Change Of Habit has the same problems as other “dramatic” Elvis movies- it tries to deal with serious issues, but jumps back and forth between being overly earnest and being light hearted or campy. Like most of the characters he plays, Elvis just can’t seem to commit. 

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On top of that, Change Of Habit seems to be trying to have Good Intentions, which, if they aren’t paving the road to Hell here, they are at least working on Heck’s driveway.

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There is also a lot of plot. Like, a lot lot. Like, too much.

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So, let’s see. Mary Tyler Moore is one of three nuns assigned to be nurses at an inner city free clinic. She is Sister Michelle. The others are Sister Barbara, (white, spunky) and Sister Irene, (African American, not happy about the assignment). The clinic is run by Elvis, playing John Carpenter, M.D. His hair and sideburn have had a chance to grow even more bushy and wild since The Trouble With Girls, so there’s that. 

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Things start with the sister getting assigned to him, and them heading into the big city. They go shopping for new groovy clothes, then leave the store and walk out into a busy intersection. Apparently they’d been in the convent so long that they forgot about cars. While this montage is happening, we get the great song “Change Of Habit,”* which has an even crazier bass line in the movie version than the studio version, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. 

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They take a bus to the clinic, where they find Dr. Carpenter having a jam session with a bunch of neighbors/ patients, playing “Rubberneckin’.”** It’s one of Elvis’s best movie songs, and seeing it played in the doc’s living room, complete with three ladies on his couch belting out the high back-up parts, is a hoot.

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John’s not happy with being assigned with nurses. He’s had problems with nurses in the past, see. “Last two nurses who worked here got raped,” he tells them. “One even against her will.” Was that ok to say in 1969? Or, like, ever? For some reason the nuns still want to work for him, and they convince him to give them a try.

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John has Michelle and Barbara work in the office, and has Irene do house calls. Michelle specializes in speech therapy, and wouldn’t you just know it, two of the first cases are young people with speech problems! One is a young man with an overbearing father. Michelle thinks she can help. Even though she has no other cases, she tells him to come back at 4PM the next day. Alright…

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The next case is a young girl who doesn’t speak at all. Her aunt tells John and Michelle that her mom didn’t want her and left the girl, who hadn’t spoken since. Michelle thinks she's autistic*** and John gives her about two minutes to try something to do with a putting blocks in order. The girl gets upset, so John takes over with “Rage Reduction Therapy.”****

The Rage Reduction Therapy scene may be the worst single scene in any Elvis movie. I’ve managed to repress some memories of Stay Away, Joe!, so there may be some competition that I’m forgetting. John takes the girl and holds her in his arms tightly while she struggles to get away. He has Michelle hold her legs to stop her from kicking. They repeat “I love you” to her over and over. She sobs and screams and kicks. They hold and squash and repeat “I love you.” It is physically painful to watch. 

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It, of course, works. After several gruelling minutes, the girl says “love. you.” It’s a miracle of science! 

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Later on, they take the girl out to the park to get ice cream and ride a Merry Go Round, where John sings another great song, “Have A Happy.” 

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Aside from John and Michelle, the rest of the characters are mostly stereotypes. There’s an assortment of brown skinned men who hang out on the streets during the day drinking beer and ogling women. There’s the parish priest who’s old fashioned and doesn’t like what the nuns are doing. There’s a fat white loan shark who provides John with lots of broken bones and black eyes to treat. It all reminds me of how people in big cities were portrayed on TV when I was a kid. Not surprisingly, the director, William A. Graham, came from television. Change Of Habit is his first movie. The only other movie he ever made was Return To The Blue Lagoon in 1991. Let that sink in. 

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Speaking of television, Ed Asner is back,***** this time as a good natured neighborhood cop. 

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The best performance in my book is by Barbara McNair, who plays Sister Irene. She comes in against her will, gets talked to by a couple of neighborhood Black Panther type characters about turning her back on her people, takes on the loan shark, and gets punched by the loan shark. But it motivates the locals to take the dirty creep on, so she’s inspired to do more to help her people. Her performance is solid throughout.

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And frankly, Elvis’s performance is really good too. It’s too bad he had such bad material to work with.

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Anyway, as foreshadowed by John’s earlier rape line, near the end Michelle is attacked by the young man with the speech problem. Luckily John shows up to pull some karate moves,****** disarm him, and save the day.

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I think it goes without saying that during all of this, John has been falling in love with/ hitting on Michelle. When she finally breaks it to him that she is a nun, he is kind and understanding. Stupid spellcheck. I was trying to type “upset and a dick about it.”

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Later on he becomes less upset and dickish, and they talk, and Michelle says she loves him but can’t decide what to do. Things end with Michelle and Irene going back to church to find John leading a folk band doing “Let Us Pray,” the worst song in the movie, and a kind of sad end to his film career.

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ACTING: 7 Elvises

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES: 8 Elvises

BEST SONG: “Rubberneckin’”

STUNTS: Rapist karate! Loan shark karate! Nun karate!

CRINGE FACTOR: Rape joke. N-bomb x 2. Stereotypes aplenty. RAGE REDUCTION THERAPY!

KISSIN’: Nope.

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*I (attempt) to play and sing “Change Of Habit” in Little Elvis.

**Sung by Steve “Lucky” Marshall in Little Elvis.

***There’s confusion by the aunt with artistic, of course…

****Apparently this “therapy” is something that some people still believe in.

*****He was briefly in Kid Galahad, remember?

******Because why break a perfect streak of fights in every movie at this point?

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