Gangster Carmine (Jack Kruschen), exasperated: "I just don't know anymore."

A lesser Elvis movie that breaks away somewhat from the usual formula, Follow That Dream (1962) unwisely casts The King as a painfully stupid country bumpkin along the lines of Gomer Pyle. Most Elvis movies after about 1960 were vehicles built around his talent and natural charm, but this was adapted from a popular novel, with Elvis plunked into the proceedings. It has a few genuinely funny moments but at 109 minutes it seems to go on forEVER, and is filled with annoying government busybodies and government-dependent backwoods stereotypes hard to accept on any level in 2014.

Nevertheless, Twilight Time was wise to license this title from MGM considering its rocky home video history. More than ten years ago MGM announced a full-frame-only DVD release (the picture was shot in 2.35:1 Panavision) but consumer complaints ahead of its street date instead led to the release of flipper disc. One side offered the film panned-and-scanned, the other in unenhanced, 4:3 letterboxed format. That was better than nothing, but for a decade there's been plenty of room for improvement. Twilight Time's new Blu-ray looks great.

The film fairly faithfully adapts Richard P. Powell's satirical novel Pioneer, Go Home! (1959); his previous and very different work The Philadelphian had been turned into the successful The Young Philadelphians in 1959. Powell was not pleased when Elvis was cast in the lead, but upon seeing the film changed his opinion and apparently was quite pleased with the results. The Internet Movie Database continues to confuse Richard P. Powell with television writer Richard M. Powell, who wrote for TV shows like Hogan's Heroes and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Because Elvis's character behaves so much like Gomer Pyle in Follow That Dream many reviewers, including, ten years ago, this one, made an erroneous connection there.

The story concerns the Kwimper Family: young Toby (Elvis), his widower father, Pop (Arthur O'Connell), and adopted siblings: 19-year-old orphan Holly (Anne Helm), formerly the Kwimper's babysitter; young twins Eddy and Teddy (Gavin and Robin Coon), distant cousins, also orphaned; and tiny Adriane (Pam Ogles), yet another parentless child taken in by the Kwimpers. In their beat-up Model A, they run out of gas on an undeveloped stretch of Florida land and decide to homestead there.

This becomes a great annoyance to state highway supervisor H. Arthur King (Alan Hewitt) as well as welfare worker and self-styled psychology expert Alisha Claypoole (Joanna Moore), the latter first turned on by Elvis's raw sexuality then determined to destroy him after he spurns her advances.

Follow That Dream is one of those pictures where the family's naïveté about absolutely everything is the big joke. The Kwimpers are, as King describes them, "half hillbilly, half hobo...with a tincture of bowery bum." They're unaware of the realities and harshness of the real (i.e., urban/outside) world yet are insulated by their very ignorance, and their basic honesty and decency protects them. There are also a lot gags concerning the Kwimpers' outhouse. (This may be the first Hollywood film to use the term "John.")

The entire middle third of the picture is taken up by an excruciating subplot involving gangsters (Simon Oakland and Jack Kruschen) who move in next door and set up a rowdy mobile casino. When the Kwimpers get in their way, they hire assassins (from Detroit) to kill Toby and blow up their home. Throughout all this, even when the assassins are firing their Tommy guns directly at Toby and leave a time bomb jug of kerosene at their front door, Toby assumes his neighbors are merely drunks getting out of hand. Therein lies the film's basic problem. We know what's going on; why is Elvis so stupid?

He never wises up, nor does anyone in his family, and so the entire picture rests on this ignorance-is-bliss conceit, one that wears mighty thin before the end of the first reel. The episodic nature of the script only makes the movie more maddeningly dull. The last third is a dreary public hearing over the fate of the Kwimper kids, with Elvis -- natch -- acting as their attorney.

Another odd aspect of the film is its suggestion that the Kwimpers are cute because they're lazy and live off the government. Pop has been on unemployment for years while super-strong Toby (he lifts their fully-loaded Model A in the air like the Six Million Dollar Man) is on total disability for a "bad back" he strained while in the army. The entire film has a vague air of satirizing government waste and its fussy employees, but this aspect goes over like a lead balloon. If Fox News had produced the film, Claypool and King would be the heroes, the Kwimpers the good-fer-nuthin' villains.

On the plus side, there's some funny business when Elvis is mistaken for a bank robber and, later, when Nick and Carmine believe Toby wants to "take them for a ride." The songs are better than average, especially "What a Wonderful Life" and "Follow That Dream." The staging by journeyman director Gordon Douglas is unimaginative, however. Elvis sings half his numbers flat on his back (must be that old army injury), and one number sure plays like Elvis must have been lip-synching to an entirely different orchestration than was used in the film.

The picture was shot in Florida but, unlike most Elvis movies, the travelogue-like possibilities are utterly squandered, with most of the film shot on the same stretch of highway. They might have filmed the entire picture in Santa Barbara for all the difference it makes.

Video & Audio

Follow That Dream looked awful full-screen on DVD, and not much better on that disc's 4:3 letterboxed version, which was soft, lacked definition, and had inconsistent color. Happily, Twilight Time's new Blu-ray is none of these things. The image is razor-sharp and the color (original prints by DeLuxe) rich and bright. The film is a bit grainy, but it's a natural film-grain look and never a distraction. The 1.0 DTS-HD Master Audio is also fine, though one wishes the original release had been in stereo, at least for Elvis's songs. Optional English SDH are offered and the disc is limited to 3,000 units.

Extra Features

Extras include a strange trailer. It's in high-def, unlike the 4:3 letterboxed trailer on the DVD, but it seems to be missing narration, as if it were replaced instead with one of the songs from the movie, played in its entirety.

Also included is an isolated score track and Julie Kirgo's usual liner notes.

Parting Thoughts

Despite conventional wisdom that Elvis made nothing but bad movies, his best films (and some of his worst) are actually a lot of fun. Movies like Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole (1958) showcase a pre-army Elvis, when he was still edgy and dangerous. Flaming Star (1960) is a great Don Siegel Western that happens to star Elvis, while movies like Viva Las Vegas (1964) and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) have a great '60s sensibility with cool cars, exotic locations, and Day-Glo color. Even Change of Habit has great camp value. Unfortunately, Follow That Dream is none of these things. It attempts to plunk Elvis into a type of role that ill-suits him, in a weak comedy in the Ma and Pa Kettle vein that was outmoded and already becoming a staple of American television by the early-'60s.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.