‘Frankie and Johnny,’ ‘Follow That Dream’ Show Elvis; ‘Ishtar,’ Out Nov. 24, May Do Fair Rental Business

The hoopla over the 10th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death rightly focuses on his singing and doesn’t dwell on his acting. That’s because there’s not much to dwell on.

Even after 34 movies, Presley wasn’t much of an actor. In fact, his acting skills deteriorated through the ‘60s. He was more convincing in the early movies.

Since Presley wasn’t performing in the ‘60s, the only way his fans could see him was sitting through movies like “Frankie and Johnny,” the 1968 musical that just debuted on an MGM/UA cassette at $24.95. Films like this, with some song and a slim plot, basically offered his faithful fans a chance to gawk at their idol. Surprisingly, the music in his movies was usually mundane.

Another new release, “Follow That Dream,” (MGM/UA, 1962, $24.95), though ultimately a trifle, is one of the best of his formula movies. Presley is likable as the strong, amiable hick fighting to save his family’s homestead in Florida.

In all fairness, Presley never had a chance to develop as an actor because of the parade of unchallenging roles. He invariably played the tough, noble hero who triumphed over all adversity and strolled off into the sunset with a pretty girl. There were rarely any subtleties or nuances to his performances. For a singer noted for intensity, he showed a startling lack of it in his movie performances.

Presley never really made what most critics would consider a good movie. The closest was “Wild in the Country,” (Key Video, $19.98), a 1960 drama written by Clifford Odets and co-starring Millie Perkins and Hope Lange. The convoluted soap opera features Presley as a backwoods delinquent with a raw talent for writing. For a change, there’s some fire in his performance. But the rest of the cast doesn’t smolder. They sprinkle cold water on Presley’s performance.

Presley has a few convincing moments as the tough young singer caught up in the New Orleans underworld in “King Creole,” but his performance has been consistently overrated--even by Presley himself. This ambitious movie, based on Harold Robbins’ novel ‘A Stone for Danny Fisher,” is undone by its script and Presley’s acting limitations. It was directed by Michael Curtiz, who also directed “Casablanca.”

“Love Me Tender” (1956, Key Video, $19.98) is of interest only because it’s Presley’s first movie. In this seamy, Civil War drama, he drastically overacts.

Possibly Presley’s worst movie is “Blue Hawaii” (Key Video, $19.98, 1961), which is a camp classic. The songs and the script are so bad that you’ll be chuckling throughout. This is one of the biggest embarrassments in the illustrious career of Angela Lansbury, who plays Presley’s mother.

Most of Presley’s movies are available on home video. Eleven are available on Key Video at the reduced price of $19.98. MGM/UA has dropped the price of the 12 Presley films to $24.95.

If you want to see Presley doing what he does best--which is sing--you might try Media’s “Elvis-One Night With You,” (Media, $19.95) an informal, 53-minute performance--including errors, ad-libs and all--taped in 1968. There’s more humor and passion in this short musical session than in all his movies combined.

LAS VEGAS NEWS: At the Video Software Dealers Assn. convention earlier this week in Las Vegas, there were, as usual, announcements of the fall home-video debuts of several major movies.

RCA/Columbia’s “Ishtar,” the $40-million bomb starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, will be out Nov. 24. Insiders say it will do fair rental business.

Two of the fall rental blockbusters are likely to be Warner Video’s Oct. 28 release, “Lethal Weapon,” with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, and Touchstone’s comedy, “Outrageous Fortune,” featuring Bette Midler and Shelley Long, due out Nov. 17. Another Touchstone comedy with huge rental potential, “Tin Men,” starring Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, is scheduled to bow Oct. 27

The eerie, controversial “River’s Edge” will be released Oct. 28 by Nelson Entertainment--formerly Embassy Home Video.

Next week: “The Stepfather,” “The Misson,” “Dead of Winter,” “The Munchies” and “Betty Blue.”

NEW RELEASES: HBO’s “Radio Days” is writer-director Woody Allen’s loving, nostalgic, often hilarious homage to the pre-TV era--around the beginning of World War II--when radio was king. Critics hailed this series of vignettes, loosely centered around the rise of a radio star (Mia Farrow) and the mundane lives of some radio fans--the members of a poor Jewish family in New York. Through it all, Allen is subtly commenting on how fleeting seemingly permanent things are. Nostalgia buffs should love the incessant sound of radio shows and old hits in the background. Allen creates such an overpoweringly nostalgic mood that you long for the good old radio days--even if they weren’t in your childhood. Co-starring Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest, Michael Tucker of TV’s “L.A. Law” and Seth Green as the young Woody-Allen character.

Lightning Video’s grim “Native Son,” which had limited theatrical release, will probably disappoint anyone who’s read Richard Wright’s great 1940 novel about the gulf between blacks and whites. The consensus was that, stripped of Wright’s passionate philosophizing, the movie doesn’t have anything close to the impact of the novel. Director Jerold Freedman plays down the message and plays up the plot--about a young black chauffeur Bigger Thomas (Victor Love) who tries to cover up his accidental killing of a white woman. But the movie does partly work as a drama and also provides a chilling glimpse of urban race relations in the ‘30s.

Love effectively carries the movie, with capable support from an all-star cast, Oprah Winfrey, Geraldine Page, Matt Dillon, Elizabeth McGovern and Carroll Baker. Winfrey, as Thomas’ mother, shows that she’s developed into one of the best character actresses around.

Critics pelted Warners’ “Over the Top,” starring Sylvester Stallone, with every possible barb. Basically the Rocky tale retold in the arena of arm-wrestling, the movie is about a struggling trucker and amateur arm-wrestler (Stallone) who’s battling his rich father-in-law (Robert Loggia) for custody of the young son (David Mendenhall) whom the trucker once deserted. Winning the arm-wrestling championship in Las Vegas would solve all the trucker’s problems. These sweaty, grunting matches dominate the last part of the movie. As his favorite character--the talented underdog confronting overwhelming odds--Stallone is surprisingly subdued. The movie’s gross ($15 million) was respectable but not nearly as much as his Rocky and Rambo movies raked in.

CHARTS

(Compiled by Billboard magazine) TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, RENTALS 1--”The Color Purple” (Warner Video).

2--”The Golden Child” (Paramount).

3--”Crocodile Dundee” (Paramount).

4--”Crimes of the Heart” (Lorimar).

TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, SALES 1--”Crocodile Dundee” (Paramount).

2--”Jane Fonda’s Low Impact Aerobic Workout” (Lorimar).

3--”Top Gun” (Paramount).

4--”Callanetics” (MCA).