Harum Scarum has a bunch of songs that sound like someone did the same thing with every Middle Eastern sounding word they could think of. Desert, cobra, sand, sun, harem, caravan, sheik, dancing girls, mirage, oasis, kismet, palm, persian rugs. The songs are all just kind of filled with gibberish, with as many tambourines and hand drums as they could muster to make them sound, um, exotic?

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Sadly, the script writing feels like they used the same process. It’s nothing but Elvis and a bunch of mostly white people playing every Middle Eastern stereotype imaginable. Elvis is Johnny Tyronne, a singing, dancing, fighting, dreamboat movie star. In other words, he’s Elvis. He’s visiting what I’m pretty sure they called Babblestan* promoting his new movie. He accepts an invitation from Prince Dragna to visit the neighboring kingdom of Lunarkand, which is made up, but has roads to Tehran and Dar es Salaam. Maybe it’s in an alternative universe. 

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On the way to Lunarkand, Johnny is drugged and kidnapped. He wakes up singing to the harem girls that surround him. Wouldn’t you? He finds out that he was kidnapped by assassins who want him to kill Prince Dragna’s brother, King Toranshah, because in the movie Johnny was just in, he killed some guys and a leopard. With his bare hands!

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Just to be clear, these are assassins. They have machine guns. And they go through the trouble of kidnapping an American actor to kill the king. Because they saw him fighting in an American movie. In a country that is described earlier as having been “isolated from the rest of the world for 2000 years.”

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At the point that the assassins said, “We want you to kill the king with your bare hands,” any normal person would have said something like, “OK, look. I’m an actor. I just pretend to kill people.” But not Johnny, and/or Elvis. Those guys are fighters. They know Karate! 

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Johnny’s not 100% in with helping kill the king at first, but during one of the many times he escapes**, he meets a group of slaves, including a young girl and boy. This brings us to the point in the movie that I almost didn’t make it through. The 9 or 10 year old girl tells Johnny that she wants him to buy her so that when she grows up to be a slave woman she can be his. This is the perfect opening for Johnny to explain how people shouldn’t own other people. That, of course, is not what happens. What happens is so cringe-inducing that it broke not only my main cringe-o-meter but my back-up cringe-o-meter too.***

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What happens is that Johnny starts singing “Hey Little Girl” to the little girl while she dances. In case you are unfamiliar with the lyrics to “Hey Little Girl,” here are a choice few: 

___“Hey little girl, come on and dance with me

___You're about the cutest thing I ever did see

___Hey little girl, I'd like to take you home

___Come on, come on, come on I want you for my very own”

It’s not only weird and gross, but it ruins the (otherwise) best song in the movie. 

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About the only thing that kept me watching, other than my commitment to this whole 31 Elvis Movies in 31 Days schtick, is that there were a bunch of weird bit players and returning actors. Mary Ann Mobley, who played Rusty’s first love interest in Girl Happy, is back as the very white Princess Shalimar. And Billy Barty is back from a bit part in Roustabout to a much larger**** role in Harum Scarum.

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Better still are two legendary scenery chewers from the original Star Trek series. Prince Dragna is played by Michael Ansara, who played the Klingon Commander Kang. The head of the assassins, Sinan, is played by Theo Marcuse, who played Korob, an alien from another galaxy, in the Catspaw episode. Korab dies in the end and is shown to be a small bird-like marionette. His death in Harum Scarum is almost as amusing.

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Harum Scarum sets a new low for worst Elvis movie. I think there are still a few contenders*****, but it may be tough to beat. But for now, I must just say “Congratulations Tickle Me! You are no longer the worst Elvis movie that I’ve seen.”

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ACTING: 2 Elvises

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES: 1 Elvis

BEST SONG: “Shake That Tambourine”

STUNTS: Fighting. So. Much. Fighting. And escaping. Also lots of wall climbing. 

CRINGE FACTOR: Non-stop, wall to wall Middle Eastern stereotypes 

KISSIN’: Some

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*I tried backing it up to hear what they said and I swear that’s it. If not, well, it’s probably just as idiotic.

**He gets away and is recaptured about 14 times, each time with a ridiculous fight scene.

***If you think that it’s going to be easy to get cringe-o-meters fixed during a global pandemic, well, think again.

****Too easy

*****I’m looking at you Stay Away, Joe!