Twice the Elvis, infinite awfulness.
KISSIN’
COUSINS (1964) was Elvis’s fourteenth film in eight years — he averaged
two or three films per year from 1960 through to 1969 — and by this
point his movies were virtually interchangeable, distinguishable from
one another only by the setting and Elvis’s vocation in the story. This
time around he plays a U.S. Army lieutenant who is forced into helping
the Army obtain permission to use an area of Tennessee’s Great Smoky
Mountains as the location of a top secret ICBM missile base. He’s
pressed into this task because the area is owned by an ornery hillbilly
stereotype who hates outsiders, especially representatives of the
government, but Elvis’s character’s family were once native to the area
and he’s related to the hillbily’s family because one of his elder
relatives married one of the hillbilly’s relatives, so Elvis is kin and
therefore not a target for murder upon entering hill country.
With
a small platoon of fellow soldiers and his commanding officer in tow,
Elvis attempts to broker the land deal while fending off the hostilities
of his blonde lookalike cousin, and also contending with the attentions
of two cornpone cuties, one of whom is played by a pre-BATMAN Yvonne
Craig, who spends much of the film running around in a yellow bikini.
Oh, and the cuties in question are his cousins.
The all-natural, puberty-enflaming wonder that was Yvonne Craig.
There’s
a time limit on making the deal, and if it does not go as planned,
Elvis’s commanding officer is threatened with getting reassigned to
Greenland instead of the cushy Pentagon gig that he aspires to, and if
he fails he’ll take Elvis down with him.
The
old hillbilly proves to be stubborn about relinquishing the land, even
for good compensation and a number of accompanying perks, so Elvis has
his work cut out for him. And while all of this is going on, there’s
romance, assorted hillbilly shenanigans with moonshine and revolting
country vittles, terrible musical numbers that Elvis pretty much
sleepwalks through, and, my favorite of the film’s many stupid elements,
the “threat” of the Kittyhawks, a roving band of hot man-starved
nymphomaniacs who roam the mountains in search of men to knock them up
so they’ll have boy babies. All these idiotic elements come together at
the end, when every problem is solved by a massive drunken party, with
the Kittyhawks getting it on with the servicemen.
Elvis versus the Kitthawks. The hills are alive with the sound of nymphomania.
Considered
by many to be the rock-bottom worst in the lengthy Elvis filmography,
and definitely the worst that I have seen thus far. KISSIN’ COUSINS is
aggressively brain-dead but is fun to sit through for its
we-don’t-gove-a-fuck utter idiocy. Like most other Elvis films of the
1960’s, it runs out of steam about halfway through, but stick with it
just to see the ridiculous conclusion.
"You gals ever hear of buggery?"
When
I ran the film for Lexi and Ginna (Lexi’s older sister and Bad Movie
Night regular), Ginna noted that she, like me, had received her
education on the cinema of Elvis via the times when the late, lamented
4:30 MOVIE would do an “Elvis Week” showcase, and though she had seen
and enjoyed many an Elvis flick for their sheer mindless entertainment
value, she had never seen KISSIN’ COUSINS. When it was over, she
remarked that it was likely the worst one she had ever seen, thanks to
its stagebound visual cheapness, terrible dialogue and performances, and
a roster of unlistenable dreck that passed as songs.
The
next Elvis outing that I plan on subjecting the sisters to is HARUM
SCARUM (1965), in which Elvis goes to Arabia and engages in Arabian
Nights shenanigans. It’s another strong contender for the crown as
Elvis’s worst, so I can't wait to endure it.
Poster for the original theatrical release.
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