Elvis Found Alive

Joel Gilbert is up to his old tricks. After creating Paul McCartney Really Is Dead, an alleged alternative story of the Beatles told by George Harrison where Paul actually died in 1966, he's rewriting the Elvis story. It turns out the King faked his death in 1977 because there was a Mafia contract out on his life. And why would the Mafia want to kill him? Because he was actually a Federal Agent, recruited by Richard Nixon to fight anti-American activity by the likes of the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and the Mafia. Obviously, Elvis Found Alive is a bizarre way to spend a couple of hours. There are moments when the proceedings are almost plausible, but then it pushes things a little too far. The tone is odd, starting off as a tongue-in-cheek documentary, then shifting gears to a relatively factual chronology of Elvis's career, from his humble beginnings to his time as a movie star. But then it enters conspiracy theory territory and doesn't know if it's trying to be funny or shocking, and therein lies the problem: it doesn't know what it wants to be. And that makes it hard to work out what potential audience Gilbert had in mind. Or maybe it isn't difficult because as soon as the name Bill Ayers is mentioned it becomes apparent Gilbert is more than happy to serve up some red meat to the Tea Party folks. And, naturally, that continues with the revelation that President Obama is preventing Elvis from returning to the public spotlight, refusing to grant him a pardon. Ultimately, Elvis Found Alive isn't very interesting; it doesn't even try to make a case for any of this being real, it just provides an overly long narrative that peters out by the halfway point. It loses any shred of credibility it might have possessed with a final parting shot of the alleged elderly Elvis, which is preposterous, with badly Photoshopped grey hair and lines. Life is too short for this kind of nonsense. Apparently there's also an album recorded by Gilbert's faux Elvis and brief previews of the songs are included as an extra ― they aren't brief enough. There's also a full music video for the tribute Elvis supposedly had written for his daughter, "Lisa Marie," which is also terrible.