Change Your Image
alex_mcewan
Reviews
Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970)
Special Two Disc DVD version
Pre-release information on the content of this two disc set was difficult to obtain, but there was a boast of over forty minutes of never-seen footage. This is also stated on the cover of the set. In actual fact it is just over thirty five minutes worth of material and most of it has been seen before.
Disc 1 is the revised 2001 version of the film, exactly as previously released, with the 'Patch It Up' restoration feature. Disc 2 is a DVD release of the 1970 theatrical original plus the extras. The original movie has been shown on TV many times in various edits. This is the most complete version I have seen, but that just means it has all of the non-Elvis sequences. It is in the original mono and very poor mono at that. The sound has been much better on broadcast versions, and you may find you have to crank the volume up much higher than your normal setting to watch this disc.
I was very disappointed with the extras which were the main reason for purchase. When the 2001 version premiered on TCM in the US they also ran a bonus sequence showing the four main songs that had featured in the original but had been dropped from the restored version I've Lost You, Sweet Caroline, I Just Can't Help Believing, and Bridge Over Troubled Water. (They didn't show the concert opener That's All Right which was replaced with 'I Got A Woman in the restoration.) On this set we get the first three but not Bridge Over Troubled Water. However it seems a bit dumb to have these on Disc 2 as they are the same versions as shown in the main movie on the disc only in much lower quality, which looks like a VHS to DVD transfer.
The complete list of extras is rehearsals of You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, Eating Sequence (lunch break), Cattle Call/Baby Lets Play House/Don't, Farther Along, Oh Happy Day, and full stage show versions of I Just Can't Help Believing, Walk A Mile In My Shoes, I've Lost You, Sweet Caroline, Little Sister (Elvis seated with his Gretsch guitar), Stranger In The Crowd (suit with red leather trim and collar), and the After Show Party. The last named is what plays as the credits roll on the restored version of the movie, as I said three of the songs were shown on TCM and came straight from the movie, and a couple of the other items 'Little Sister and Oh Happy Day, have been doing the rounds for some time on bootlegs and web pages, so there it falls far short of the forty minutes of 'new material.
Nice to have, but a chance missed to gather all of the available material in one place, why couldn't the songs that been on tape releases e.g. Make The World Go Away, have been included?