, but few of its songs will rattle your cage. Elvis performs admirably considering what is required of him. Vic Morrow makes a grim villain.

dimplet Sure, Elvis is the star, but the real force making it a great movie is Michael Curtiz. King Creole has a great cast, great acting, a solid script and many interesting musical numbers, not to mention excellent cinematography. Without all this, it might have just been another Elvis vehicle. Look at the list of Curtiz' movies -- Yankee Doodle Dandee, Casablanca, Mission to Moscow, to name three in a row -- can you find a more versatile director? I don't think there is any "Curtiz style;" each is unique, in each he fits the movie to the material. His work begins in the silent era, 1912, yet King Creole epitomizes the 1950s. And Curtiz, 72, knows how to showcase the talent and energy of Elvis, presenting him as an artist. Yes, Elvis can act. There isn't a wrong note anywhere, and it is a relatively complex role. I suppose the next question the studios would have asked is whether he had the depth to play a wide range of characters. Could Elvis transform himself into someone else? That is great acting. I'm thinking of someone like Paul Newman -- or Walter Matthau. Elvis never got a chance to find out. Perhaps the studios looked at King Creole and decided not to push their luck and stick to the Elvis persona?To do good acting you need a good cast to react off of, and he had it here. We see some real chemistry and sparks flying as they interact with Elvis. Here is Matthau at his finest. This is no mobster don caricature; we see cruelty and cunning, but also rays of kindness and genuine appreciation for Elvis' talent. And who would guess that Ronnie -- Carolyn Jones -- was also Morticia in the Addams Family or Julie Rawlings in How the West was Won? I am not a big Elvis fan, though I do respect the emotional energy of his style. Those who are not familiar with Elvis should watch King Creole to understand why he was so influential.At first I was disappointed that there wasn't a broader range of musical styles displayed, given the title "King Creole" and the fact that Elvis's musical roots are in the black jazz and blues of Memphis, Tennessee. It appeared to be all all high octane Elvis. But then I looked closer and realized that Elvis' musical roots are, indeed, on display in the movie. Even in the slower numbers, the Elvis intensity just made them seem high octane.The only Creole influence is seen in the opening number of street vendors calling out their wares, Crawfish, similar to the Street Cries number in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. But it does set up the musical environment.The first performance number, Trouble, shows Elvis singing with a Dixieland group, but it is actually a solid blues number in a style similar to T-Bone Walker (Stormy Monday). Now this is Elvis' roots. The closest to a slow love ballad is Lover Doll in the Five and Dime, accompanied only by a bass. The closest to jazz is "New Orleans," which starts slow like W.C. Handy, and shows a connection between Elvis' style and jazz, including a banjo and some Dixieland riffs. In the number "King Creole," the only connection to the movie's title aside from the club's name, we see typical Elvis energy and tempo, but also some of the blues and jazz roots we saw more clearly in earlier numbers. Later, we have a somewhat gratuitous Dixieland Rock, which sounds a lot like Jailhouse Rock, and is closer to pure Elvis than most numbers here. The distinctive double clapping by Elvis that sets up the number, echoed by the band, corresponds to the sound of a car driving over a loose manhole cover. If you'd ever lived with one outside your window, you would recognize it. Don't Ask Me Why is a slow number in the style of many Fifties pop songs, and a takeoff of O Sole Mio, an old Italian song that's seen many permutations, including Elvis' later It's Now or Never.What stands out, at least to the modern listener, is the high energy, fast beat Elvis style that became so famous. But actually Curtiz does a good job of mixing styles and tempos, and of providing a sort of chronology of musical influences on Elvis in the various numbers. The range could have been a bit broader, but this was 1958 and the movie was helping to establish Elvis' musical identity. The influence of black jazz and blues is there to the observant viewer, but not fully highlighted. This was the Fifties, and displaying too much black influence would have been risky. What we do see was a actually a bold move (though setting it in New Orleans makes it more acceptable), and probably enhanced Elvis' edgy, bad boy image with the teenagers and James Dean crowd. (Now, if they had made Elvis' role truly Creole, part black and part French, that would have been ballsy for the time.)I suppose you could say the best Elvis movie is the one that was never made, the mature actor singing in a broad range of styles: rock, jazz, blues, creole and ballads. It's too bad he didn't return to his musical roots in later years, as well as acting. But King Creole comes surprisingly close to providing Elvis' musical testament. In the end, Curtiz delivers not only fine acting and a fine script, but also some fine music in an assortment of Elvis' style. Once again, Curtiz fitted the movie to the material.

SanteeFats This is not your typical Elvis movie!!! It is pretty dark, not the light hearted romps that most of his movies are, and the songs are few and I guess because this takes place in New Orleans, they are bluesy. Which I think Elvis had a great voice and presence for the blues. Walter Matthau plays the heavy here. He has the stereotypical Hollywood gangster image. A woman beating, murderer. Carolyn Jones, well before the Addams Family, plays the gangsters girl and she looks pretty good and acts well. The family dynamics of Elvis's screen family, the Fisher's, is a little weird. The actress playing the sweet kind of naive girlfriend is nice to see compared to today's way too smart about everything young girl roles that get cast now.

Spikeopath King Creole is directed by Michael Curtiz and adapted to screenplay by Herbert Baker and Michael V. Gazzo from the novel A Stone for Danny Fisher written by Harold Robbins. It stars Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dolores Hart, Dean Jagger, Vic Morrow, Paul Stewart and Jan Shepard. Music is scored by Walter Scharf and cinematography by Russell Harlan. Plot finds Presley as Danny Fisher, a high school student struggling at school who falls in with the wrong crowd just as family matters of the heart start to take a hold.He said anybody that disagreed with you got a punch in the mouth. Is that what I brought you up to do, to fight?The last film Presley made before going off to do his service in the army, King Creole is his best film. It's one of only a small handful that showed the star actually had some acting ability, here he gets a top director to work under and a very tidy cast put along side him for him to respond too. Presley immediately warmed to Curtiz (Casablanca/Mildred Pierce), wilfully doing as he was told by the wily old director, rewarding the film fan with a performance of some merit. Presley would often say it was his personal favourite of his own films, and it's not hard to see why. Though packed with musical numbers, many of them belters as well, the film always stays dramatic, in fact the tunes form part of the narrative, they are not frothy interludes slotted in purely for fan appeasement.Everything he touches turns to drink.It's not unreasonable to expect King Creole to be a fun movie, the kind where Elvis flies a plane, speeds around on power boats, or saves the word during a treasure hunt, because the poster art and DVD covers lend you to think that. Honestly, one shows the King with guitar wrapped around him, hips bent and a huge smile on his face, the other has the same Elvis pose but along side him is a smiling beauty bedecked in a banana patterned dress! I mean really, would you think this film is shot in moody black and white, features murders, theft, family upheaval, drunks, knife fights, wasted life and all round dirty tricks? That the King is snarly, aggressive and channelling Jim Stark from Rebel Without a Cause? Because all these things reside within this potent and most agreeable Elvis picture.Now you know. That's how you get into it.With the drama relocated from the New York of the novel to Bourbon Street New Orleans, and Danny Fisher changed from a boxer to a singer, atmosphere needed to be tight to the emotionally battered story. And it is, very much so, with Harlan (Ramrod/Riot in Cell Block 11) doing a great job of making The Big Easy come off as The Big Seedy. This is a world of back alleys where hoodlum youths dwell and of wet tinged streets barely lit by gas lamps, many of the night scenes shot here are worthy of film noir status, with a rain sodden mugging sequence truly top of the line. Conversely Curtiz also paints a bustling Orleans picture, with song clubs and street sellers proving to be the heartbeat of the city. It's a twin viewpoint of Orleans that matches other duality themes that drive the narrative forward, because Danny is caught between two girls and two night club owners.Cast are very good across the board, with Matthau menacing, Morrow weasel like, Jagger and Jones sad and pitiful, Stewart elegantly honest and Hart doing a neat line in confused love. Stand out tunes include the title song, "Hard Headed Woman", "Trouble", "Steadfast Loyal and True", "Lover Doll" and the quite beautiful "As Long As I Have You". It's not perfect, serious crime goes unpunished, the main motive driving on Matthau's club boss is rather weak and the two love interest girls are written lazily as love sick puppies. Yet this is still a cracker of a movie, where Presley bristles with magnetism and emotional conflict and Curtiz and Harlan rack up the requisite amount of impressive atmospheric visuals. 8/10