GIRL HAPPY (1965) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 3/29/21

 

Currently rewatching: GIRL HAPPY (1965). One of my two favorite "bad Elvis" movies along with the immortal "Tickle Me." 

 

I used to think "Tickle Me" was the worst, but upon reappraisal I find it positively charming compared to this oozing mass of unmitigated stupid. 

 

"Girl Happy" contains a whole album's worth of Elvis' worst songs. No wonder he'd lost interest in making movies with a script this dumb and songs such as "The Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce" and "Do The Clam" for him to warble with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever. 

 

 

 

His character, "Rusty Wells", heads an awful rock and roll combo consisting of guys like Gary Crosby and Joby Baker, who entertain the easily-pleased patrons of a club owned by mob-connected Harold J. Stone.

 

When the boss' daughter, played by Shelley Fabares, decides to run off to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break, Daddy sends Elvis and his boys down there to keep an eye on her with the warning that failure will result in serious consequences for them.

 

Needless to say, daughter Valerie hooks up with a fast Italian lothario who wants to do more than hold hands, and while trying to keep her pure Elvis falls in love with her himself which seriously cramps his style with erstwhile romantic interest Mary Ann Mobley.

 

The script, surprisingly co-written by Harvey Bullock of "The Andy Griffith Show" fame and directed by Boris "The Omega Man" Sagal, can hardly muster up a single decent joke or sight gag, which leaves the cast working overtime to come off as more than just a bunch of stiffs. 

 

 

 

Watching them struggle to be funny is, in fact, way more entertaining than the script itself. They're joined in this futile endeavor by such stalwarts as Jackie Coogan, John Fiedler, Olan Soule, and the ever-delightful Nita Talbot as a brassy stripper.

 

Even a grown-up Jimmy Hawkins, who played Gail Davis' little brother Tagg in the 50s western series "Annie Oakley", is on hand to join the rest of the cast in having the life sucked out of them by this stupefying cinematic experience. 

 

As bad as it is, however, Elvis at his worst is pure entertainment for bad movie fanatics such as myself, which is why "Girl Happy" is one of my favorite "bad Elvis" movies and why I just bought the DVD when I could've spent the same money on something infinitely better. 

 

After all, it wouldn't have featured anyone performing "Do The Clam", would it?

 

 

GIRL HAPPY (1965) -- Movie Review by Porfle

Joe Bob Saves The Planet -- Elvis' Environmental Footprint?

 

Due to the efforts of pioneering environmentalist Elvis Presley, 100 percent of the objects, flooring, ceiling and walls of the Jungle Room at Graceland are recyclable

NEW YORK—People ask me all the time, “How do you do it, Joe Bob? How did you achieve that negative-27,000 environmental footprint?”

Easy. I recycle everything. I once recycled a One-Oh-Eight Freightliner dump truck with a flat-leaf spring suspension and a stand-up right-hand drive that I inherited from Chubb Fricke when he went to jail for getting drunk in San Diego and stealing a penguin from SeaWorld.

But for day-to-day recycling, I’m gonna give you the foolproof Joe Bob Briggs Guide to Loving the Earth. If you follow these 21 easy steps, you won’t just be loving the earth, you’ll be having kinky sex with the earth. Other planets will be asking you for your phone number.

First off, you’re gonna need two dozen 55-gallon whiskey barrels, the kind used for Wild Turkey, then reused for Macallan single malt, then frequently used to dispose of dead bodies.

 

 

 

We’re gonna arrange our whiskey barrels into four groups—plastic, paper, metal and glass—and then we’re gonna put a single slime bucket next to each group. The slime bucket is for stuff you can’t categorize, like egg cartons.

What the fuck do they make egg cartons out of? Somebody please tell me. It’s not paper, it’s not cardboard, it’s not plastic, it’s some kind of spongy white Frankenbucket substance that’s cranked out through a 3D printer fed with squirrel manure.

And yet, I will recycle it. Do not challenge me. I have recycled machine-gun-toting members of the Medellin cartel.

Okay, let’s start with plastic. You’re gonna take seven barrels and label them as follows:

Styrofoam Coffee Cups: We use 24 trillion of these a year, and everyone believes they can’t be recycled. We’re gonna recycle these mothers anyway. We’re gonna smush em down into that barrel, tens of thousands of Styrofoam coffee cups in a single barrel, until that foam polystyrene becomes rigid polystyrene. They’re going right in with the plastic razors, CD cases, license plate frames, and Uber Eats utensils. America uses 2.5 million plastic bottles per hour, and I’m determined to increase that pace by proving that every Poland Spring container can become yet another Poland Spring container if we just shovel this stuff back into the Plastic Mash-up Factory.

Okay, let’s move on.

High-Density Polystyrene: This is your Lysol bottle, your Oreo tray, and your Tide dispenser. And we’re gonna make lawn chairs out of em.

Polyvinyl Chloride: This is all that stuff you thought was leather when you bought it but turned out to be made out of kitchen linoleum. We’re gonna use it to make traffic cones for use in midwestern cities that maxed out their budget subsidizing the B-B gun factory.

Polypropylene: Tic Tac boxes, Tupperware, prescription drug containers, beer coolers, and those little trash cans that you kick across the room in motels. This is stuff that is made to last. But it won’t. We’ll mash that molded deck chair into oatmeal residue.

Polyethylene: This is virtually everything plastic that you use in your daily life, from Head and Shoulders bottles to all those quilts they sell at Family Dollar—those things are 110 percent petrochemical-based, which is why we have heat-stroke victims in January. Here’s the part you’re gonna love, though. We’re gonna compact all that stuff and feed it to the Greater Wax Moth, an ugly little monster that normally feeds on beehives. The Chinese have determined that these creatures can live on polyethylene, and that means that it’s only a matter of time before Michael Bay makes the movie about China using its overwhelming polyethylene stockpile to breed monster Wax Moths that attack en masse and eat their way through redneck packing plants all over the South.

Okay, what else we got here?

  

READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE

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Joe Bob Saves The Planet -- Elvis' Environmental Footprint?