Wild in the Country (1961)

Just perfect...

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

I expected something a with a little more class than this. Elvis goes from girl to girl so fast it's like where's his heart? Then he gets the hots for his counselor, a lady who is significantly older than him. Yuck! This kind of action was being made to look appealing, all the way back then? One of the other girls his age he runs off with is so trashy, and she says the most horrible thing- that she wants to go sliding right down into hell, like it's nothing to fear. In the movie are also some references to the Bible and Elvis quotes some scripture and carries his bible around. This does not make a trashy movie good...it remains what it is.Very disappointed in the content and story lines...I've watched some other movies with Elvis in them that were much better.

Wild in the country was the third and last try for Elvis to became a real serious actor,after King Creole and Flaming Star.There is no singing there,only one or two songs and the story isn't for family entertaining as in the typical Elvis movies. Elvis as Glenn Tyler is an outsider young guy,with troubles with the law.The rest of the story is extreme for it's time(single moms,alcoholism e.g.) and although the movie was Great,it was a market failure,as King Creole and Flaming Star also was,probably because people needed to watch a feel-good movie with Elvis and not s/th heavy and dark.Although Presley demonstrated that he was an Excellent actor,never tried to play drama again.His next movie,a typical musical,called Blue Hawaii stayed in the top of box-office for 18 weeks,who can blame him?

Don't get me wrong Elvis is cool, so is Millie Perkins, Tuesday Weld and Hope Lange, but thats about it, this movie makes the classic mistake of having about 2 plots and about 2 or 3 subplots to many, any movie should only have one main plot and one sub plot and thats IT! but Wild In The Country commits that exact offense, thus throws the movie into fast forward in the first 10 minutes first Elvis is in a fight with his brother which is in real life good friend and body guard (Red West) we see Elvis in the court room answering for that cause were left thinking Elvis killed him, then Elvis goes to live with his uncle, who's daughter (Tuesday Weld ) has the hots for him!(Elvis that is)lol. and we find he already has a girlfriend (Millie Perkins) then there's Hope Lange the phychiatrist who eventually falls for Elvis, then Elvis has aspirations to be an author, he winds up going to college to be an author, ! wait a minute ! in this movie Elvis doesn't even have a high school diploma, and hes going to college???????! Shouldn't he get a GED first, see what i mean, this movie is that confusing, and don't get me started on him hitting and supposedly killing Gary Lockwood,WHEWWWWW slapstck2000

"Wild in the Country" presents the following credible scenario: a) the King is a loser, but with an untapped talent for writing; b) Hope Lange checks him out as he comes before community elders, deciding how to deal with his delinquencies; c) Tuesday Weld is something like an unwed-mother cousin, who hangs around waiting for a guy to make her whole (and no one, no one, shows up); d) Gary Lockwood is a jerk with a weak heart who dies after Elvis punches him once; e) John Ireland is Gary's dad, loves Hope, and is hanging around waiting for a gal to make him whole; f) given the choices (Millie Perkins, Hope, and Tuesday), Mr. Presley goes "wild in the country" for Ms. Lange ("ma'am"); and, gee) given that Elvis loves her, Hope decides to...SPOILER.4.5 stars is about right; there's a nice scene where the porch is hosed, while the youngsters fake insobriety.