Paradise Hawaiian Style – ELVIS PRESLEY***

Paradise Hawaiian Style/Queenie Wahine’s Papaya/Scratch My Back/Drums Of The Islands/Datin’/A Dog’s Life/ House Of Sand/Stop Where You Are/This Is My Heaven/Sand Castles

On Paradise Hawaiian Style Elvis returns to Hawaii for his latest soundtrack, in a doomed attempt to recreate former glories. Too many album releases, with too few decent songs, would appear to be the problem. (US:15 UK:7)

"A sleepy kind of Elvis record, mindless fluff we expect from his soundtracks, but ya got to give him some credit - he gives a good performance."

"Paradise Hawaiian Style was an attempt to recapture some of the success of 1961's Blue Hawaii, which was Elvis' all-time biggest hit album. If they had done it a few years earlier, perhaps it would have worked, but too much time had passed and it was nowhere near as successful."

"The material is not the best in his career. Some clever arrangements along with a surprisingly inventive Presley performance give us the reason not to neglect this."

"This is one of the weaker Elvis albums. It has more novelty songs than any other Elvis soundtrack. There is just one good song, This Is My Heaven."

"With more vigour and vim, some better songs and a stronger script, Paradise Hawaiian Style could have equalled Blue Hawaii. But, all Colonel Parker was interested in was the bottom line. On that note, many people may not know this, but no Elvis Presley movie ever lost money. Some may have just scraped in over the line, but most of them were huge successes. A lot of his movies were lousy, but Elvis was miserable all the way to the bank."

"Younger viewers seeking an answer to why the British Invasion of the mid-1960s was almost instantly successfully need look no further than this film. By 1966 Elvis Presley had gone from a target audience of teenagers looking to scare their parents with his sensual style of rock and roll, to being the heart-throb of the nursing home circuit; electing to skip entirely the huge demographic between these two groups. The British Invasion was able to hit our beaches almost unopposed. Unlike the much better Blue Hawaii, there are island themed musical productions but no actual island songs or music. And the geriatric garbage Elvis sings is surreal in its wholesomeness."