It’s hard to imagine a pop or rock ’n’ roll star today cranking out the type and sheer quantity of friendly, formulaic fluff flicks that Elvis Presley did while also remaining at the top of his or her game musically. It’s a testament, I suppose, to the fact that back in the days of the King, there weren’t quite the mechanisms for media saturation that there are today, meaning that fans who wanted more, more, more of their original American idol would be more than happy to snarf up a “quickie” movie or three a year, all the while hoping for another shot of Jailhouse Rock.

While they’re of varying quality, this latest barrage of Elvis titles, collecting six Presley films from the 1960s, will set diehard fans screaming all a-new.

Though each title is released individually, the collection includes:

• It Happened at the World’s Fair
• Spinout
• Speedway
• Harum Scarum
• Double Trouble
• The Trouble With Girls (And How to Get Into It).

1963’s It Happened at the World’s Fair finds Presley cast as a dashing pilot-for-hire, and includes 10 original songs and an appearance by a young Kurt Russell.

Spinout is probably the best of the bunch, mixing music, racecar driving and crisp, funny dialogue from writers Theodore Flicker and George Kirgo.

Another Elvis-as-racecar-driver musical, Speedway co-stars Nancy Sinatra, Gale Gordon and Carl Ballantine, and benefits from their collective comedic presence.

Double Trouble casts the King as a rocker who becomes the object of affection for an underage heiress (Annette Day); a mish-mash of many different styles and tones, it plays like a bad, lost Scooby-Doo episode.

Harum Scarum, meanwhile, places notoriously among the lesser Elvis efforts, casting him as a rocker touring the Middle East to promote his new movie, an Arabian swashbuckler. Let’s see this remade today with Justin Timberlake, right?

(Source: Katherine Taylor, Entertainment Today)