Harum Scarum (1965)

Overrated

Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Only Elvis fans, and big ones at that would probably be the only viewers willing to give this musical comedy burlesque a spin. Made cheaply on the MGM lot it is a fantasy with songs about an American movie star who gets caught up in a plot to assassinate the king of a ancient Arabian kingdom. The plot is the sort of thing that worked for Rudolph Valentino, so why not Elvis?. No one is really taking any of this movie seriously least of all the star while his co stars are happy just to be working. Like all the Elvis movies of the 60's this made money despite very weak production values and timid list of songs, except for one "So Close Yet So Far" written by Joe Byers this is one of the least known most under rated songs ever to be recorded by Elvis, and it has long been a big favourite with me. Watched with a sense of humour "Harum Scarum" known to us in the UK as "Harem Holiday" the title of the opening song, this is a terrible movie so bad that it must be one of history's greatest bad movies, and brilliantly entertaining for being just that, it really is a hoot. I love It!

Widely considered to be Elvis' dumbest movie ever and the source of many prime gags in Top Secret, Harum Scarum is worth watching only for those Elvis fans interested in answering the question of what went wrong with his movie career. The answer was quite simply that, to Colonel Parker, Elvis was a carnival concession. He was getting million dollar offers to keep at the same old formula junk and since Parker had no idea how good movies were made he kept agreeing to the deals while the money was there. Harum Scarum shows the formula at its most derivative. Elvis himself looked bored and distracted at times on screen and even messed up some of his lip synching! The bulk of the songs are strictly for the Pat Boone set and badly out of date before the movie even came out. At a time of rapid change and great excitement in the music world (the Beatles made HELP around the same time) the music in Elvis' movies did not evolve or change, it just got recycled. The sets are also retreads, studio back lot leftovers from earlier better movies which look about as authentically middle eastern as a Moroccan restaurant in Brentwood. The costumes are a bad joke, and look like I Dream of Jeannie cast-offs. Elvis himself spends most of the movie looking foolish (and a bit like a Popsicle) in lime green pants. Add in a ridiculously predictable hand-me-down story about intrigue in the palace of the sultan and a few unfunny minor characters, and there is not much to like here, even for die hard Elvis fans. Even Elvis haters looking for a cheap laugh will find themselves bored by this exercise.

About in an hour into this mid-60's Arabian Nights dreck, there's a moment when Elvis sings the above-referenced song. In this subtle though not well-staged, two-minute scene (Elvis sits motionless and cross-armed by a prison barred window), the song's lyrics sadly reveal what poor Elvis truly must have felt personally regarding his nose-diving professional acting career. He was still a strong top box office draw (So Close), but he had somehow become and remained mired in below even below-average DRECK like this movie (Yet So Far) after the fact that the decade had already produced "Help!" and "A Hard Day's Night." Some IMDb reviewers blame Col. Parker and the evil-Elvis-inner-circle, but I think the blame rests with Mr. Presley himself … a truly American tragic figure who should have courageously asserted himself and said "No more!" even if it meant buying out his movie contracts and firing losers like Col. Parker.As for the rest of the film, TERRIBLE! It has "why bother?" karma (emanating from behind and in-front of the camera) that hangs over the entire production. It begins with a cheesy horrible opening credits then continues w/ Ansara's repetitive "Karnac the Magnificent"-like hand gestures in every scene he's in, then onto Ms. Jeffries wearing a black body-hugging kittenish outfit (w/ matching white scarf) that makes her acting and looking like she's auditioning for Catwoman on "Batman" instead of performing in "Harum Scarum", and then this dreck ends with a Vegas-casino musical number TOTALLY out of place with the previous hour-and-a-half Middle East-based "storyline."Earlier on, there's one jaw-dropping musical number scene that's borderline soft-kiddie porn when Presley (wearing really gay green pants that don't hide the bulge in his crotch) sings to little orphan girl Malkin a song clearly meant for an adult woman w/ lyrics like "I want you for my very own" and "I want to take you home with me." Presley watches as his pre-teen firecrotch (with slits in her dress that are WAIST-HIGH) gyrates faux-seductively. It's a really LAUGH-INDUCING, inappropriate, wildly politically-incorrect musical number.

Harum Scarum may not be Elvis's best movie, yet this Elvis movie is very much worth watching because it is a good movie. But more importantly the movies soundtrack is definitely the greatest album ever recorded, and its percussions are still being felt at the present time. For some reason they failed to play "Wisdom Of The Ages" in this Elvis movie and that is so wrong, because if there is one song from the 1960s that represents the 1960s rock & roll sound, its Elvis's song "Wisdom Of The Ages". Elvis's Harum Scarum soundtrack Middle Eastern infusion changed the world of rock & roll forever, and placed Elvis and his band, among the greatest of rock & roll teachers, who include John Lee Hooker and the most important Howlin Wolf. Yes, the Elvis movie Harum Scarum is worth buying to watch and so is that movies soundtrack.