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Spinout

Spinout

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Elvis is chased by girls in Spinout!
Review: "I'm not going to marry you, I'm not going to marry her, I'm staying single, single, single, single, single." That is what Mike McCoy (Elvis Presley) is tring to do. Mike has 3 girls wanting to marry him. (The 3rd person will start later on in the film).

An author named Diana St. Clair (Diane McBain) wants to marry Mike McCoy. She writes books, like Ten Ways to Trap a Bachler and the mating habits of the single male. While that a millionairess name Cynthia Foxhugh (Shelly Fabares) wants to marry him too.

Her father (Carl Betz) wants her to marry his worker named Philip (Warren Berlinger). Like Girl Happy, Elvis sings with a combo. This time the combo is made up of Les, Curly and Larry, (Deborah Walley, Jack Mullaney, Larry Hawkins, Girl Happy).

Cynthia claims she gets everything she wants. She even gets her old man to pretend to kick Mike and his combo out of town. A police officer (Will Hutchins) shows up.

Mike asks if they can leave in the morning, and the police officer replies, "Sure, who does he think he is kicking people out of town in the middle of the night."

He is Cynthia's old man.

But soon thier is trouble when Les makes a move on Mike. But does he stay single or marry one of the 3 girls? Watch to find out.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Who else would have three beautiful women after him?
Review: "Spinout" has Elvis playing a singing race car driver with three beautiful women who want to race him down the aisle to marriage. They are Shelley Fabares, Diane McBain, and Deborah Walley. Looks like Elvis has a tough decision. I can't decide myself. In "Spinout" you'll find two veteran stars in the height of their stardom: Cecil Kellaway and Una Merkel in one of her last roles. Also, the man who plays Shelley Fabares' father is Carl Betz who also starred with her as her father on "The Donna Reed Show". So, try to not to knock this movie. It's got great songs and the title tune was a top 40 hit by just that much. So, treat yourself to a swinging film that you just can't understand why Elvis wants to stay single.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Better than average Elvis 60's flick.
Review: "Spinout" is neither the best nor the worst Elvis movie of the 60's. But it is represenative of most of his films and thus a good movie for Elvis newbies to gage whether they want to see any more from da' King.

The Plot? Well, here goes;

Elvis and his bandmates (who are also his pit crew) run across a millionaire's daughter & a attractive journalist who want Elvis as their trophy husband. The band's drummer (whose also a gourmet cook) is also smitten with the King. The millionaire wants Elvis as well, but only to drive his new race car. In the end, everyone is racin', dancin', & finally gettin' married. But which one (of any of them) does Elvis chose?

The songs are above average for a typical Elvis flick, lead off by the snappy rock number "Stop, Look, Listen". Other highlights include "Adam & Evil", "All That I Am", and the swaggering "I'll Be Back".

"Spinout" is perfect drive-in fare where the details of the plot should really be ignored if you're going to enjoy the film. Although I'll admit that some of it is so bad it's funny. Take for example the late night dinner scene that happens early in the film. Elvis manages to light a campfire simply by dropping a lit match on a small pile of dry wood (try that the next time your camping). Or how Elvis 'n bandmates manage to organize a pool party overnight to wake the millionaire up at dawn. Not to mention the band itself seems only vaguely familiar with how their instraments work. The fetching Deborah Wally seems completely lost while trying to maintain a beat.

The rest of the cast is fine, if not really outstanding. Shelly Fabares is appropriately spoiled, yet radient as the millionaire's daughter. Diane McBain is the quinessential cool blond jounalist who pops out of nowhere from time to time. And Warren Berlinger is in perfect sit-com form as the hapless assitant to the millionaire whose desparately in love with Fabares.

The film does have stretches where nothing really happens and the most groan inducing moment is when Elvis identifies a wondering mutt as a "Hound Dog". Elvis himself seems rather bored all through the film and his eyes are noticably hazy, as if...well, I'll leave any explaination for why up to y'all.

For those who love Elvis and enjoy his films, this one is for you. For those who are curious, "Spinout" is a good introduction and is just entertaining enough to pass a lazy afternoon.

Some extra trivia:
* - Cecil Kelloway & Una Merkel make their final movie appearence as the old couple that Elvis tricks into taking their second honeymoon. There characters are not the sharpest knives in the drawer considering that they leave their mansion in the hands of a total stranger whose a rock musician.

* - Note the first wide shot of the club that Elvis performs "Stop, Look, Listen". You'll see everyone movin' & dancin' to the song, including the guy on the phone.

* - One member of the band "plays" a double-necked guitar, which was just coming into prominence at the time.

* - The ad line for "Spinout" was "Elvis marries three women at once." It turns out to be literally true, but not in the way you might think.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Elvis is chased by girls in Spinout!
Review: "I'm not going to marry you, I'm not going to marry her, I'm staying single, single, single, single, single." That is what Mike McCoy (Elvis Presley) is tring to do. Mike has 3 girls wanting to marry him. (The 3rd person will start later on in the film).

An author named Diana St. Clair (Diane McBain) wants to marry Mike McCoy. She writes books, like Ten Ways to Trap a Bachler and the mating habits of the single male. While that a millionairess name Cynthia Foxhugh (Shelly Fabares) wants to marry him too.

Her father (Carl Betz) wants her to marry his worker named Philip (Warren Berlinger). Like Girl Happy, Elvis sings with a combo. This time the combo is made up of Les, Curly and Larry, (Deborah Walley, Jack Mullaney, Larry Hawkins, Girl Happy).

Cynthia claims she gets everything she wants. She even gets her old man to pretend to kick Mike and his combo out of town. A police officer (Will Hutchins) shows up.

Mike asks if they can leave in the morning, and the police officer replies, "Sure, who does he think he is kicking people out of town in the middle of the night."

He is Cynthia's old man.

But soon thier is trouble when Les makes a move on Mike. But does he stay single or marry one of the 3 girls? Watch to find out.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Elvis Excelsis
Review: Hooray, SPINOUT on DVD at last! One of Elvis' 60s movies, about which all you can say is, if you like them, you love them. Somewhere along the way, Elvis stopped really caring about everything except Gladys, and the scripts suffered. They were all the same with plenty of innuendo, but not much real sex. Except of course that sex is omnipresent in the air, it's built into each frame of film like a poltergeist nimbus in a haunted house. SPINOUT features Elvis opposite the perplexing pixie Deborah Walley, who often played a kind of tomboyish girl yearning to be a woman, the parts Debbie Reynolds owned a decade earlier. And yet Walley is extremely sexy, just not in this film. The other guys Elvis has to compete with aren't in his league, but they're not bad looking, at least Will Sugarfoot Hutchins and Carl Betz from the Donna Reed Show are passable and here even Warren Berlinger from BILLIE looks pretty sharp.

However in every department the women outclass them, from Deborah Walley in torn sweatshirts and pink Capris, to ultra-chic Diane McBain an "author" like Helen Gurley Brown of sex manuals for bachelorettes, to Shelley Fabares, the millionaire daughter of Carl Betz--a casting move that will leave you scratching your head if you remember her playing the same part in The Donna Reed Show. As many have noted, the final number is the best--I'LL BE BACK, sung by Elvis and band in a bohemian basement nightclub with weird proto-Dufy paintings on the walls and candles stuck in Chianti bottles, and the band drives the crowd to their feet eventually, everyone doing the Frug and the Monkey in wild 60s abandon.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Elvis formula fun is a good thing!
Review: Some will have you believe that Spinout was one of Elvis' worst movies (out of 33). Then again, some thing "Stay Away Joe" wasn't absolutely miserable. They're all wrong.

Elvis movies are made up of music, girls, fairly interesting characters, and lots of Elvis. This movie covers every area.

Look at the music. "Adam & Evil", "Stop, Look, and Listen", "I'll Be Back", "Am I Ready", and even the title song, "Spinout" are all good songs. The first three songs I mentioned, I absolutely love.

The movie takes place in Santa Barbara, but you wouldn't know it by watching the movie. That's a shame. Santa Barbara has mountains on one side and ocean on the other. State Street and the Beach are really, really cool. But they're never seen, and that's because the Foxhugh's and a racetrack are keeping Elvis from shopping and rollerblading down the sidewalk. He doesn't even have time to get an ice cream cone at the end of the pier! That's harsh.

Three characters in this movie come from the Donna Reed show, which was my favorite sitcom of all time: Carl Betz, Shelly Fabares, and Jimmy Hawkins, who started out on Donna Reed playing Mary's (Fabares) love interest, but by the end of the show's run, ended up being pals with Jeff (Mary's younger brother). Fast forward to Spinout. Fabares is a hot little brunette, Betz is her hip Daddy-O, just like in Donna Reed, and you even have Deborah Walley from Beach Blanket Bingo and Ski Party.

The movie will fascinate you as you won't be able to figure out how someone as cute as Deborah Walley (who was a hottie in Ski Party and Beach Blanket Bingo) can be so unappealing in this movie. But she is, which is unfortunate considering she's in competition with Fabares (who had excellent chemistry with Elvis in Girl Happy) and Diane McBain, a nationally known author and sexy older woman, who finds gypsy livin' Elvis to be the perfect American male...and wants to marry him because of it. Considering where Elvis has his gigs, I'm surprised this well known authoress has even heard of Mike (Elvis). But explanations are an afterthought in Elvisland. And rightly so.

Three women want to marry Elvis. Each one makes out with Elvis. Two women make him dinner. One woman runs him off the road into a creek. That pretty much levels the playing field as Walley isn't even cute in this movie, and McBain is too old.

Somehow, someway, through music, racing, kissing, and conivery, everything works out. And by the time Elvis is singing "I'll Be Back" with Jo from "Easy Come, Easy Go", the King of Rock n Roll and Racing (four racing movies, four movies where he's top dog on the track (or water) has everything figured out.

This movie makes you take a look at your values. And if that's not all, the auto racing scenes in the movie are better than Clambake's boat race and Speedway's ovals.

This movie rates among the best of Elvis' movies in music. It pairs Elvis with Fabares for the second of three movies. The ending is better than that of Viva Las Vegas, and Elvis still gets to be gritty.

All the formula ingredients for a fun movie. No reason to dislike it. Those who do have inner issues to deal with.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The music's better than the movie
Review: SPINOUT is another hard movie to sit through, thanks to the weak dialogue and even weaker storyline.

Elvis plays a singing race car driver (for the second time), who is being chased by three women. These include a spoiled brat (Shelley Fabares), an erotic author (Diane McBain), and his own drummer (Deborah Walley).

The music is actually listenable in this picture. Highlights include "Stop, Look, and Listen" and "I'll Be Back".

Elvis appears to be sleepwalking through this one. His appearance is also disturbing: slightly overweight and his hair looks like a big black ball on his head.

Again, not QUITE the worst, but far from the best. Buy something more worthwhile first.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Spun Out
Review: The best things about this heavily formula vehicle are (1) Elvis' opening production numbers (including a nicely staged "Adam And Evil"); (2) Deborah Walley's "girl drummer" role; (3) the Deusenberg; and (4) Elvis' closing production number, the medium walking blues "I'll Be Back". Everything else is redundant.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THANK YOU WARNER BROTHERS!
Review: This cover is EXCELLENT! Glad someone smart at WARNER BROTHERS decided to use the original poster art! ENTERTAINING film with a GREAT Soundtrack! ELVIS looked GREAT and the supporting cast did too!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THANK YOU WARNER BROTHERS!
Review: This cover is EXCELLENT! Glad someone smart at WARNER BROTHERS decided to use the original poster art! ENTERTAINING film with a GREAT Soundtrack! ELVIS looked GREAT and the supporting cast did too!


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