So yeah, Elvis is Glenn Tyler, a wild, angry young man who lost his mom early*, and gets sent by a parole board (and his a-hole dad) to live with his uncle and his uncle’s daughter, the Hot Dangerous Woman Noreen, played by Tuesday Weld. It’s worth noting that they had some idea that making one of Glenn’s love interests his “uncle’s daughter” was a bad idea, because they never, ever use the word “cousin.”

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There is also a Hot Safe Woman, Billie Joe, who seems thrown in occasionally only to be a counterpoint to Noreen. She’s superfluous because in Wild In The Country there’s a new element, the Hot Older Woman. She’s Irene, played by Hope Lange. Glenn is required to meet with Irene a few times a week to talk. It never says she’s a therapist, but if it quacks like a therapist…

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So about those bad decisions. First the movie starts off with a fist fight between Glenn and his brother. He knocks his brother out, and so has to go to a parole board hearing. It’s a goofy set up, and seems to exist only to check the “Elvis fist fight” box in the script.

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Then Glenn gets sent to his uncle to work in his Snake Oil factory. OK, they call it elixir or something, but whatever. There is no point to it being an elixir shop, other than giving Elvis access to alcohol from time to time. Also, everyone on the parole board seems to know the scam the uncle is running, but they decide to send Glenn to work there? It didn’t need to be making elixir, it didn’t need to be his uncle, she didn’t need to be his cousin.

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By this point we’re in full dramatic mode, but then the next box has to be checked- the song. It’s a good one, “I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell.”** But it’s out of place in a pretty serious movie. And aside from a quick sing-song thing with Hope Lange later, and the title track, there’s no other Elvis songs. The movie just decided to be a musical for a minute and a half, and then not.

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Then there’s the whole Billie Joe subplot, which goes nowhere. 

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And then there’s a whole lot of other mechinations which are hard to follow but go something like this: Irene is a widow, and works at a university. She has a rich married guy after her that wants to get a divorce and marry Irene. His son and Glenn don’t get along. Irene has Glenn do some writing as part of their Meetings/Therapy and she thinks Glenn can be a writer She takes Glenn to the university to show a sample of his writing to a professor and he agrees. On the way home the get caught in a rainstorm and stop at a motel for the night. They get separate rooms, but the rich guys son checks in and see them. Now everything is in place for the climax.

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Glenn professes his love for Irene. She loves him, it wouldn’t be right for here to be with this younger man.*** She agrees to marry the rich guy to keep herself from wanting Glenn. The rich guy’s son spills the beans all over town about Glenn and Irene in the motel. Glenn runs off with Noreen. As they are leaving town with the truck and money that they stole from the uncle, he makes a quick stop at the roadhouse to… wait for it…

MANSLAUGTHER the rich guy’s son. What. The….

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Why? Why? A million times why?

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Sure, they needed a reason for him to get arrested and have a trial. But for God’s sake, he’s a parolee stealing a truck. There’s your reason right there!

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At this point there’s nothing left but to have the trial, Irene to attempt suicide, Glenn to run out of the court to be by her side, and well, ok, maybe it was more than a handful of bad decisions.

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ACTING: 7 Elvises - With a good director and solid co-stars, E can act

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES: 6 Elvises - Good song completely out of place

BEST SONG: I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell

STUNTS: barn fight with brother, roadhouse fight with manslaughter, 

CRINGE FACTOR: Well, the whole cousin thing. 

KISSIN’: A fair amount, mostly with his “uncle’s daughter”    *cringe*

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*The dead mom thing, I realize now, is another Elvis Movie Trope. I think that Elvis’ love for his mother was well known, so writers killed off his mom in the movies as motivation.

**Full disclosure, I do “I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell” in Little Elvis.

***In reality, Hope Lange was only 2 years old than Elvis.