Kissin’ Cousins (1964)

Directed by Gene Nelson. Starring Elvis Presley, Arthur O’Connell, Jack Albertson, Glenda Farrell, Yvonne Craig, Pamela Austin, Cynthia Pepper, Donald Woods, Tommy Farrell.

Army officer Presley is sent to the Smoky Mountains to convince a distant relation to lease land on a mountaintop for a missile silo, meets a lookalike third cousin (also played by Presley) and cozies up with one of the buxom “mountain maidens”…also a cousin, but so it goes in Appalachia. It’s exactly what you expect it’s gonna be—dopey yokel humor, some forgettable singing and dancing, and no effort whatsoever from the King to differentiate his dual performances (one has black hair, the other light brown, that’s how you tell ‘em apart). Fewer chuckles in the “Green Acres”/L’il Abner-style hillbilly humor than in the abrupt transitions to song, none funnier than Elvis first catching glimpse of blonde beauty Cynthia Pepper and breaking out in “A Tender Feeling”. The camera tricks and processing techniques used to stick two Elvis’ in the same shot are so poor, the “two actors” are almost never seen together onscreen. Keep an eye out for Teri Garr as one of those dancing “mountain maidens”.

41/100