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?
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?