The King... of DVD

Hey, I make no bones about... I love The King (see my The King and I post). I've seen most of the films, been to Graceland, have a nice collection of his CDs and my iPod can pop-up any of about 60 Elvis songs on shuffle at any time. I have been known to pop in the DVD of his comeback special to get out of the doldrums. Elvis Presley was awesome in my book. I didn't learn to really appreciate him until the last decade or so, but I made up for lost ground. I'm not super fanatic or anything, but I appreciate the guy.

I'll readily admit though, a good portion of his movies sucked jelly donuts. There are some great ones that I love, but there are more that just stink. So I've always avoid buying any of his movies on DVD (I have a few concerts/special and such though). Finally a couple of decent collection have changed all that. Fox and Warner both have jumped on the 75th birthday bandwagon and after seeing on hit the stands yesterday I did some digging to see what's going down with these 2 sets.

Here's the skinny as far as info I can find:

Elvis 75th Birthday DVD Collection

Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Release Date: June 1, 2010
List Price: $39.98 (I got it for $31.99 @ Amazon.com)
Number of discs: 7

* Clambake
* Flaming Star
* Follow That Dream
* Frankie and Johnny
* Kid Galahad
* Love Me Tender
* Wild In The Country

My Thoughts: Well, for the price I got it's less than $7 per movie, and you get the excellent Love Me Tender (one of my favorites) and several other of his good films (Wild In The Country, Follow That Dream, Flaming Star). Sadly, you also get Clambake and Frankie and Johnny, both of which ain't nuthin' but hound dogs. Kid Galahad falls somewhere in between I think. So it's a decent selection, especially for the price.

Elvis 75th Anniversary DVD Collection

Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Release Date: August 3, 2010
List Price: $74.98 (Amazon.com has it for $58.49)
Number of discs: 17

* Jailhouse Rock
* It Happened At The World's Fair
* Kissin' Cousins
* Viva Las Vegas
* Girl Happy
* Tickle Me
* Harum Scarum
* Spinout
* Double Trouble
* Stay Away, Joe
* Speedway
* Live a Little, Love a Little
* Charro!
* The Trouble With Girls
* Elvis: That's The Way It Is (Special Edition)
* First Time on DVD - Elvis on Tour
* This Is Elvis

My Thoughts: A few of these I've never even seen (Stay Away, Joe, Live a Little, Love a Little, Tickle Me) but there are some really good ones in there too (Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, It Happened At The World's Fair). Also you get a couple of his race car movies (Speedway and Spinout) and although they may suck... c'mon it's Elvis in a race car! That's awesomeness right there. Harum Scarum and Double Trouble both blow pretty hard in my opinion, but Warner sort of makes up for it with some non-movie stuff. The last 3 in the list are all concert or documentary type stuff. So again, for the money, this is a pretty solid set.

I'm going to pick up both of these for less than $100 and get 21 of his movies and 3 other excellent DVDs, so I think it's a pretty good bargain.

What's left? Well, my favorite Elvis flick ever, King Creole is absent, as is G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii, Fun in Acapulco and Roustabout. Plus some others. But these are available on a collection called Lights! Camera! Elvis! from Paramount a few years ago that's out of print now I believe. It includes Blue Hawaii, Easy Come, Easy Go, Fun in Acapulco, G.I. Blues, Girls! Girls! Girls!, King Creole, Roustabout and Paradise Hawaiian Style. Good luck finding it. I'm not sure what Paramount has planned in their future releases or why they pulled this collection.

So when all is said and done, if you have these 3 DVD collections then your Elvis movie collection is pretty solid. If you don't have them, come to my house (with beer and wings) and we'll do a hunka hunka burnin' movie marathon.