![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/t/tickleme.jpg)
Tickle Me
Lonnie Beale (Elvis Presley) is an old-fashioned singing cowboy, making his living in rodeos and nightclubs. When farm owner Vera Radford (Julie Adams) offers him a job as riding instructor, he ends up at a Zuma beach resort surrounded by beautiful women. Such encourages/allows him to break into musical numbers repeatedly for no good reason. While there he catches the eye of yoga instructor Pamela Merit (Jocelyn Lane). Pam's grandfather was an old prospector and left the family a ton of gold, but hid it, and such has sent Pam and some of the locals on a treasure hunt to find it. Such leads Lonnie and Pam to spend the night in a haunted house, where the bad guys wear masks to try and scare them off and get Pam's gold. Tickle Me (1965) is the closest Elvis Presley came to appearing in an episode of "Scooby Doo," and as directed by Norman Taurog (Elvis's favored director), it's about as sophisticated. There are two things you can also count on from an Elvis movie: inane songs, and hot '60s women. Though Tickle Me features no memorable numbers, it (for better or worse) doesn't feature the sort of inane ditties that somehow manage to encapsulate some aspect of the film's plot. Then again, the Elvis filmography really only turned out handful of songs that were worth something: "Jailhouse Rock," "All Shook Up," and "Viva Las Vegas" spring to mind (and the remixed version of "A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action"), and while "Dirty Dirty Mind" sounds promising, it doesn't amount to much. If Tickle Me has a silver lining, it's not the belabored physical comedy, but the appeal of having one of the sexiest men in the world singing to someone as attractive as Jocelyn Lane. Their chemistry (and it's rumored that Elvis slept with all of his female leads but one) at least makes the movie nearly palatable. Warner presents the film in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) with Dolby Digital 1.0 audio. Extras include a theatrical trailer and bonus trailers for other Elvis films. Keep-case.
—DSH
