I’ve been watching summer movies for the last few weeks and this week I finished up the marathon with Clambake.

I thought Beach Blanket Bingo was painful but Clambake – wow. This was even more painful to watch.

I was doing searches for photos from this movie to use for this post and I forgot to add the word movie so I was actually getting photos for actual clambakes and I decided that reading the sites where those photos were from might be more interesting and better than this movie ever was or could be.

Alas, I plodded forward and found photos from the movie instead and then proceeded to do some research about this movie that I had to suffer through.

Let us start with the “plot” of this movie. To give you a short summary – Elvis plays Scott Heyward, the son of a millionaire businessman who works in the oil industry.

He’s been promoted to vice president of his father’s company but he doesn’t feel he deserves it just because he is the son of the boss. He takes off to get away for a while, driving his fancy car and wearing a fancy suit. He runs into a waterski instructor who notices the girl at the sandwich shop is drooling all over Scott and hears he’s the son of a millionaire while Scott’s talking to his dad on a car phone. I’ll get to that later.

The mechanic says Scott has it made. Scott says he doesn’t know whether people like him for him or for his money. Then he suggests he and the water skiing instructor –Tom Wilson – switch places. Tom can go on to Miami Beach with him and pretend to be Scott Heyward, including having access to all the money and Scott will become Tom and see if he can be an average guy who everyone either likes or doesn’t like based on who he is and not whose son he is.

Tom likes this idea and away they go – Scott riding Tom’s motorcycle and Tom driving Scott’s fancy car.

My first complaint came quite early in this movie – about four minutes in when Elvis’s character is talking on a car phone.

He has a car phone. A car phone in 1967. I think not. I don’t care how rich his daddy is.

But after a quick search online – car phones were actually made available in 1946!! What? Yes, you could install a phone in a car but it had limitations. First, it operated on a radio frequencies and there were only three frequencies you could use. Second, coverage was spotty to say the least. Third, they weighed 80 pounds.

Down in Miami Beach we are supposed to believe that Scott is ignored because he is just a ski instructor and not a millionaire. And we are supposed to believe people and women fall all over Tom only because he is rich. Puh-lease…this might be a dumb movie and Elvis may not have been that good of an actor but he is way hotter than the actor who plays Tom. Women are going to fall all over Elvis because he’s hot – poor or not.

So Scott ends up staying in the employee’s room and Tom gets the presidential suite.

Also staying at this hotel that Scott and Tom are staying at is some famous boat racer played by Bill Bixby. All the girls just fawn all over him and his stories about racing. One girl wants to get his attention so she wants Scott to teach her how to water ski as soon as possible. Again, we are supposed to believe she’d rather date Bill Bixby than Elvis.

The young woman is trying to date a man who obviously could be her father. Just – ew, yuck, gross, and shudder.

Elvis’s singing is truly the only thing that saves this movie and even then, it barely does.

This review of the movie cracked me up and summed up my feelings:

“Arthur H. Nadel’s Clambake (1967) was Elvis Presley’s twenty-fifth film, the last he made as a single man and his least favorite.  Before re-watching Clambake in preparation for this post I would’ve said that in comparison to the many, formula musicals Elvis made this one lies at the bottom of the barrel.  It’s unfortunate, however, that even the King himself couldn’t appreciate all the elements in Clambake that make it so awfully fantastic.  I mean it’s really bad, horrible goodness.”

You can read the full review here: https://aurorasginjoint.com/2015/06/08/clambake-1967-is-the-citizen-kane-of-beach-party-movies/

Usually I look up a bit of trivia for a movie but on this one I disliked it so much I didn’t even bother. Ha!

My advice is to watch this one with a lot of candy and soda next to you so you won’t be so miserable while you watch. Take a bite of chocolate every time Bill Bixby gives off dirty old man vibes and you should have a sugar rush that will take three days for you to come down from.

I’m done with my Summer Movie Marathon just in time to start Comfy, Cozy Cinema with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs next week.

We are starting with What We Did On Our Holiday, which we will be watching this weekend and then writing about next Thursday, Sept. 5.

Here is our schedule for the next couple of months if you are interested in joining in.

We will also have a link up and in October we are doing a comfy, cozy care package giveaway so keep an eye out for that.

Just in case you would rather read a recipe for an actual Clambake than watch this movie you can find that here: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/91837/clam-bake/