Love Me Tender (1956)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Wild In The Country; Flaming Star
Rating
Year Of Production	1956
Running Time	85:54
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (58:33)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Robert D. Webb
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Elvis Presley Debra Paget Richard Egan (I) Robert Middleton William Campbell (I) Neville Brand Mildred Dunnock
Case	?
RPI	Box	Music	Lionel Newman Vera Matson (songs) Elvis Presley (songs)

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Danish Finnish Dutch Swedish Norwegian German Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    He’s a rugged fighting man. He’s a wonderful loving man. He’s a terrific singing man. He’s......Elvis Presley! In his motion picture debut, ‘the king’ was the main attraction to Love Me Tender, despite his lack of acting training. Proving he was multi-talented, Elvis built himself a full career in acting to go along with being the greatest rock’n’roll singer of his time, and probably everyone else's.

    Shot for $1 million in 1956, Love Me Tender tells the story of Clint Reno (Presley), who stayed with his family while his brother Vance (Richard Egan (I)) joined the Confederate army to fight in the Civil War. When Vance comes back to propose to his girlfriend, he discovers that his brother has married her. Vance leaves and gets himself into trouble with the law, and the Reno family must resolve the issue, and get their family back to where they were before.

    I’m not a big fan of the forced and unnatural acting that was used back in the day. It is on display in full force in this film, and is an immediate turn-off for me. That is my main criticism of the film, but those who are interested will likely not care much for that, as any fan of Elvis’ music was more than likely a fan of his films. If you’re a fan, then ignore my comments, and go stock up on your Elvis DVDs.

Video

    The video transfer is good, considering that the film has not been remastered. It is presented in black and white, and is framed in its correct ‘Cinemascope’ aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The transfer is 16x9 enhanced.

    Sharpness was not perfect, with an overall softness to the entire film. Nothing excessive, and to be expected. Shadow detail and black levels were strong, which is important to the transfer. Grain and low level noise was evident throughout, but never became excessive.

    Film artefacts such as black and white specks and dirt were consistently frequent throughout, but for a forty-six year old print were not too dramatic.

    This disc is RSDL-formatted, and the layer change occurs at 58:33.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio is satisfactory, if unspectacular. We have the choice of English or German Dolby Digital 2.0 mono.

    Dialogue was fairly clean, never becoming unintelligible or distorted. There were no issues with audio sync.

    The film’s music, which features four songs from ‘The King’, all sounded pretty good. There were no issues with musical quality - these songs were the highlights of the soundtrack.

    Surround channel usage was non-existent, and neither was the subwoofer used by this mono soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Theatrical Trailer - (2:16)

    Poor quality, 16x9 enhanced with Dolby Digital 2.0 mono audio.

Trailer - Wild In The Country (2:26)

Trailer - Flaming Star (2:29)

    The Region 1 version of this DVD includes a Spanish trailer for Love Me Tender, and misses out on the trailers for Wild At Heart and Flaming Star. There is no need to import this title - the local product is fine.

    The video transfer is good, if a bit problematic, which is only to be expected being such an old print.

    The audio transfer is satisfactory, if unspectacular.

    The only extra features are three trailers.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall