Stay Away, Joe

Stay Away, Joe (1968)

Runtime: 101 minutes

Directed by: Peter Tewksbury

Starring: Elvis, Burgess Meredith, Joan Blondell, Katy Jurado, Thomas Gomez

From: MGM

Yesterday was the day that Elvis passed away, back in '77. Thus, I figured I should watch another one of his films. Maybe this wasn't the right one to pick... I explain it all in the Letterboxd review below:

Or: Stay Away, Moviegoers

The jokes do write themselves sometimes. Yesterday I was reminded that it was the day Elvis passed away in 1977. Thus, I figured I should see another one of his films and I went with one in my collection. I decided to go with the one that sounded pretty wacky. When I saw that Elvis would be playing a (to quote the IMDb plot description) a “half-breed”, that got my attention.

The plot of this: Joe Lightcloud (Elvis; like the Cher song he's half white and half Native American) returns to his home at the Navajo Indian Reservation. OK, his abode where his full-blooded dad Charlie and half-Indian half-Mexican stepmother Annie lives is more of a shack, but Charlie is still given an offer to raise some cattle by the US Government and if he succeeds they will help the entire reservation. But really, the story is a bunch of bull. Most of it is random crap and a lot of that is inane shouting and yelling and general buffoonery.

It should be noted that Charlie is played by noted Native American actor... Burgess Meredith. It's one thing for Elvis either to have some bronzer on his face or be sporting a hell of a tan in order to play an ethnic role. Meredith does the full brownface act (as does most of the cast; there's few if any actual Native Americans to be seen) and at best it's awkward; at worst it's offensive, and it doesn't help that in this film full of stereotypes, the Navajo are portrayed as party animals who love drinking alcohol-including Pabst Blue Ribbon-making light of a still serious issue with Native Americans.

But even if you don't have that, you still have a film which too often thinks that “loud and boisterous” automatically equals “funny”, when that was rarely the case here. There isn't much of a plot so you get to see random things happen instead, and characters doing a 180 and acting completely different just because the script says so. There's at least some chuckles and a few moments of both visual and physical humor that were OK but this is the sort of film where there's a final act fight and it's full of cartoon sound effects.

As for the songs, there's only a few of them; the real highlight (or maybe lowlight) is the tune Dominic, where Elvis sings about a lazy old bull that he wishes would wake up and start mating. Honest. Aside from the guffaws I got from that and the pretty scenery of the Arizona setting, most people should stay away and there definitely are more tolerable Elvis flicks out there.