Not Monster of the Day #15

Updated on April 24, 2025 By Ken Begg 9 Comments

Elvis (and Mary Tyler Moore) with the little autistic girl that Dr. Elvis cures by hugging her.

We closed out the day shift of movies with another old favorite, Change of Habit. It was, in fact, the first film I reviewed for the site, back in its KWAM days. I had posted a Giant Claw piece I’d written before the site started, but this was the first actually written to be posted.

The film is trying so hard to be cutting edge and gritty and relevant, but in the end (as I often opined) it felt like a backdoor pilot from a Room 222 pilot. My dramas don’t always go over well, and I don’t think people loved this one, but nobody seemed annoyed by it either. I’ll take that as a win.

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  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    Another example of the hero having a JC name. Dr. Jon Carpenter. Elvis even doubled up with that one in case we did not get it.

  • zombiewhacker

    Also there was the novelty of Mary Tyler Moore and Ed Asner in the same movie together before the MTM sitcom years later — though, if I remember correctly, they worked separately here.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I've seen a bunch of Elvis movies, and they all seem to be dumb and inconsequential. I mean, they're fun, but they're fun in a disposable way. Is this the first time he wanted to be taken seriously? To be…significant to the youth?

  • Ken_Begg

    Also, "Carpenter." Get it? Eh? Get it?

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes, Asner's wise neighborhood beat cop interacts with the (mostly comically) "radical" one.

  • Ken_Begg

    His early films had more pretensions (which I don't mean negatively) to being "real" films. But yes, I think this was a last ditch effort to make Elvis "relevant" in the cinema. It was his last movie, so…..

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    That's what I meant by doubling up ;-). Like on Lost when the one character's name was Christian Shepherd.

  • zombiewhacker

    Unfortunately, Elvis gave up acting just as the martial arts movie craze started hitting America. I would've loved to have seen Elvis (a real life karate practitioner) try his hand as a singing, guitar-strumming Billy Jack-inspired hero. That would have been jabootu gold.

  • Ken_Begg

    Man, you're making me cry. What could have been!