Synopsis
The King lives on!
This biopic traces Elvis Presley’s life from his impoverished childhood to his meteoric rise to stardom to his triumphant conquering of Las Vegas.
Elvis
1979 Directed by John Carpenter
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Alternative Titles
Elvis não morreu, Elvis the Movie, Elvis - The King, Le roman d'Elvis
Popular reviews
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Finally watched it after decades of wondering if I should. Well, I should have a long time ago. Even though there is a TV aesthetic that we know has more to do with the network than Carpenter's ability, it's an absorbing TV movie that has an incredible performance by Russell. Honestly, I can't think of a better Elvis performance. Up to now, I've always felt like I was watching caricatures when an actor takes on Elvis but in this case, I 100% forgot I was watching Russell. This performance should be remembered.
Watched the Shout Selects Blu-ray. Wish there were modern interviews with Carpenter and Russell but still good extras.
- "Bringing A Legend To Life" Featurette With Archival Interviews Of Kurt Russell And John Carpenter (1979)
- Commentary By "The Voice Of Elvis" Ronnie McDowell And Author Edie Hand
- Rare Clips From American Bandstand
- Photo Gallery -
While this is the start of the collaboration between Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, I WISH deep down in my heart of hearts that this was the start of a collaboration between John Carpenter and Shelley Winters.
Elvis was an enjoyable biopic [is it really the only biopic on Elvis Presley?] but in the safest sense, obviously taking liberties with the truth to make for a more interesting, filmic [and wholesome, made-for-TV] experience. I couldn't help but laugh because this is the ONE instance where I think an actress hired to portray a role was too old, because Priscilla Presley was only 14-years-old when she met Elvis.
Richard and I were actually in Graceland/Memphis this past year and it was…
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"Listen to them. Man, they love him. He's gonna go on forever".
Time for a quiz! Am I giving Elvis the benefit of the doubt because:
a) The current landscape of bio-pics has been horrendously dry, formulaic, and frankly disrespectful to the legends they’re tackling. So this was a breath of fresh air.
b) This is by the far the best made-for-television film I’ve ever seen, and could *almost* pass as a film deserving of a theatrical run; with the ridiculously small budget it’s so impressive.
c) My perpetual love for John Carpenter — especially his collaborations with Kurt Russel — is clouding the nerves in my brain that typically process films.
d) All of the above.
Answer Key: with…
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After the remarkable success of Halloween, John Carpenter returned to the small screen to try his hand at a new genre, this time a biopic. Bringing the life of the King of Rock & Roll in splendid detail, Elvis is Carpenter’s second & final TV film, and is also notable for marking his first collaboration with actor Kurt Russell.
Elvis chronicles the life & career of one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, Elvis Presley. The film explores his early childhood, his close bonding with his mother, swift rise to fame & fortune, military service, marriage, decline in popularity, and ultimately concludes with his return to stage in 1970.
Directed by John Carpenter, the film marks his first stint with…
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This was way better than I thought it would be, I'll say that right off the bat. I love John Carpenter, but he's not perfect, and the thought of him directing a 3 hour TV movie about Elvis immediately following his death was... not something I was looking forward to watching. And while it may not be a great movie, this definitely has its moments.
It also has the best performance of Kurt Russell's career, and it makes the movie. Yeah, there are some rough edges, like some lip-syncing that doesn't quite match up, but either I got used to this or the performances got better as the movie went on. Either way, by the end of the movie I…
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immersive and enjoyable in the way only carpenter’s framing and russell’s charisma can make almost insufferably tongue in cheek, clunky writing and tragically made for tv vibes.
this also might be the reason why we have the thing and escape from new york. so, thanks abc!
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October 2016: Smiler Grogan’s Scavenger Hunt #2
TASK #26: A Kurt Russell/John Carpenter collaboration!Although unfortunately lacking in director John Carpenter's trademark stylish visual flair, Elvis makes for an engaging and entertaining TV biopic featuring a fantastic lead performance from future Carpenter collaborator Kurt Russell as the King.
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- A 3-hour late '70s John Carpenter movie I hadn't seen as of 2020
- Kurt "John Ruth" "Stuntman Mike" "Wyatt Earp" "Snake Plissken" "R.J. MacReady" "Jack Burton" "Dean Proffitt"(yes) "Ego the Living Planet" "Santa Claus" "Mr. Goldie Hawn" “Wyatt’s dad” motherfucking Russell in one of the only roles that has ever garnered him major awards recognition (I mean, an Emmy, but, y'know)
- the life and times of rock 'n' roll grandaddy Elvis Presley
= cinema immortality somehow, surely, right?
It's a TV movie, airing one night on a 4-hour block for ABC, so tone everything down to PG-rated serenity and time the movie for little synthetic cliffhangers to punctuate those commercial breaks. It's a hagiography, so cut out…
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MOVIE KING ALBUM REVIEW: "ELVIS' CHRISTMAS ALBUM"- ELVS PRESLEY
The King of Rock and Roll is here to brighten the Christmas spirit, and it delivers on all accounts!
Even on a holiday album can Elvis brighten smiles and lift spirits. He clearly loved Christmas in his short life, and puts his love in every track.
The first half of the album are the Christmas songs you most often hear on Christmas radio, as they're so beloved each and every season. There's the raunchy, bluesy, but utterly clever "Santa Claus is Back in Town", the soulful rendition of "White Christmas" influenced by The Drifters (another amazing version, by the way), his perky fun take of "Here Comes Santa Claus", his heartfelt…
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John Carpenter's exceptionally long Elvis biopic is anemic but enjoyable. Mostly it is enjoyable because of Kurt Russell's hair, his dancing and his impersonation. It is a really fun performance. John Carpenter directs with feeling, but his stylistic touches are mostly absent as he brings the bloodless biopic to the screen without much controversy. Carpenter and Russell made many better films together, and (crucially) shorter ones, but this ain't that bad.
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Work-for-hire dilemma: the man who had just made a haunted-car movie critiquing rock-n-roll/teen-culture as a rebellious, acting-out way of expressing the same negative values that are embedded in the dominant culture has to make a movie that won't piss off Elvis fans. Does he succeed in having it both ways?
At least intermittently, he does. There's a Sirkian double perspective at play here that invites reading against-the-grain, and it becomes more visible as the movie builds up steam; the most obvious example is at the very end, the career-spanning montage set to an Elvis-sound arrangement of Battle Hymn Of The Republic: the Pilgrimage-to-Graceland audience can understand that as "(Elvis'es) truth is marching on," and Elvis agnostics can read it as…
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Original Title: Elvis
Year of Release: 1979
Genres: Drama; Biopic; TV Movie
Director: John Carpenter
Writer: Anthony Lawrence
Main Cast: Kurt Russell, Shelley Winters, Bing Russell, Robert Grayson, Season HubleyIronic that Carpenter's most unconventional film is a rather conventional biopic. Its made-for-TV length seemed daunting at first, but the film actually flows at a pretty decent pace. It definitely helps that Kurt Russell is perfect as the King of Rock, and there are plenty of his great songs that are played in their entirety throughout the entire film.
Carpenter tackles the real-life story in an effective way: some thing are romanticized, some time jumps are a bit jarring, but it's nonetheless quite interesting to see Elvis being portrayed in…
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One of the best biopics I've ever seen. Great performance by Kurt Russel. Carpenter gives us some legendary sequences.
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The Master of Horror. #5
La película que naturalmente se sale por completo de lo que conocemos de John Carpenter es “Elvis”, una biopic que de seguro acercó a John Carpenter a un premio de la academia como ninguna otra dentro de su extensa filmografía.
John Carpenter demuestra que de haber querido dedicarse a realizar un cine fuera del género fantástico, de horror o ciencia ficción pudo haberlo hecho sin ningún problema, la manera en que toma decisiones en “Elvis” deja en claro principalmente que Carpenter es un director flexible y además, es un gran director de actores. La forma en que trabajan en esta película Kurt Russell y Shelley Winters es digna de una ovación, sobre todo Russell que…
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I watched the German version which is about an hour shorter than the original... And even this was dragging fairly hard. Low-budget TV movie with a tame Carpenter trying to do his best not to piss off anyone and just doing exactly what he was paid for.
The one person really keeping this movie from being a complete snoozefest ist Kurt Russel who's playing as if he really was Elvis. He's fully accepted that he's the king of rock'n'roll now and is having the time of his life while also leaving room for the negative emotions that come with the fame. 100% believable and glorious. Sadly he's the only one who's really into the movie, so I'm really glad it got shorted drastically for the German market, otherwise I would probably have turned it off half way through.
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Very fun to relive memories of seeing Elvis in Las Vegas in 1974. Kurt Russell and his dad acting together is very sweet. Good to see how Elvis grew up and know that he had good loving parents.
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- I love old Las Vegas signage
- watching Kurt Russell play Elvis is a treat
- Elvis playing with his hair at the movie theater
- sunrise at the gas station
- white washing of Precila and his relationship is not good, although they don’t completely gloss over how gross it was
- Carpenter and the cast aren’t responsible for this being a let down. It’s the executives fault for keeping him out of the editing process
- wish it touched on his crazy affairs
- release the Carpenter cut
- lots of long boring stretches -
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Well, I did it, I got through this monster biopic, (reluctantly) as part of my journey through John Carpenter and Kurt Russell's filmographies. I gotta give it props. I couldn't care less about Elvis and still found the movie pretty watchable, the three hours passing relatively painlessly; a lot of the credit for that should probably go to Russell. It's a rather frustrating experience, though, because even with my limited Elvis knowledge I can feel how sanitized and scrubbed free of any grit this script was. I reckon Carpenter did as well as he could have in his situation, as this is an attractive, perfectly serviceable biopic.
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Birth Year Challenge (37/41)
It's a made-for-TV biopic, all right: the dialogues are cheesy, it lacks the style usually associated with John Carpenter, and feels very choppy as it rushes through Elvis' life. On the other hand, it's got Kurt Russell's energetic performance going for it. He's a true force of nature in this and probably the only reason why ELVIS didn't turn out boring.
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Unless he makes another movie, which seems very unlikely, then this is the last time I get to watch a John Carpenter movie for the first time. I've held off on checking it out for years. Partially because it's been in and out of availability but mostly because I didn't want to complete his filmography. I liked knowing there was still another one out there. I did same with Kubrick until I finally watched Barry Lyndon last year and I have two Craven movies I've been delaying. The movie itself has a surprisingly cinematic feel for a '70s TV movie and a great Kurt Russell performance. The script is pretty standard biopic stuff so I think it's a testament to the talent involved that I wasn't bored at all throughout it's three hour runtime.
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A music biopic documenting Elvis' life from early childhood to his return to the stage in Las Vegas. This film is significant for a number of reasons. Prior to its debut on television Kurt Russell was know mostly for Disney films, such as 'The Barefoot Executive' where he has a pet monkey that is able to predict what television shows will succeed. Playing such an Iconic character would allow him to better flex his dramatic muscle and hopefully establish himself as an actor and not some glorified animal wrangler. And in the context of this movie he most certainly accomplishes this, Russell's Elvis is subtle and never falls into parody. This is also the first pairing of John Carpenter and…
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