A hip, young Dr. John Carpenter (Elvis Presley) comes to a bad neighborhood slum to manage a clinic. He hires three nurses, unknowing that they are nuns in plain clothes. One of the nurses (Mary Tyler Moore),falls in love with the guitar playing doctor and has to make up her mind to stay with him or go back to the church. This is Presley's last scripted movie and probably never looked better. Four songs make up the soundtrack featuring the million seller "Rubberneckin'". Also in the cast are Jane Elliot, Barbara McNair, Robert Emhart and Ed Asner. Great for repeat viewing.

If I thought about it long enough I could probably come up with a more surreal casting decision for a movie, but since I just watched "Change of Habit" my mind has gone a bit blank. I would never have considered Elvis Presley and Mary Tyler Moore opposite each other in a conflicted romance, but that's what you get here when Moore puts on, or should I say, takes off her nun's habit and goes to work with Barbara McNair and Jane Elliott at Dr. John Carpenter's ghetto clinic. The trio are *secret agents from the Little Sisters of Mercy*, a term used in the picture which I didn't make up, but wish I had.

But you know, after what I thought was a false start with Presley's rendition of 'Rubberneckin', the picture settled in with a surprising portrayal of social issues that was just beginning to see treatment in film back in the Sixties. The topic of racism was broached with Sister Irene's (McNair) description by one of the elderly neighborhood busybodies as 'black as the ace of spades'. Over the course of the picture, the good sister decides to break out of her 'safe' role as a nun to become a community agitator on behalf of the barrio folks, taking on the Ajax Market and the usurious Banker (Robert Emhardt). She wins tenuous approval from the self styled Black Panther types who earlier challenged her 'blackness' before they knew she was a nun.

On the flip side however, I had to wince at the suggestion of Dr. Carpenter's 'rage reduction' therapy as a way to cure autism. Even though the session with Presley and Moore attempting to instill love in the little girl Amanda was touching, the miraculous 'cure' was something quite out of the Old Testament, and did little service to the decades long search for treatment of this serious affliction.

For old timers like myself, the picture is a fairly fascinating period piece taking me back to the time of my teenage youth in the Sixties. Thirty cents for three ice cream cones in the park was a major shock to my system while viewing it today, along with eighty nine cents a pound for beef stew and boneless chuck at the Ajax. Rheingold and Piels Beer were on prominent neon display in the local bar; can you still get those today? And shades of Woodstock, did you catch the priest at the chancery office exchanging peace signs with Sister Barbara?

Perhaps the biggest kick I got out of watching the picture was fast forwarding a year ahead to 1970 with a couple of precursors to the popular 'Mary Tyler Moore Show'. Didn't they use Miss Moore's pass from the touch football game in the park at the start of that show? And how about Ed Asner showing up as the neighborhood police lieutenant to make peace at the street festival? All pretty cool, but there WAS one reference that wound up leaving me to scratch my head - has anyone else ever heard of noodle ring?

This is the last of Elvis' movies and at least I can give him some credit for trying something different as well as decent acting on his part. However, other than that, this is a pretty dumb movie that is fun to watch because of its camp value. Most of the problem is the casting, the rest has to do with trying to make the film timely and "with it", as this movie is tragically un-hip! Mary Tyler Moore stars, of all things, as a nun! She and two other "cool" nuns enter the "hood" to help nice Dr. Elvis with his free clinic. The catch is that they are incognito and no one there knows they are already spoken for, so to speak. Naturally, good Dr. Elvis and sweet Sister Moore are taken with each other and sparks begin to fly...until Elvis discovers the truth AND Moore needs to decide whether or not to remain marry the king of the universe or the king or rock and roll.

Along the way, there are lots and lots of subplots--most of which are amazingly silly. One that COULD have been interesting involves a little girl with autism. Unfortunately, just about everything about how they treat her and why she is afflicted is wrong, as they claim the autism is caused by early childhood abandonment(!) and that to cure it they need to use something akin to "compression therapy". In other words, the doctor and nurse hold the autistic kid and force her to accept their love--thereby effecting a miracle cure! Using this same illogic, such "treatments" could also make blind kids see and possibly effect world peace!! Sadly, this misinformation probably did a lot of harm to those who watched the film and had no idea it was all mumbo-jumbo.

Additional plot elements involve two old prudes who inexplicably hate the nuns, a priest with all the charm of Idi Amin, a gangster and his thugs, a nun who decides to give it all up to become a political agitator and a guy with a speech impediment who is a rapist who just needs a bit of understanding! Because practically every imaginable social ill is thrown into the film "kitchen sink style" and the answers seem so pat, viewers can't help but laugh at the whole thing--as well as the idea of Mary Tyler Moore as a nun OR her falling in love with Dr. Elvis--who has a practice in the ghetto! Talk about incongruous plot elements!! The net effect of all this dropped within an incredibly sterilized "hood" is truly funny when seen today--despite the producers best efforts to make a film that said something about social ills. However, for bad movie fans, this film is a must, as it provides many unintended laughs.

You know an Elvis Presley movie is bad when his acting is the best thing about the film!!!

By the way, there are two interesting elements about the film I didn't yet mention. First, Ed Asner makes an appearance late in the film and it's neat to see him and Moore together a year before they appeared together on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. Second, the film has a very vague ending and this wasn't a bad thing, as it allowed the audience members to wonder how it would all work out--though I am sure some were disappointed by the lack of a clear resolution.