Spinout

With a tagline blaring, "It's Elvis with his foot on the gas and no brakes on the fun!" Spinout roared into theatres in 1966. Elvis twenty-second film within a ten year span was originally titled California Holiday, but as one MGM exec pointed out, "They don't need titles. They could be numbered." Not surprisingly, Spinout doesn't break a whole lot of new ground in the Elvis genre. As in Viva Las Vegas (1964), he plays a racecar driver and moonlighting singer with . . . what is it again? Oh yeah, multiple females running around trying to snag him against the colorful backdrop of the race track while the King and his hot combo croon songs like "Adam and Evil," "Beach Shack," and "Am I Ready?." Shelley Fabares, Deborah Walley, Diane McBain and Dodie Marshall play the marriage-minded women this time around. Norman Taurog returned to direct; it was his sixth Presley flick and he would eventually helm a total of nine Elvis movies. An Oscar winning director, Taurog was best known for two of his earlier films, Boys Town (1938) and Skippy (1931). Spinout was Shelley Fabares' second Elvis film (she also starred in Girl Happy (1965) and Clambake, 1967). Elvis claimed she was his favorite co-star, and, not surprisingly, a long-running rumor of a hot-and-heavy affair between the two persisted for years. Perhaps the rumor was not completely unfounded: during a romantic scene in Spinout, the two continued kissing for three minutes in front of the full cast and crew after Taurog... more