Elvis Movies Ranked Worst To Best

The "Elvis movie" was a unique phenomenon; there was nothing really like it before, or even since. Of course, pop music stars and film had gone hand in hand since the advent of talkies, from the feature-length musicals of Bing Crosby and Lena Horne to proto-music videos starring bandleaders Louis Jordan and Cab Calloway. And plenty of singers in the years after Elvis Presley's last film have starred in movie musicals or straight films where their songs were prominently placed on the soundtrack: Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini. But Horne and Streisand never pumped out three movies a year for more than a decade, and Crosby's busiest years were in the golden age of the movie musical. Frankie and Annette made a few beach party flicks in the 1960s, and The Beatles had their own post-modern takes on the Elvis movie, but as he often did, The King stood alone.

Presley's films, to be fair, were rarely critical favorites, and at the rate in which they were pumped out — 31 films in just over a dozen years -– some corners had to be cut, particularly in the screenplay department. Most of the films cast Presley as a well-intentioned hunk with a two-fisted job like cowboy, soldier, or race car driver. His rowdy ways are challenged by the love of a good woman, and he sings a song or two that would become chart-topping hits. Despite this staid format, the movies remained massively popular, and made Elvis the highest-paid actor of his day. In a tumultuous decade, you couldn't count on much in the world, but you could count on an Elvis movie. Here are Elvis' 31 starring roles, ranked from worst to best.

It's never a good sign when a film's title can double as its own bad review. Such is the case with 1968's "Stay Away, Joe," a warning that audiences should have heeded. Presley plays the eponymous Joe, a modern-day cowboy whose life is one big party, jumping between rodeos, cattle drives, and women one after the next. It could have been just another lightweight trifle like so many other Elvis movies, if not for the fact that Joe and his family are supposed to be Navajo, and Presley, Burgess Meredith (playing his father), and several other white actors are slathered in redface. This was already egregiously offensive in 1968, the same year that saw the formation of the American Indian Movement, and is borderline unwatchable today.

In the film's slight defense, Michael A. Hoey's script (based on a novel by Dan Cushman) attempts to depict contemporary reservation life for Indigenous peoples, but any sensitivity is buried under layers of crude makeup and painfully unfunny hijinks, such as the running gag of the local saloon keeper (Joan Blondell) gunning after Joe for seducing her teenage daughter. There isn't even much music to distract from the story; Presley recorded just three songs for the film that wound up on compilation albums over the next few years, as a proper soundtrack was never released.

Originally conceived as a project for the surf rock duo Jan and Dean (per The American Film Institute), 1967's "Easy Come, Easy Go" stars Presley as a recently retired Navy frogman and part-time nightclub singer on the hunt for sunken treasure. Aiding him in his quest is a feisty go-go dancer (Dodie Marshall) and a salty sea captain played by screen and stage vet Frank McHugh in his final film. In their way is a villainous competitor (Skip Ward) and his femme fatale girlfriend (Pat Priest) who sets her sights on distracting our hero from both the treasure and the nice girl at his side.

The film takes a humorous look at the burgeoning hippie culture, setting Presley's character (and by extension, Presley himself) amongst groovy chicks in body paint, student protesters, and a disastrous yoga class. This leads to the most notable, and surreal, moment in an otherwise generic film, as Presley fumbles his way through various yoga positions while singing the novelty song "Yoga Is as Yoga Does" with the class instructor, played by the Bride of Frankenstein herself Elsa Lanchester.

Presley and crew returned to Hawaii after the commercial success of "Blue Hawaii" for 1962's "Girls! Girls! Girls!" As simplistic as its title, the film follows suspiciously soft and handsome fisherman Ross Carpenter (Presley) as he pursues his dreams of owning his own commercial fishing boat, while also pursuing nearly every woman on the Big Island and beyond. As with many Elvis movies, he finds himself torn between a fast-talking career gal (Stella Stevens) and a pure-hearted nice girl (Laurel Goodwin).

Though it was nominated for a Golden Globe, the film itself is a step down from Presley's other work of the era. Stevens in particular was offended by the low quality of the script and initially refused to co-star (via Express); Paramount Pictures won her back by promising that her next film would be with Montgomery Clift (though that film, "Too Late Blues," would eventually star Bobby Darin instead). Three songs from the soundtrack were released as singles, though only "Return to Sender" cracked the Hot 100, making it all the way to #2.

"Spinout" from 1966 dares to challenge the Elvis movie template by asking, "What if he had three girls after him instead of two?" The subtext to many (if not most) of these films is to flatter and affirm Presley's virility to an absurd degree. Here, he plays Mike McCoy, who's not just a rock and roll singer but also a hotshot race car driver with three different women literally begging to marry him: a spoiled heiress (Shelley Fabares again), a feminist author (Diane McBain) who considers Mike the perfect man, and the tomboyish drummer in Mike's band (Deborah Walley) who's been carrying a torch along with her drumsticks for years.

But Mike can't be tied down by one woman, or even three; in order to continue his carefree bachelor lifestyle of rocking, racing, and ravishing, he plays matchmaker to find his three would-be brides more suitable husbands than he. But can he do all that and win the big race? The answer might (not) surprise you. This subtle tweaking of the Elvis movie formula was perhaps too subtle to make much of a difference; the film trails behind Presley's other two 1966 releases in both quality and reputation, as we'll soon see.

Elvis is back on the racetrack in "Speedway" from 1968, playing Steve Grayson, a good ol' boy who's a demon behind the wheel but a soft touch with his pocketbook. When the IRS sends a stylish revenuer (Nancy Sinatra) to collect back taxes that his crooked manager neglected to pay, Steve risks it all on one last big race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

This would be the last of Presley's all-ages musical comedies; his last four films would all attempt in their own ways to introduce The King to the more sophisticated, adult world of New Hollywood. While "Speedway" hardly re-invents the wheel, it does offer more thrills than usual thanks to its real-life stock car racing scenes, with stars of the era like Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough playing themselves. The soundtrack album was a bust, with its one single making it just to #72 on the Billboard Hot 100, though it's notable for having the one song on any Elvis release, Sinatra's "Your Groovy Self," to not feature Presley at all. Roger Ebert's two-star review damns the film with faint praise, finding Sinatra lacking as both a singer and actor.

1969 marked not just the final year of Presley's film career, but an honest attempt to bring the "Elvis movie" into the modern age, taking inspiration from (or just plain ripping off) the era's significant films. None of his three films from that year were quite successful at that goal, but the second one feels like it should have been a perfect re-introduction for The King, at least on paper. A period piece set in the late 1920s, Presley plays the charismatic manager of a Chautaqua show, a kind of traveling educational carnival that roamed rural America in the first part of the 20th century. The film is still a musical, but most of its songs are presented in the context of tent shows, and director Peter Tewksbury doesn't hide from the darker aspects of life in the 1920s, especially for an itinerant band of entertainers led by a charlatan with a heart of gold.

And the title of such a film? Why, "The Trouble with Girls," naturally. Fearing that no one would understand or be able to pronounce "Chautaqua," MGM chose a title that feels of a piece with Presley's more lighthearted films, but didn't prepare the audience at all for what the movie was actually about. Yes, there are girls and yes, Presley gets in trouble with them; despite its more serious tone, this is still an Elvis movie, and romantic shenanigans still abound. Like "Change of Habit," Presley's performance never quite rises to the occasion, even though the character should have been right in his wheelhouse.

Sadly not a biopic of the celebrated actress and flamenco guitarist, "Charro!" was another of Presley's attempts at cinematic reinvention in 1969, this time taking aim at Clint Eastwood and the spaghetti westerns that made him a household name. Sporting twin bandoliers and a dark scruffy beard, Presley rides into a sparse Western set as Jess Wade, a reformed outlaw who is then captured, branded, and left for dead by his old gang (led by longtime cowboy actor Victor French), who are holding a small town hostage with a stolen solid gold cannon.

According to Peter Guralnick, Presley was thrilled at the original script, chock full of Eastwood-style sex and violence and nary a musical number to be found, then disappointed when he arrived on set and found that the shooting script had been neutered — though still no musical numbers. Presley had played cowboys before, but of the clean-shaven, singing variety; try as he might, he just can't pull off the haunted killer vibe he is desperately reaching for here. It might have helped things if the production didn't look so chintzy; the town he protects from his former gang looks to have a population of about 15, and bears a strong resemblance to the type of movie Western town Mel Brooks would skewer five years later in "Blazing Saddles."

Another film with a title that has little to nothing to do with the rest of the film, 1965's "Tickle Me" is a never-ending pile-on of slapstick gags, puns, and incidents — which, honestly, makes sense for a film scripted by a pair of former "Three Stooges" gag writers. Presley plays unemployed rodeo cowboy and singer Lonnie Beale, who takes a job at a dude ranch. But it turns out that this dude ranch is (gasp) for girls, a fitness camp where dancers and actresses go to lose weight fast.

Just as the film seems to be in the vein of Presley's other resort comedies like "Blue Hawaii," the film pivots into a buried treasure story, with Lonnie and fitness instructor Pam (Jocelyn Lane) searching the ghost town of Silverado for a stash of gold left by her grandfather. Then the film pivots again into "Scooby-Doo" territory (four years before that cartoon premiered) when it appears that the ghost town has actual ghosts in it. Each pivot proves more unfortunate than the last; Presley could play a cad with a heart of gold in his sleep (and often did), but looks out to sea when called on to pull double-takes at fake cowboy ghouls.

1963's "Fun in Acapulco" follows the template set by "Blue Hawaii," setting Presley in the middle of a tropical seaside resort surrounded by exotic (but not too exotic) beauties, where he must prove his mettle in some local competition — in this case, cliff diving. As is often the case, Presley's character is ridiculously talented at a number of things, not just as an entertainer but also as a fisherman, lifeguard, circus acrobat, and expert diver. Working at a fancy hotel, he soon attracts the attention of nice girl Ursula Andress and bad girl Elsa Cardenas, while his overall awesomeness draws the ire of jealous fellow lifeguard Alejandro Rey.

Despite being a "Blue Hawaii" knock-off, "Acapulco" is a looser, more fun film overall, and one with an overall better soundtrack; the single "Bossa Nova Baby" made it to #8 on the charts. Presley filmed all of his scenes in the United States, but this time it wasn't Colonel Tom's fear of leaving the country that kept him out of Mexico, but a bizarre incident in which a Mexican newspaper columnist printed a false, racially inflammatory quote about Mexico attributed to Presley, which caused the Mexican government to ban his entry to the country and caused riots by Mexico's Elvis-loving teens (via The Mexico Daily Post).

Presley's last stab at being a dramatic actor until the end of the decade, 1961's "Wild in the Country" is neither fish nor fowl. Based on J.R. Salamanca's debut novel about a troubled young man who battles his demons and goes on to become a writer, the film was written by legendary playwright Clifford Odets and directed by writer-director Philip Dunne, both at the tail end of illustrious careers. The tone and subject matter are decidedly adult, seemingly made for a grown-up audience uninterested in Presley's whole thing, while Elvis fans were more interested in him shaking his hips than wrestling with his emotions.

And yet, the tension between these elements almost works. A major part of Presley's appeal as a recording artist was the vulnerability he could bring to his vocal performances, something that often gets lost in his film work. He fits well into the sort of role that would have been played by James Dean or Marlon Brando a decade earlier, and his casting goes a long way toward justifying why Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, and Millie Perkins would risk it all for a Bible-quoting, two-fisted dirtbag. Still, the film's mostly negative reception sent Presley running for the safety of low expectations with his next film, "Blue Hawaii."

The first Elvis movie wasn't even an Elvis movie. Presley made the jump to film in 1956, in a Civil War melodrama originally titled "The Reno Brothers." "Pollyanna" actor Richard Egan stars as Vance Reno, a Confederate soldier long thought dead, who returns to his family home to find that his sweetheart Cathy (Debra Paget) has married his youngest brother Cliff (Presley). Vance takes the news in stride, but the rest of the family, Cathy included, cannot reconcile with his return. Cliff, especially, grows overcome with jealousy and meets a tragic end.

In the first volume of Peter Guralnick's Elvis biography "Last Train to Memphis," he writes that Presley arrived on set in California not only with his own lines memorized, but everyone else's. No one was quite sure what to make of him at first, but he shortly won his co-stars over with his down-home mix of charm and humility. Director Robert D. Webb worked closely with Presley on line readings and script study; he was a natural, unvarnished actor and a quick study. As Presley was doing his thing on set, Colonel Tom Parker was doing his thing behind the scenes — namely working to use the film as a promotional tool for The King's massively popular single "Love Me Tender," even getting 20th Century Fox to rename the film in the song's honor.

Elvis stands up for squatter's rights in 1962's "Follow That Dream." When an itinerant family breaks down along an unopened stretch of Florida highway, the family patriarch Pop (Arthur O'Connell) and his son Toby (Presley) decide that they should just set down stakes right there. But that kind of old-fashioned pioneer thinking quickly brings trouble in the form of a highway commissioner who wants them gone, a social worker (Joanne Moore) spurned by Toby, and a pair of rough gamblers (Jack Kruschen, Simon Oakland) who set up an illegal casino next door to Pop and Toby.

Released between "Blue Hawaii" and "Kid Galahad," the film's story has a little more meat on its bones than either of them, even if it lacks the former's glitz and the latter's genre thrills. Presley in particular gets a chance to stretch his acting muscles, notably via a heartfelt monologue during the climactic courtroom scene. Befitting its slightly more serious tone, the film goes light on musical numbers, though the jaunty title song made it to #15 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

Perhaps the most consequential element of the film happened behind the scenes: While filming in Florida, one of the local crewmen brought his nephew — a ten-year-old named Tom Petty – onto the set to meet Presley. As reported by Gainesville Downtown, that brief encounter put Petty on his own path to rock and roll stardom; he and his band The Heartbreakers would make their first appearance on the charts just three months after Presley died in 1977.  

For Presley's second feature, producer Hal Wallis optioned a 1956 short story by Mary Agnes Thompson about a young, gifted country singer who gets plucked from obscurity and becomes an overnight star, but one could be forgiven for thinking that 1957's "Loving You" was a lightly fictionalized take on Presley's own meteoric and controversial rise to fame. And in a way, it was; Wallis' choice of source material was clearly meant to evoke Presley's real life history as a 21-year-old Memphis truck driver who hit it big, and whose music thrilled the young and baffled the old.

The film was Presley's second, but in many ways it plays like a first. It was his first film as a headliner, his first film in color, and his first on-screen kiss. In his book "Last Train to Memphis," Peter Guralinick notes how Wallis and Colonel Tom Parker made the film as soft a launch for Presley as they could, with a cast and crew of seasoned pros and a good script — a professional, respectable production, as opposed to the rock and roll exploitation cheapies that had been cranked out over the last year after the success of "Love Me Tender." 

And though it would be a few years before the "Elvis movie" calcified into a routine, many of the hallmarks of Presley's later films are already here, from the good girl/bad girl love triangle to a plot that resolves itself so neatly and with so little conflict that it might as well have not been there at all. The soundtrack album, powered by singles like the title track and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" would peak at #1 on the Billboard pop chart.

What is it about 1964's "Viva Las Vegas" that makes it the best of Presley's "vacation" movies? On paper, the film doesn't sound terribly different from anything else he was making in the middle of the decade: A race car driver (Presley) coasts into Sin City on fumes, needing a new engine for his car in order to compete in the Las Vegas Grand Prix. While working as a waiter to raise the money, he falls for his hotel's beautiful swimming instructor (Ann-Margaret), tussles with his Italian racing and romance rival (Cesare Danova), and tours the city by land, water, and air.

There's an immediate difference in the film from the likes of "Paradise, Hawaiian Style" in its female lead. Ann-Margaret was coming in hot off the success of "Bye Bye Birdie" the year before, and the script is as much a showcase of her singing, dancing, and acting talents as it is Presley's. Her "Birdie" director George Sidney is behind the camera here as well, working with Presley for the first and last time, and getting sizzling chemistry between the two. The title song, of course, is an all-time banger; though it underperformed on the charts at the time, it has lived on for nearly 60 years as one of The King's signature hits, and the theme song for not just a city, but an entire midcentury modern vibe.

One of the two "serious" films starring Presley between "G.I. Blues" and "Blue Hawaii," the 1960 Western "Flaming Star" was a departure in more ways than one. The oater plot was nothing new — Presley is a mixed-raced cowboy trying to keep the peace between white settlers and native tribes in West Texas after the Civil War — but it was something new for The King, a vision (along with "Wild in the Country") of what adult stardom could look like, free of corny plots and musical numbers. Presley sings the title song off-screen and has just one other musical moment, singing at a gathering in a way that doesn't break the realism of the film.

Directed by Don Siegel of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (and later, a frequent collaborator of Clint Eastwood), the film dares to treat Presley and his character Pacer Burton seriously, and Presley gives it his all, something he would do when working with the right director (see the next entry). And while the film's treatment of its Native American characters is simplistic, it is nowhere near the offensiveness of something like "Stay Away, Joe." Critics took notice, giving Presley his best notices since "King Creole." Variety wrote that the film has "Indians-on-the-warpath for the youngsters, Elvis Presley for the teenagers, and socio-psychological ramifications for adults who prefer a mild dose of sage in their sagebrushers."